Chapter 5
Thirteen Years Ago
Alchemy Malefic
I’d stared down the likes of grizzly bears half a dozen times in my life. Once, I stood toe-to-toe with a crocmare. My childhood coven even once employed me to face off with an outcasted fearcat that plagued our seaside town. None of those things scared me. They excited me, if anything.
What could the teeth of beasts do to me?
Make me bleed? Kill me swiftly? My life was of little consequence, and death had never haunted me in the way it did some.
Death was a door I’d walk through when the time came, whether by claw or age or a spell gone wrong.
There was no outrunning the reaper’s snare, and the notion of such did little to spike my pulse or plague my mind.
Yet one thing did frighten me.
Something I discovered the moment I met Spirit.
We shouldn’t have met, really. Not within the common day-to-day of life. My wife was from the mountains of Willowspire, and I was a sea witch from the beaches of Night Gale. Our meeting was by divine accident.
It was the summer solstice, our most sacred solstice, and my coven and I met by the arched, sea-wave worn stones as we did every ceremony.
The salt air tangled through my curls and sand anointed my skin as we waded into the deep.
When the moon shone bright and our ceremony concluded, I swam past my coven sisters, noticing a faint pink glow.
Thinking I was chasing after a jellyfish or an eel, I stopped short of an illuminated whirlpool. The face of a woman shone on the other side of the reflection. Not mer, nor siren, but a woman far more beautiful than the sea itself.
Spirit’s long golden hair cascaded over her shoulders as her blue eyes looked up at me. “Oh, dear,” she said, cupping a palm to her rosy cheek. “I fear I’ve made a mistake with my crystal ball. I apologize for disturbing you—”
“What’s your name?” I asked, enchanted by the rogue vision in the tides. A witch. A witch from some far-off place had cast her glow right there, on the solstice, exactly where I’d be swimming. What were the odds?
The blonde-haired witch bit her lip. “Spirit. What is yours? And why are you all wet?”
I chuckled, circling the pool, enjoying the land witch’s body turning to follow me as I did so. “I’m Alchemy, and you’re gazing into the ocean of Night Gale. Where are you?”
“Willowspire… the mountains. A far cry from your waters, sea witch.” A voice so sweet yet tinged with sadness. She plucked a white and yellow flower from her hair. “I want to try something. Reach out your hand to mine.”
“This sounds like a trick.”
Spirit lifted the corner of her mouth. “Might be, but you’re going to do it either way, aren’t you?”
Obviously.
Doing the opposite of what my crone would advise, I touched my palm to her reflection against the waves.
A small ripple formed. Suddenly, something pressed against my hand.
When I turned it over in my palm, the yellow and white flower from her hair sat perfectly in my grip.
My heart almost leapt from my very chest.
Her smile beamed brighter than the moon.
“You’re the most enchanting witch,” I breathed. I knew nothing of Willowspire, or mountains, or the world past the sea, really… but I desired to know everything about her.
That was the beginning of the end for me. The end of my fearlessness. The end of my casual swim into dark waves not meant for me and the beginning of a journey far more terrifying than any bear or riptide… love.
Love, my crone said, was deeper than the sea and a more wicked tempest as well. The ocean could swallow you whole in a moment—and so did Spirit.
My wife was the only thing that could scare me. Losing her, the thought of her hurt, the idea of a life without her, were all more frightening than any legend of sea monsters. When she birthed our children, my fears doubled—tripled. My one charge, my highest honor, was to keep them safe.
And keep them safe I had.
Even with the rise of Asunder and our entrapment by wicked law, I’d kept my family alive, healthy, and fed.
Our little girls feared nothing except the looms who stocked our fireplace and the lone wolf howling at night.
That was the way it should be. Or perhaps, I should not have sheltered them as much as I did.
They seemed to know more than what we’d told them.
Rumor with her righteous, steadfast will.
Prism with her tender discernment.
The kids pieced together the state of things yet looked to Spirit and I for safety.
We were their anchor in the storm of losing the mighty willow and the threat of blue fog and monsters in the woods…
though those horrors, even still, were not as concerning to me as my wife coming upon the shadow again.
The shadow in her dreams.
The nightmare that watched her.
The evil that wanted our children.
How could I keep my family safe from an invisible force?
From something I couldn’t see nor touch?
I’d find a way. I had to find a way. They were depending on me, and I couldn’t let them down.
If I failed… if something happened to Spirit and me…
I couldn’t bear to fathom the forces that would be coming for our girls.
We were the barrier, my wife and I. We were the sea rock against the waves that wanted to sweep our two children out to sea.
Without us…
No, I wouldn’t let that happen.
I would keep them safe at any cost.
I’d do anything for them.