CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
21
Morwenna
My mother always said dreams held meaning, cryptic and unsettling at times, yet somehow true.
This one, though… this dream staring back at me, defied understanding. It blurred the lines between slumber and… something else.
Raw darkness, not suffocating but dense, surrounded me.
In the distance, a lone mirror shimmered with harsh, clinging electricity. Yes. I’d dreamt of this mirror before, the very one that had once swallowed me whole and toyed with my sanity.
This mirror. That’s what haunted me.
A woman stood beside me, her back turned.
Through the warped reflection, however, I saw a figure staring back, ethereal and distant.
She knew I was here, knew I watched her.
Her eyes shimmered with an otherworldly purple, and her hair – an impossible blend of silver, copper, and white – danced with the electric current coursing through the mirror.
This was the woman in my dreams. The woman Draven saw reflected in me. This was her, in her entirety.
But the woman in my previous dream… she was dying.
Here, in this new dreamscape, she was the antithesis of that vision.
She didn’t speak, but her gaze through the mirrored reflection felt heavy. Dark circles marred her perfect beauty, and her white hair, though long, was tangled and wild.
A subconscious urge compelled me to touch my own hair.
A single strand, thick and undeniably dark brown, confirmed my suspicion. I ran my fingers across a rogue strand at my forehead, the one that always dared to defy gravity. Relief washed over me – it was brown, too. No rogue white streak. I could have gasped.
My eyes… did that mean they were green? Mother would be thrilled.
My eyes had always been a source of insecurity, shifting from purple to green, then back again. Sometimes, they were even mismatched, emerald green on the left, violet on the right. It was why I wore the amulet – its magic held my unstable magic in check.
Seeing my hair back to normal, could it mean…? My eyes. They had to be normal too. I couldn’t wait to tell Mother. This news, for once, would surely bring a smile to her face.
Oh wait...this is a dream. What a mockery of effort.
But dreams, as my mom once told me, have meaning. So this one should, it must. I hope.
A smirk, a mere flicker of amusement, played on the woman’s face reflected in the mirror. Was it for me? The thought sent a shiver down my spine.
It was an unsettling smile, one that mimicked the very shadows dancing within us, mocking them in the process.
It could only mean one thing – she knew.
She’d seen right through me, into the churning vortex of my thoughts and emotions. That dark, knowing smile was the chilling confirmation.
“Dreams do have meaning, Morwenna Petrova,” the woman’s voice said. My heart hammered in my chest. Did she just speak to me?
Her gaze wasn’t directed at me, not truly. It was fixed on the reflection, as if she could see straight through the cool glass, her eyes boring into mine.
She stood close to the mirror, bathed in its electric glow, her skin seemingly impervious to its harsh bite.
I, in contrast, clung to the far wall, a lone island in a storm.
My mind reeled. Did she truly know? She knew what I was thinking? Every raw, unfiltered thought laid bare for her scrutiny. “Take my word for it, child. It does have meaning,” she continued, her voice a soft rasp.
A primal fear snaked its way up my throat. Was I truly about to have a conversation with a ghost? Apparently, yes. “W-who are you?” I stammered, needing confirmation that this wasn’t just some twisted figment of my dreams.
She scoffed, a harsh sound that echoed in the stillness. “Who am I?!” she repeated, a glint of amusement dancing in her reflected eyes. “You already know, Morwenna Petrova.”
“No, I don’t,” I lied, my voice barely above a whisper. But a part of me knew it wasn’t entirely true.
A throaty giggle escaped her, the sound widening the dark crescent of her smile. “I am the hunter,” she declared with a cryptic air, “and the hunted.” Her voice, husky like aged velvet, sent shivers down my spine.
Hesitantly, she elaborated, “Meaning, I stalk those who know me best, even as they, in turn, pursue me.”
In a swift, unnerving motion, she whirled around, her face snapping into view. Gone was the tentative distance she’d maintained moments before. Now, her dark eyes held mine with an intensity that sent a jolt through me. “Thrilling, isn’t it?” she purred, the question laced with a hint of amusement. Her smile stretched impossibly wide, momentarily mirroring the terrifying visage of Chucky, the malevolent doll that haunted every children’s nightmares.
A gasp escaped my lips as the full weight of her words settled in. This woman, this chilling apparition, was the figure from my dreams. The woman I’d come to identify, in the recesses of my mind, as Victoria.
“Victoria,” I dared to whisper, the name tasting foreign on my tongue.
Her response was swift and cold. “Victoria is dead.” The way she spoke, a single syllable given undue emphasis, sent a tremor through me. “She perished a long time ago. There is no more Victoria.”
My brow furrowed in confusion. “If you’re not Victoria, then who are you?”
“I am the hunter and the hunted,” she repeated, her words offering no clarity. This spectral entity, draped in the skin of Victoria, denied any connection to the woman who haunted my dreams. Yet, she spoke of being both predator and prey. The more she spoke, the more convoluted the situation became, tangling my thoughts in a relentless knot.
“But why Victoria’s form, then?” I pressed, my voice trembling only slightly. “If you’re not her, why have you taken on her visage?”
A flicker of something akin to surprise crossed her face before it was quickly masked. “I haven’t taken on Victoria’s skin,” she countered, her voice dropping to a low murmur. Her neck elongated in an unnatural contortion, bending impossibly far to her left as if attempting to touch her shoulder.
“You,” she hissed, her voice dropping to a guttural whisper, “are Morwenna Petrova. You are Victoria’s vessel, reborn. And she will reclaim what’s rightfully hers – the skin you occupy.”
Despite the terrifying nature of her proclamation, a strange calm settled over me. Fear, it seemed, had yielded to a steely resolve. “I am no vessel,” I declared, my voice firm. “In fact, it’s she who’s trespassing. She needs to leave. Not just me, but Draven as well.”
The chilling facade she’d meticulously crafted seemed to waver momentarily. “Draven,” she echoed, the name a soft sigh on her lips. It was as if the mere mention of his name had rendered her vulnerable, just as Victoria’s name had with Draven. A strange connection, one I couldn’t quite grasp. Yet, the mantra echoed in my mind, a desperate plea for reason – “She’s not Victoria. She’s not Victoria. She’s not Victoria.”
“You’re dead, Victoria, or whatever your spectral moniker may be. Stop haunting him. Stop haunting Draven!” I demanded, feeling as if I were bargaining with this ghost.
“Draven,” she crooned, her voice a wavering melody, “is my eternal love, my forever king. We pledged our troth before…” Her voice fractured, climbing to a desperate pitch. “Before I…” A beat of silence, thick with unspoken tragedy. I braced myself, expecting the harsh pronouncement of “death,” the image of her demise flashing unbidden from my dream. But her next words sent a shiver down my spine. “Got betrayed!” she shrieked.
Betrayed? By whom? The knowledge gnawed at me, a mystery lost to the abyss of time.
A mere twenty-six years separated me from that bygone era, a chasm too vast for mortal comprehension. I wondered what it was like to be born in that bygone era.
“If I still drew breath,” she continued, her voice tinged with a bitter possessiveness, “you, Morwenna Petrova, would never have been. Draven and I would have remained eternally bound. His kingdom, his love, all mine.”
“But you’re no longer among the living,” I interjected, a tremor in my own voice.
Her translucent features contorted. “Even in death, I stand by him,” she declared, her voice regaining its chilling resonance. “Just as Draven swore. ‘I will stand with you, even after death, Victoria du Saint-Clair.’“ The last words were spoken with a slow, deliberate cadence, as if reciting a sacred oath from memory.
“So, this haunting,” I pressed, piecing together the fragments of her narrative, “is a morbid attempt to pull him into the abyss with you? To join you in that suffocating darkness?” It was the only explanation that made sense, the only reason for a restless spirit to cling to the living. My mother had always warned me of such things – ghosts, tethered to the mortal realm by an unfulfilled desire, a yearning for a companion in the cold grip of oblivion.
A cruel grin stretched across her spectral visage. “No,” she rasped, the sound akin to dry leaves rustling in the wind. “I haunt him not out of some misplaced affection, but to goad him into reviving me. To rise anew, stronger, and dominate the very world that stole my life, that betrayed me – especially my own sister!”
My breath hitched. Sister?
Betrayal from a sibling cut deep, and the way she spat the word sent a shiver down my spine.
If it’s a thousand years...? That could mean her sister defied the natural order, either through the dark arts of a witch or the unnaturally extended life of a vampire.
The vision in my dream offered no clues.
Victoria wasn’t pallid enough for the tell-tale pallor of a vampire. Perhaps, then, a witch. Witches, in the forbidden lore I’d devoured, could manipulate their very essence to survive for centuries. Lady Jen, for one. The chilling possibility solidified: Victoria’s sister is a witch, it makes sense.
“So, vengeance takes precedence over reuniting with Draven?” I ventured, the question a barb aimed at her spectral heart, if such a thing existed.
“Both,” she hissed, her voice laced with an icy venom.
“You can’t have both,” I countered, a spark of defiance igniting within me. “Revenge as your sole purpose is a hollow victory.”
A mirthless chuckle echoed. “I am the hunter,” she declared, her voice dripping with morbid amusement, “stalking those who wronged me. The hunted. For what haunts me most is the insatiable hunger for sweet, bloody vengeance.”
Sweet, bloody vengeance? A tremor of unease ran through me.
“So you desire...”
“Chaos,” she interjected, her voice a chilling whisper. “Utter chaos. Draven, my ‘eternal love,’ will serve as the catalyst, raising me from the ashes. And you, my dear reborn, will be the sacrificial vessel. My essence will rise from the pyre of my mortal coil, and find new life within you...” She unveiled her plan with chilling relish.
Reborn. The word echoed in the cavernous silence, a death knell disguised as a promise. Not just any death, but a ritualistic sacrifice. The weight of her words pressed down upon me, suffocating.
“What becomes of my own soul?” I rasped, the question tasting metallic on my tongue.
Her cruel smile stretched wider. “Discarded, my dear. Absorbed into the vessel that will become mine once more.”
“The dead one?” My voice cracked. This ritual, this sacrifice - it was a soul swap, wasn’t it? I’d inhabit her desiccated shell, a gilded cage of D-E-A-T-H. The silence stretched, suffocating. No answer was needed. A primal terror, unlike anything I’d ever known, clawed at my insides, especially my soul.
A lifetime ago, I’d learned the truth of my existence – a vessel reborn, a past life echoing in my present. But this? This purpose, this twisted fate – to relinquish my very essence to a soul extinguished millennia ago? It was unthinkable. Draven, surely, wouldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t sacrifice me. Would he?
As if reading the frantic plea in my mind, the ghost threw back her head and unleashed a peal of laughter that echoed through the darkness, each cackle a shard of ice piercing my heart. “Draven? Your savior? Don’t be naive, child. You’re nothing more than a pawn in his twisted game. A means to an end. He seeks only to exploit you, to siphon your life force to resurrect me.”
Her words echoed, each syllable a barbed arrow. Belief warred with disbelief. Could she be right? Was there a sliver of truth in her spectral pronouncements? Ghosts, after all, were whispers of the past, repositories of forgotten secrets. But were they to be trusted? A silent plea formed in my mind, a desperate question mark hovering in the oppressive air, if there was one.
A shiver snaked down my spine as her next words sliced through the air. “Draven is mine, and I am his,” she declared, the possessiveness in her voice chillingly familiar. It echoed a memory tucked away in the dusty corners of my mind:
‘You’re mine… and I am… yours, Draven.’
The echo hitched my breath. This was confirmation. Confirmation that what Draven and I shared was nothing more than a searing inferno of lust. Lust that blinded him to anything but me as a mere conduit – a tool to reconnect with his wife, to fill the gaping void in his life. My own lust, a horrifying realization, whispered of a heart awakening, only to plummet. Our story, a cruel plaything of desire.
Love, I knew, was a symphony conducted by a pounding heart, ragged breaths, and a mind consumed by a single thought – the object of its affection.
Yet, mine was a twisted opera conducted by lust.
Lust that battled the burgeoning embers of love within me.
Lust that yearned to not just hate Draven, but to possess him entirely.
His lust, a mirror of my own, mirrored the desire to claim me as his.
I had been played. Again.
Fooled by my own defiance, I had allowed myself to fall.
I had crumbled before the intoxicating power of our connection, a connection that was ultimately a hollow shell of pleasure and desire, a mere fulfillment of needs I never knew I craved.
I was the architect of my own downfall, a fool blinded by a yearning that masked itself as love. He, however, was the puppeteer, pulling the strings with calculated precision.
“Just coming to terms with it, Morwenna?” Her voice, laced with venomous amusement, slithered through my chest. “You are a purposeless wisp, Morwenna Petrova. Rejected by all, a curse upon those around you. Draven will never see you as anything more than a distraction. He will always choose me. Always.”
If only I could slap a phantom! Alas, such actions were beyond the realm of the living.
“Your time is finite, Morwenna,” she continued, her voice receding into the darkness. “Very finite.”
And then, darkness.
But a different kind of darkness.
One that pulsed with a malevolent energy.
As the shadows deepened, I felt her presence flicker within the confines of the mirror. The accursed glass, the conduit between worlds, seemed to grow, engulfing her spectral form in an inky shroud.
Tendrils of darkness, extensions of her malevolent will, reached for me, promising a future as bleak as the abyss itself.
“Until then,” her voice whispered in the recesses of my mind, laced with a chilling promise, “I haunt you. All of you, reborn.”