Chapter 62 #2
A memory surfaced then, my mother wrapping a bow and quiver into fabric to store away in a chest. A chest that had the same markings as my locket now. Come to think of it, she started wearing this locket right after that.
My hand fell to it then, reaching under the black choker fabric that shielded my locket, feeling the magic that had always been there, but I didn’t feel until my own unlocked.
I let my warmth surround the necklace, feeling the hidden parts of it.
Sure enough, the bow materialized, but it wasn’t of wood and string.
No, a golden light created the weapon, spiraling around my arm.
I didn’t have to carry it, and it wasn’t corporal to bang against anything.
The quiver was the same, building from the magic for them all to see the mark of Artemis being worn as a second sleeve.
The guards cowered, the animals knelt, and Alain looked at me like I’d only gotten more beautiful. Whatever it was bonding me to my mother and her magic, the sacred creatures had come, and they moved with purpose toward the approaching hunters. Now, I had her bow of pure magic. I had her with me…
“Go,” Alain said again, squeezing my hand once before releasing it. “End this while we can.”
I nodded, turning away from him with an effort that physically hurt. Every instinct screamed to stay by his side, to face Gaspard together. But I knew he was right. The witch was the key to everything. To breaking the curse, to freeing my beasts, to saving the forest itself.
Behind me, chaos erupted. The king’s men shouted in alarm as the forest creatures charged them. Horses reared in panic, throwing riders. The magical animals moved with eerie coordination, separating Gaspard from his allies, driving him toward where Alain waited, sword drawn.
I didn’t look back. Couldn’t. If I did, I might lose my nerve. Instead, I faced Enid, who stood watching me with those mismatched eyes. One clouded with age, one burning with unnatural light.
“Let me pass,” I said, injecting every ounce of power I could muster into the words as I raised my bow. “Or I’ll make you.”
For a moment, she seemed to wage that internal war again, the two halves of her face contorting in opposing expressions. Then, with a sigh that seemed to deflate her entire body, she stepped aside.
“It was always going to end this way,” she murmured as I moved past her into the hut. “The cycle demands completion.”
The interior of the hut was larger than its outside suggested.
Another magical impossibility that I no longer had the capacity to be surprised by.
The single room was dominated by a massive cauldron that bubbled at its center, green smoke rising from its depths to coil near the ceiling.
Shelves lined every wall, packed with bottles, jars, and bundles of herbs.
Some glowed, others pulsed like beating hearts, and still others seemed to shift and change when I wasn’t looking directly at them.
Enid shuffled in behind me, closing the door against the sounds of battle outside. I could still hear it, muffled but unmistakable. The clash of steel, the cries of men, the uncanny vocalizations of creatures that had no earthly counterparts.
“What did you mean?” I asked, turning to face her. “About my mother. About cycles.”
Enid moved to the cauldron, her steps uneven as if one leg was shorter than the other. “Your mother was my sister,” she said, the young half of her face now dominant. “Artemis, the light to my shadow. The forest chose her as its guardian, while I... I chose a different path.”
“My mother had a sister?” I knew I should be focusing on stopping whatever spell Enid was preparing, but I couldn’t help myself. After a lifetime of questions, answers were finally within reach.
“I am not made of all god, like your mother, Isabeau Dubois. A forest witch, once before, because I am only a halfling, a demigod like you. Your mother was the guardian. A goddess of the forest, of the animals she kept watch over, of the moon, making you goddess-touched.” Enid stirred the cauldron, and the green smoke took shapes—trees, animals, a castle I’d never seen yet somehow recognized.
“She was meant to rule the Enchanted Forest, to maintain the balance between the wild magic and the human realm.”
“But then you cursed it,” I said, anger building in my chest. “You turned it into the Forbidden Forest. You trapped my beasts in a hell dimension.”
“I did,” she admitted, her voice thick with what might have been regret. Then her older half reasserted control, the glossy eye flashing. “I did what my Lord demanded. The old ways were dying. The forest needed new blood, stronger magic.”
“The Dark Lord,” I whispered, pieces clicking into place. “You serve him.”
“For a price,” the older half smiled, while the younger half’s eye filled with tears. “Everything has a price. Mine was steeper than most.”
She reached for something on a nearby shelf. A small cage containing what looked like a half-formed creature, neither bird nor reptile but some hideous combination of both. It writhed weakly, already dying.
“The final ingredient,” she said, the older half’s voice stronger now. “The binding agent that will give my Lord physical form once more.”
“Don’t,” I said, reaching out as if I could stop her from across the room. “Enid, whatever you’ve done, whatever price you’ve paid, it’s not too late.”
For an instant—just an instant—both halves of her face aligned in an expression of profound sorrow. “It was too late the moment I killed my sister,” she said, voice unified once more. “The moment I didn’t know she carried a child. You.”
The revelation hit me with the force of a thousand suns, driving the air from my lungs. “You... you killed my mother? But she got sick, died of a fever.”
Enid nodded, tears streaming from both eyes now.
“The Dark Lord demanded a sacrifice. The guardian’s blood to seal the curse, my greatest treasure…
the sister who never treated me like I was beneath her for being half.
I didn’t know she was pregnant with you.
Hades only offered her fourteen years if she surrendered her magic.
She accepted. Arty knew she would leave you because of me.
That she'd only get fourteen years with her only child.”
“Because you wanted to curse my men, my beasts?” I roared.
“They were all set to die, young one. They were building on sacred ground that did not belong to them! They deserved my wrath! But your mother!” She closed her eyes in both anger and sorrow.
A controlled breath leaving her before she spoke again.
“My curse was for the royal family and everyone within their kingdom.”
“By trapping the entire realm in darkness?” My voice rose with each question, power building in my veins until my skin felt too tight to contain it.
“The Dark Lord takes advantage of all who are blinded, Isabeau. He used me for my curse, but he manipulated it into his own crafting. He wanted the magic gone. He wanted your mother gone. I didn’t know she was my greatest treasure, believing it was my own magic he’d steal in price.”
“How is any of that redemption?”
“I’ve never claimed to seek redemption, young one. Arty knew that when she learned what I’d done to protect the forest. Your mother interfered the moment the magic began to pull her in, knowing Hades planned to destroy her land, her creatures.”
“She was trying to stop it,” I whispered.
Enid nodded. “She created a loophole because it was the only thing to be done after my bargain had been struck. She felt what the curse would claim of her after, but she still cared more about the forest. She placed in her unborn daughter the ties to break it by creating a bond through her magic to the princes she turned into beasts. The bond you’ve already found with them. ”
“But you came after me. You planned to curse me!” I yelled at her.
“When we went to set the second curse, I didn’t expect her spirit to rise. I didn’t know she’d placed the loophole within her kin, within my niece until it was too late all over again.”
“But you didn’t stop it!” I snarled, tightening my grip on the bow.
“I couldn’t!” Enid lashed out, breaking a vial of potion on the ground.
“But Arty tried… she interfered again, showing me what she planned, begging me to fight the hold of Hades, to save her daughter. She spoke to me through my mind, broke through to who I was before the curse,” Enid admitted, the younger half briefly dominant, almost human.
“But the power, the glory.” Then the older hag took control.
The woman the Dark Lord manipulated into becoming his.
Now I knew the true face behind the vile man.
The ruler of the underworld held my men captive.
“He never gives you just a taste. No, he’s too cunning for that.
He made me addicted to his magic, needing it! ”
Before I could react, she upended the cage over the cauldron. The malformed creature fell with a shriek, hitting the bubbling liquid with a hiss that sent green sparks flying in all directions.
“No!” I lunged forward, but too late.
The cauldron’s contents turned from green to black in an instant, the smoke thickening, coalescing, taking form.
A humanoid shape emerged from the roiling darkness.
Tall, impossibly broad, with horns that curved from a head that was more shadow than substance.
Only the eyes were fully formed. Twin coals that burned with the concentrated hate of centuries.
I remembered him from the castle. He came with Enid, but he had more body then.
“At last,” a voice rumbled, resonating not through the air but directly inside my skull. “The child of Artemis comes to me willingly.”
The Dark Lord had arrived, and Enid fell to her knees before him, her internal battle apparently resolved by his presence. The older half of her face now dominated completely, the younger half shriveling before my eyes until it was barely more than a smooth blemish on the wrinkled hag.
“My Lord,” she breathed, her voice as worshipful as it was terrified. “I have prepared everything as you commanded.”
Those burning eyes turned to me, and I felt my magic recoil instinctively, curling tight around my core like a frightened animal.
“The goddess-blood,” the Dark Lord said, reaching out with a hand that was still more smoke than substance. “The key to making this forest mine completely.”
I backed away until I hit the wall, bottles rattling on the shelves behind me. Outside, the sounds of battle intensified as my ear sat closer to the barrier. Animal screeches, human cries, and beneath it all, the clash of steel on steel that told me Alain and Gaspard had engaged.
The claiming mark on my shoulder burned, no longer a comforting warmth but a desperate heat, as if my beasts were trying to break through the barrier between worlds through sheer force of will. I pressed my hand against it, drawing strength from the connection.
“My beasts,” I gasped as the Dark Lord advanced on me, his form becoming more solid with each step. “My mates.”
“Will remain trapped for eternity,” he finished, his voice like gravel grinding bone. “Their kingdom will become my stronghold. Their subjects my slaves. And you, daughter of Artemis, will provide the blood needed to complete my transformation.”
I searched desperately for an escape, but there was none. The door was behind Enid, who now stood, her wrinkled face a mask of malicious anticipation. The Dark Lord blocked any path to the cauldron. I was cornered, trapped like my beasts but in a much smaller prison.
But I wasn’t alone. Even now, I could feel them with me. Marcel, Laurent, Bastien. Their strength flowing through our bond, their determination fueling my own. And now Alain too, his royal blood adding something new to the mixture, something unexpected that the Dark Lord clearly hadn’t anticipated.
The claiming mark flared again, so hot it should have burned me, but instead it felt like power incarnate. Four connections, four bonds, four sources of strength flowing into me from across worlds.
“You’ve miscalculated,” I told the Dark Lord, straightening my spine as magic surged through me. “I’m not just my mother’s daughter.”
I was Isabeau Dubois. Daughter of an inventor. A witch by birthright. A mate through a curse I’d been literally born to break. The chosen one who could break a curse that had held two kingdoms in darkness for too long.
And I was done running.