CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
MY CHEST HEAVES AS I force my horse as fast as he can go.
Stinging branches whip my face, and a warm liquid rolls down my cheek, but it doesn’t matter—these glowing bugs have to be the last line of my mother’s journal.
If we did this right, then the Being should be at the end of this, and we can finally get some answers regarding the Soul Stone.
I never take my eyes off the luminescent swarm, yet somehow it disappears from sight. I screech to a halt, and Jesper nearly topples over while Nero flaps his wings to steady himself on my shoulder. We are in a small meadow now with nothing and nobody in sight except for my mates and I.
Did I lose the insects? Is this my fault?
“Where did they go?” Aemon asks as he catches his breath.
I shake my head as my eyes sting from frustration. “They were right there, I swear. They just vanished.”
Killian pulls his horse up beside me and tsks as he gently touches my cheek. I hiss at the sting, remembering that my face has a few cuts on it. “You should have used your earth magick to clear the path,” he grumbles softly. “We should get those cleaned up.”
“They can wait,” I tell him. “We need to find that glowing swarm.”
Jesper’s arms tighten around my waist. “Let him ‘mother hen’ you. The bugs are lost right now anyway. We should take a moment to regroup.”
I sigh and nod, my shoulders deflating slightly.
Killian climbs off his horse and begins to pull supplies from a pouch on his waist as he moves closer to me.
I almost laugh in amusement, but instead my lips curve into a small smile because even with me sitting atop my horse, we are almost the same height.
“This is going to sting,” he warns before pressing a cool cloth to the small wounds, dabbing them as he cleans them.
The pain doesn’t register, but I let him do this because I know he needs it. His protective side must be in overdrive with everything that has happened since we entered the forest.
Talyn touches my thigh, making me jump slightly. “Don’t worry, we will find the Being so you can ask your questions.”
I nod, taking his hand in mine. My gaze searches for Aemon, and that’s when I realize he’s moved to the other side of the field. “Is everything okay?” I ask, not wanting to yell and potentially attract some other beast that calls this place its home.
I see him tilt his head and his shadows pulse. “There’s something here. The shadows don’t lie.”
Killian finishes, and I urge my horse closer to Aemon to see what he’s talking about. Although I don’t need to go far, because I sense it. It’s like there’s something there but it’s hidden from the realm.
“I see you found my home.”
We whirl around and see an elderly female, older than anyone I’ve ever met, although she doesn’t look fae.
Her long white hair is tied back, exposing rounded ears—no scars to be seen, so they weren’t cut off…
almost as if they’re natural. She grins and all her teeth are blunt, with no pointed canines at all.
If she’s not fae, then what is she?
She steps closer and my mates all pull out their weapons, but I don’t sense any malice from her. What I do sense, though, is power—magick like I’ve never felt before. It’s unfamiliar to what we have, but somewhat similar?
I tilt my head and she does the same.
“I thought you may come looking for me one day. The tea foretold it could be soon, especially after the lengths your mother went to hiding you. Come, I have some stew brewing and hot water boiling for tea.” She waves her hand and the field that was once empty is now the home of a small, well-kept cottage.
“Stop,” Aemon commands. “Who and what are you?”
She sighs like introductions are an inconvenience to her. “I’m the Being you’ve been searching for. I left the instructions with the Queen and her mates. My name is Celeste Weaver: the last witch in all of Damorliea. Now come, so I can answer your questions; these old bones need a rest.”
She hobbles past us and into her house, leaving the door open for us to follow.
I stare wide-eyed at my mates. “Um, do we just… I’m sorry, a witch? What is a witch?”
They all shrug except Killian, who says, “They’re legends: powerful beings who could conjure anything and perform magick beyond your wildest dreams. But I thought they were just fantasy, a story to entertain fledglings.”
Jesper wiggles behind me and jumps off the horse, pulling me towards him and placing me on the ground as he practically shakes with excitement. “Come on! Let’s go, I want to talk with the witch!”
Nero lands back on my shoulder after having to jump off with Jesper’s sudden movement of me. “Do you think she has snacks?”
I raise my brow at Nero and glance at Jesper before turning to the others. “You should probably put your weapons away before we go in there.”
Talyn moves next to me, dropping a kiss on my forehead. “Stay next to us. I don’t trust the old hag yet.”
I nod, knowing when to pick my battles and all that. I get no bad feelings from her, but my males are overprotective and it’s growing on me… Kind of.
We make our way inside the quaint cottage, its warm lighting and heat brought on by the many candles laying about. Herbs hang from the ceiling to dry and a cauldron sits in the fire, smelling of a warm delicious meal that’s making my mouth water.
“Come, sit, eat. You’ve been traveling hard,” she says, using a wooden ladle to fill bowls with a hot meal. She passes the first one to me and gestures with her head toward the long table.
I scurry over and place the bowl down and wait for the others. I was always taught to wait until everyone is seated to start eating. “Our horses—”
“They are taken care of. Eat.”
My lungs inflate as I inhale deeply, staring at the stew, chunks of beef and vegetables in a thick broth. I smell rosemary, sage and garlic.
Once everyone is seated she looks directly at me and says, “Ask your questions, young Queen.”
A million of them bubble up all at once and they just spew out of my mouth. “How are you here? Are there any other witches? What do you know about the Soul Stone? What kind of magick hides houses—”
Talyn slaps his hand over my mouth and winces. “Maybe give her a moment to answer them?”
Celeste laughs. “Oh, I forgot how refreshing it is to be around the young.” She’s smiling, but there’s a sadness in her eyes. “Let me see where I should begin. You all eat.” She whispers something and another bowl appears, and fruit and nuts drift across the room to fill it. “For your familiar.”
I desperately want to ask her if it’s air magick, but I hold my tongue.
She sips her tea and leans back in her chair as she gets a faraway look in her eye, as if she’s drifting away to another time—with her age, she might be.
“How much do you know about the history of Damorleia? About the Demon Wars?”
I glance around the table and see the befuddled expressions on the others’ faces. “My librarian said something about it, but I can’t remember at the moment.”
She sighs. “Of course they aren’t teaching you about the wars.
Over a thousand years ago, fae and witches lived together, worked together and even lived together in Damorleia.
Until there was one coven of witches who decided that they wanted more power and got their hands on tomes that contained forbidden magick: magick that ripped through time and space and conjured creatures that no one had ever heard of before—demons.
You see, the demons rival us in power, and it’s foretold that you can make deals with them, for a price.
” She sighs. “But the price is never worth it.
“These witches and warlocks made a deal that changed the entirety of Damorleia. Demons began pouring through this rift after granting them forbidden magick,” she scoffs.
“If you can even call the meager power-up they got ‘magick’. That’s the thing with demons—they’re tricky and ruthless.
Anyway, I digress. The demons caused chaos.
Fae and witches worked together to rid the realm of them.
The war between us and the demons lasted almost a century before the fae Queen of that time was gifted an artifact.
They say it was gifted by the Fates, but some thought it was demon-made, stolen from their homelands, and that the Fates gave the Galallaus fae the ability to use it with a hefty price.
How the Queen came to have the Soul Stone still remains a mystery. ”
“It weakens us and takes a bit of our magick when we use it,” I add between bites of the delicious food.
She nods, a proud glint in her eyes. “Precisely. The fae Queen of old used the Stone to defeat the forces of demons surrounding her city, but the war was far from over. Thousands on both sides were decimated, so what little remained of the witches came together. We had the worst losses because it was our war. We started it by inviting them here, so we came up with the only solution we could to save us and the fae. We left.” She watches the flame flicker on the candle next to her.
“I opened a portal into another realm for the witches to flee through, hoping the demons would follow or give up. And because the demons were bound to the witches thanks to the deal made with the coven, they had no choice but to leave Damorleia.”
Aemon crosses his arms and sits back. “So how are you here then?”
I scoop another spoonful into my mouth, waiting to hear the answer, because he makes a good point.
“I’m still here because, when the war eventually ends with the demons, I can open the rift for the other witches to come home.
My kind are not long-lived, but we can we live as long as the ones we bind our lives to.
My life is bound to a soul contract. This is my home until either the end of time or the war between witches and demons ends.
Now. Enough about my life. You have questions about the Soul Stone, correct? ”
My heart aches for the female in front of me, living away from everything and everyone because of something her fellow witches did over a thousand years ago. I swallow the lump in my throat. “Yes, we want to know if there’s a way to destroy it.”
The silence that follows my question is enough to hear a pin drop from across the field outside.
Celeste sits forward slowly, placing her hands on the table and clasping them together.
“There’s no way for it to be destroyed. So many have tried and failed.
You can make it weaker by splitting it. Your mother and I managed to break it into pieces, but that took weeks, and the toll it took on our bodies…
” She shakes her head. “Please tell me the pieces are still hidden?”
I glance at my mates before looking back at the witch. Nero nuzzles my cheek comfortingly. “Kind of? One piece is, possibly two. Lord Craven managed to find the rest of them and has been using his portion to terrorize the realm.”
She purses her lips together and it’s like I can almost see her thinking.
“There is something we could try, but it’s incredibly dangerous.
Your mother and I… Well I didn’t tell her because it’s not something the two of us could handle ourselves, and her mates didn’t know about our meeting, nor did she want them to know.
You five should be able to get it done, though.
Maybe.” She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“We can handle it,” Jesper announces. “We love a little danger.”
Killian grumbles. “I’d prefer to keep our mate away from danger.”
“How about we let her tell us what it is, and then we decide,” Aemon states, raising his brows at all of us.
We nod in agreement and wait for Celeste to continue.
“There’s a creature in these woods; it’s a dangerous beast, and not many who wander into its nest make it out alive, but its hide after death becomes impregnable.
It becomes like a stone that not even shadowflame can destroy.
If you can obtain it, we could use it to wrap the remaining stones, and no one would ever be able to access it again.
Much more secure than a blood-warded door. ”
Hope flares in my chest. If we could make sure that Lord Craven never gets to the last piece, then that gives us a chance.
Killian grumbles. “Throwing them into the sea sounds a lot safer than tackling this creature.”
The witch shakes her head solemnly. “Craven has elemental magick, and nothing stays in the sea forever. Securing the two last pieces with this hide is the best way I know of.”
“We only have one piece of the stone,” Talyn informs her. “Our mission here includes to find the other lost piece.”
She smiles. “Actually, you now have two. Queen Calantha hid a piece with me, knowing I’d be able to keep it safe. I’ve protected it all this time. A few have tried to claim it, but it was never theirs to have. It’s yours whenever you’re ready to take it.”
The two pieces kept from Lord Craven. Thank you, mother—for once your secrets are paying off. Thank the Fates our second mission in the Nairiden Woods is also complete now. “So where is this beast?” I ask.
She winces, her wrinkled face becoming even more wrinkled. “Off the path before the canyon.”
My stomach drops as I stare wide-eyed at my mates. “The path that made me want to run down it when every instinct was screaming at me to run the other way?”
“The very one. I’ll make us some tea and we can discuss the beast, and then you all can rest.” She mumbles something under her breath again with some strange hand gesture, and all our dirtied dishes have vanished. “Let’s move to the sitting room.”
I stare at Jesper bewildered while he looks like this is the most exciting discovery to have ever happened to him, but I still can’t help but worry if this is the right choice.
That pathway felt like doom and despair, and my instincts are telling me not to do this, but what other choice do we have?
We need to keep the stones away from Craven and future evil fae like him, and this feels like the last option we have, because if something happens to us, the realm as we know it will fall into disarray, and death and destruction would reign.
Looks like we are talking to an ancient witch about killing whatever is waiting at the end of that trail.