Chapter 33 #2
“Did we take precautions, or did we become the predators? You’re always telling me to use my brain, Sabina.
Use yours. Because I am desperate for you to wake up.
” She took in a breath, then an unexpected surge of emotion sent a humiliating tremor through her voice.
“I—I don’t want to be accomplices anymore. I just want my big sister back.”
The fight drained out of Sabina all at once, leaving her face pale and entirely exposed. Before she could reply, a leathery wing cut straight through the space between them, creating an ironclad barrier.
“I think that’s enough, girls.”
Ileana rescinded her wing, and stepped between them. She always had two inches over Bella, and while it was the thinnest difference, it was enough to look down on her.
“So you don’t want to kill anymore, darling?” she said. “That’s fine.”
Bella winced under her gaze. A cold dread flooded her veins, every survival instinct screaming a frantic warning. Her mother was many things, but never agreeable.
“I understand your anger, dear. You feel for your friend. You’ve had very few friends in your life, besides your sisters. This must feel like some kind of wonderful revelation.”
Ileana walked toward the table they’d been sitting at, and picked up a piece of paper that Bella hadn’t spotted when she walked in.
It was so thin, it looked like it would rip just by touching it. But as she brought it closer, Bella saw the yellowed parchment, and instantly, she knew.
The text was written in a garbled, runic script.
Completely illegible. The only clear instruction was an arrow pointing towards a thin line, a place for a signature.
There was an old one there, stained into the page, but it was painfully faded, so Bella couldn’t make out the name.
It had to have been thousands of years old.
“But the truth remains that Yasmine is dangerous. It would be a tragedy—and as your mother, unforgivable—to see you join the long list of souls she has driven into madness,” Ileana murmured, tracing the ancient runes with a long, sharp nail.
“Friends are fickle. Do you know what’s not fickle, darling? ”
“Family?” Teodora volunteered.
“Mind control.”
Bella snorted in pure disbelief.
“Thank you for the lecture, Mother.” She forced her shoulders to drop, meeting Ileana’s oppressive gaze. “But I don’t need one. I’m already on board. I’m done killing. I just want the easy way out. I’ve always said our strategy needed to evolve—this is it evolving.”
Ileana’s head cocked to the side, eyebrows raising. Her piercing gaze bore into Bella's as if she could peel back her skull and read her thoughts. She was hunting for even the slightest tremor in Bella's expression.
“You… really?”
“Yes,” Bella said, not flinching. “Where’s the pen?”
“No fair, Bella gets to sign it first?” Teodora whined.
Bella clenched her jaw as her mother turned away to look for a writing instrument.
She had deliberated for hours over how to play this.
She’d considered trying to reason with her mother, to ask her for the contract in exchange for something else of value.
But every avenue where she was honest ended with her sacrificing something.
And she’d sacrificed enough. So, yes—she was going to take the easy way out.
She was going to do what her mother never expected her to do, because she hadn’t done it, truly, meaningfully, in two thousand years; she’d paid lip service to it, she’d argued endlessly with Sabina about it; but she’d never actually done it.
She was going to betray her. There would be no pretense.
Ileana handed her a quill. It was darkened with ink at the end.
“Brought this with me from Dacia,” she said. “Thought it would be a better instrument to usher in a new era for our family than a lousy pencil.”
“A new era for our family,” Bella said slowly, taking the quill. “Right.”
Her mother’s impassive smile faltered slightly at the edge.
“I knew you wouldn’t leave me. My sweet, perfect girl,” Ileana said, and it made Bella pause.
Because it sounded genuinely sweet. It sounded desperate.
It sounded like when Bella was just five, and her powers hadn’t developed yet, and she scraped her knees outside on the rocks.
Her mother had wiped them clean with a rag, pressed a kiss to each cap, and told her this will make you stronger.
Bella had felt so loved then. The next day, Bella’s legs still hurt, and she refused to work in the shop.
Her mother had locked her in the closet.
Bella didn’t have it in her to smile back. Even if it would help the sham. All she could do was press the quill to the page, and write the name her mother gave her.
***
It didn’t matter that she hadn’t driven in decades.
Yasmine didn’t watch the speed limit; she didn’t watch the street.
She busted off six rear-view mirrors by the time she pulled onto the sidewalk outside the Meridian.
All she could hear was her own pulse in her throat, white noise blaring in her ears, and Sylvia—
“Aster’s on her way in an Uber, but she’s coming all the way from Brooklyn. Fuck.” Sylvia slunk out of the passenger’s seat. Yasmine followed her to the door of the Meridian—it was already standing ajar. “Of all the days she decided to look at apartments.”
Yasmine paused for a split second, staring at Sylvia through the glass of the door, caught completely off guard.
“Look for apartments? Why… why is she doing that?”
Sylvia pushed her inside, and they both surveyed the space. Empty. Nothing but beer bottles. Rebecca had said they’d be on the thirteenth floor. Yasmine spotted an elevator—
“So we can stop living inside of my DVD collection. As much as I love my child, I do not think he should be the only person in the house with a bedroom.”
“I have plenty of bigger apartments. You could have just asked.”
“I didn’t need to. I’m a woman of means now, darling. I’m running a business.”
Yasmine stared at her in confusion as the elevator dragged upward.
“You mean your whole enchanting… scam.”
“It’s not a scam. I legitimately took a course. I even have a certificate now.”
“Why in the hell are you trying to make money? Did motherhood melt your brain?”
“If you can believe it, I’m allowed to develop character traits outside of being a mother,” she said. “I’m doing it so you finally change my name in your phone.”
Yasmine choked out a laugh, but, for once in her life, it didn’t seem that Sylvia was joking.
She looked… embarrassed? Yasmine saw her cheeks redden in the gleaming metal of the elevator.
Oh.
Yasmine’s chest tightened. “Sylvia…”
The elevator dinged, but Yasmine hardly heard it. There was a much louder noise coming from outside the elevator door—voices, yelling.
“She’s not moving, Mother! It must be faulty!”
“It’s not faulty—it just takes a moment. She’s inheriting an ancient power. Be patient.”
“What if she’s stuck like this forever?”
Oh, fuck.
The elevator doors vaulted open. Inside the barren, unfinished room, a mess of half-concrete and half-carpet, was the entire Dragomir clan.
Ileana was at the center of the screaming match, standing there with a scowl, her black robe spilling over the brutalistic gray floor.
Her daughters flanked her on either side, shouting and pointing fingers, Teodora crying, Sabina waving a book around like she might use it as a makeshift weapon.
In another universe, it would have been amusing.
In this one, Yasmine didn’t breathe until her eyes found Bella’s.
At first, she’d looked between the sisters, expecting to find her standing there; it was obvious she’d signed the contract, but maybe it hadn’t settled in yet, maybe she was still processing it, maybe Sylvia could reverse the effects if it was early enough—
Instead, Bella was several feet away, sitting at a dining table. She was looking at her family with a blank, slightly troubled expression. Her nose was scrunched slightly, the way it always was when she was confused, her chin balanced on the top of her hand.
The best way Yasmine could describe the look in her eyes now was—waiting.
A great wave of nausea spread through her as she recognized that expression.
When Sylvia had first enthralled her ex-husband, Richard, Yasmine had watched in a matter of minutes as he shifted from a narcissistic, abusive corporate juggernaut, ripping into Sylvia with insults, physically tearing at the restraints she’d put around his wrists, into a silent shrug of a man.
He still retained his aptitude for business, his sharp wit, but his voice always sounded like it was echoing from somewhere else.
Like he was accessing his personality remotely, through a fire wall.
Enthrallment didn't rewrite someone’s essence completely; it more so… sharpened some senses, and dulled others; the parts of humanity needed to process orders were heightened, anything combative or disagreeable was smothered like a fire.
Yasmine had always regretted letting Sylvia do that to Richard, even if he really had deserved it—but she had never felt the raw cruelty of the act until Bella's eyes drifted innocently over to hers, and the blonde startled, then smiled, in a sort of mechanical way.
"Yasmine,” she said softly, with a simple, disconnected cheeriness. “You’re here. That’s good. I was hoping I would see you before we left. I still had something to tell you.”
The Dragomirs turned towards them, shocked first by Bella’s voice, then secondly by who she was talking to. But before they could say anything, Bella continued—
“Ah, well, I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore, since we’ll be getting on a plane back to Bucharest this evening,” she said, with a small, nearly-sad frown. “But for what it’s worth, I really did love you, too. A lot, I think. It’s fuzzy now.”
Teodora gasped, Sabina went rigid, and Ileana immediately shifted her massive wings to block her daughters from view.
But Yasmine never got to see their reactions.