Chapter 27 Arwyn #2
I made a move to walk past him, bashing my shoulder into his as I went.
I was bigger than my father, better built and riddled with far more muscles than he could even dream of.
And yet, when his spindly fingers wrapped around my wrist and pulled me to a halt, I was a child again, falling to his beck and call.
“Don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you.”
I almost couldn’t control my anger, hot and flashing white like lightning in my veins.
“Take your hands off me,” I seethed, spit flecking across his face as I squared up to him.
Just to prove to me that he still controlled everything in my life, he held on for a few more beats before releasing me. The skin around my wrist itched like a vile bracelet. I’d need boiling water to scrub that feeling away.
“How about I share another truth with you, and then you can share one with me in return,” Tomin said.
“How about I choke you until the blood vessels in your eyes explode?” I jibed as I stormed off, with no clear direction besides getting away from him. “See how long it takes you to bring yourself back from that.”
He knows. He knows. He knows.
I had to find Hector. And quickly. The blood dripping down my cheek, my swollen skull, they were all signs that something had happened to him, and I had no way of knowing if he was okay.
I trusted in his ability to protect himself, but that didn’t mean I wanted to let him. It was my duty… my single burning need. I would do anything to protect him, which was exactly why my father was right.
I had used old magic on Hector.
Last night, after we’d shared an intimacy together on a level we’d not explored before, I’d done something to him. And Tomin had just worked it out.
It was foolish and brash, but from the wounds across my body, I didn’t regret it.
The rune was meant to keep him safe. A few soft lines painted onto his sweat-damp skin, followed by a silent murmuring of a spell I’d not read or learned, but manifested in the moment.
A spell to shield him from suffering and offer it to me instead.
Hector would kill me himself when he found out, and I hoped that was true. Because that would mean we both survived long enough to see each other again.
I was vaguely aware that Tomin was following me.
Instead of looking back, I forged ahead, using my gut to guide me…
my heart to lead me. He didn’t question me again on the old magic, but my silence was enough of an indicator that he’d worked me out.
I scolded myself for being so reckless, so pathetic.
For hours the view around me had been the same. Rows upon rows of gravestones marking the endless number of people who’d died in the pursuit of witch hunting across generations. After a long while the landscape changed. Ahead of me, out of the mist, a new horror came into view.
Six pyres had been erected in what my heart told me was the middle of the grave-site.
Bundles of dried wood skirted the bottom of towering gibbets.
Mist danced like silver flames amongst the kindling, mocking the very tools used to burn those who were named witches, regardless if it was true or not.
“I must say.” Tomin cleared his dried throat. “Bahmet has done an excellent job of making these look as authentic to the originals as possible.”
He came to a stop beside me, hands grasped in front of him as his shoulder brushed mine.
I glanced his way, confused as to why he looked so proud that tears sheened his eyes. It shouldn’t surprise me that a man with such dark tendencies would cry with joy at the sight of an instrument of death.
Floating around him were flecks of what looked like dust shifting in the wind. I lifted a hand up to catch one in my palm. I ran a thumb over the fleck, watching how it broke apart and smudged my dark skin grey.
It was no dust.
It was ash.
I brushed my hand down my dirtied trousers, wanting to rid myself of the ash, but I only made the smudge worse.
“Hot water, lavender soap and you’ll eventually stop smelling like burned flesh,” Tomin recited, eyes still fixed on the pyres. “Trust me, I have burned enough people to know.”
“And yet you cry like you’re watching your firstborn take their first steps,” I replied.
“I cry because it is beautiful. To witness a damned soul cleansed with fire. There is nothing more holy than that, my boy. Us Hunters first believed that to return a witch to the flame was to clean them of their demonic tendencies. Of course, that was a load of bollocks. Even I knew that. Burnings were rare in England, but that didn’t stop them from happening with a little persuasion.
In Scotland our faithful brothers would strangle an accused before setting their bodies to the flames, but when I—when it was brought over to us, it was thought more entertaining to keep them alive. ”
I was thrown off when Tomin cried harder, letting his tears fall down the sides of his face. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d seen him cry. It was the most horrific thing I’d witnessed when it came to him, and that was saying something.
“I’m well aware of what a burning is like,” I said, mind wandering to Eleanor Letcombe and how she had taken the place of Romy just to keep her alive in the trial. “There is nothing holy about it. Nothing pious. The act in itself is demonic in nature.”
“How dare you,” Tomin spat, sadness melting to fury in the blink of an eye. “You wouldn’t begin to understand the lengths that were taken to save the world from the grasp of true evil… the sacrifices innocent people made.”
To add some umph behind my reply, I looked over the endless grave-site around us. “I think I have a pretty good grasp of just how many innocent people have died in this pursuit of Witch Hunters, actually.”
“Go on then, enlighten me.”
My hand clenched into a bolder-sized fist at my side.
“What always struck me as odd was how you preached that hunting witches and cleansing them was ridding the world of demonic activity, when it was the Witch Hunters’ pursuit of Eleanor Letcombe who drove witches to make pacts with demons in the first place. ”
I’d seen my dad angry before. Many times.
I’d once watched one of his initiates accidentally spill coffee over his lap which sent my father into a vortex of limbs.
That poor initiate died with a cup forced between his jaw and his head slammed into the ground.
But this, my dad’s reaction to me speaking about Eleanor Letcombe, was unlike anything I’d ever witnessed before.
One second I was standing, the next my dad’s shoulder had cracked into my ribs and slammed me to the ground. An inch to the left and my skull would’ve split open against a gravestone, further opening the wound that was already there.
“How dare you speak her name,” Tomin seethed, spittle flying down over me. “Never. Ever. Again. Do you understand me?”
His body trembled like an unspent storm raged within him. Tomin panted like a dog. I glared back into his overly wide eyes, wondering how they were still sitting within his skull at the rate he held them open. “Oh no, have I hit a nerve, Daddy?”
I wanted him to hit me. Desperately. I wouldn’t lay a finger on him, no matter how much I longed for it. My dad deserved to face Bahmet’s punishment for breaking the rules, regardless if it would actually remove him from the trial or not. Any punishment, no matter how short, would be worth it.
And yet, Bahmet did nothing. I waited with bated breath, longing to see what Bahmet would do to my father for knocking me to the floor.
The demon lord was silent.
Tomin held his fist aloft, heaving with breath as he contemplated breaking my face.
“Do it,” I encouraged like the devil on his shoulder. “Don’t hold back now. It’s never stopped you before. I dare you. Go on. Hit me.”
My body had been a playground for my dad’s fists for as long as I could remember.
I’d once looked in a mirror to see the marks he’d left on my body, and thought that it was his way of truly owning me.
Then, when I was seventeen, I’d left the compound, conjured an illusion of a valid ID, and convinced a tattoo artist to cover my bruised and scarred body in marks of my own choosing.
Those tattoos were my way of claiming my body back.
It was the first time I truly rebelled. After that, when he rained down his hate upon me, I couldn’t see the bruises beneath the dark ink anymore.
Ever since then, I felt like I had won a part of myself back.
Took a part of myself back.
In all those years of abuse, Tomin never hit my face. Never. Not with the risk of showing cracks in the poised facade he put on for his followers. It was always places I could hide. Now, however, I sensed that we were seconds away from that fact changing.
Goddess, I’d never wanted something so desperately before.
Our eyes were locked, tension lingering between father and son. I didn’t bother to close my eyes when he finally let go and drove his fist down upon me. But it wasn’t skin he punched, but the sodden earth beside my head.
I bet he didn’t even leave a mark with those pathetically small hands.
“Feeling better?” I asked, jealous of the ground he’d punched.
“Up,” Tomin snapped.
“Impossible when you’re still on top of me,” I replied, drawing on the small bouts of sarcasm that Hector had rubbed off on me. “Which, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you, is not a good look. This type of act could get you locked up for a long time.”
Tomin scrambled off me, brushing the dirt from his trousers as he stood. We both knew I could’ve removed him myself. But alas, I wasn’t risking my position in this trial, not when Hector was still out there.
Bahmet might’ve spared my father, but I didn’t imagine the response would be the same for me.
As I unfolded my body, broadening my shoulders so my dad knew I wouldn’t take that type of reaction from him again, he was studying me. “Something to say?” I asked.
“A question. What do you want out of all of this?” he asked, a mask of sadness to his voice.
“To make sure people like you can never hurt people like me again.”
“That simple is it?” Tomin stepped towards me, loosing a long breath out of his nose.
“Because you’ve had the opportunity to lift my curse when Bahmet possessed you, and you refused.
I could’ve been dead now, my life completed.
But you decided to keep me cursed… you decided to keep me alive. Rather self-sabotaging if you ask me.”
“I would never give you what you want. Not then, not now.”
“Not even to save witch-kind that you’ve suddenly become so invested in?”
I nodded, jaw muscles tight with tension. “You don’t deserve the peace you seek. Killing you would turn you into a martyr that would inspire more twisted men and women to follow in your footsteps. Killing you would not put an end to the hate, but spark the kindling into an inferno.”
Tomin’s softer expression cracked. As I had guessed, it was all a show. “Well done, my son. I guess you aren’t as stupid as I had you down for.”
“Thanks. As you said, we share blood after all,” I replied, turning on my heel and facing the towering pyres that had killed so many, like Eleanor Letcombe. A woman whose name turned my father into something uncontrolled and emotional—two words that had never described him until now.
“And Bahmet, what of the demon?” Tomin continued. “I trust you want to win this again, to actually make something of yourself with the power that Bahmet can bestow you. First time was a waste, second will be a…”
I glanced over my shoulder, bubbling with unspoken thoughts. “This is the first time in my life that you have showed an ounce of interest in my wants and wishes. Why start now?”
“Because my time is limited.”
I laughed at that. “You actually think you’ll get what you want out of this, don’t you?”
Tomin lifted his hands up to his sides. I first thought it was in some shrugged gesture, until I realised he was pointing to a strange mound of earth that was placed perfectly between two opposing gravestones. “Yes, my son. I do believe I will.”
The universe shifted on its axis.
Tomin dropped suddenly to his knees atop the mound of dirt, a broken sob cracking out from the deepest and darkest part of his soul. Then, with the fever of a man possessed, he started to dig. Hands clawing at the upturned soil that made up the unmarked grave.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
He ignored me.
Mud churned up, spraying behind my dad. The more he dug into the earth, the deeper his sobs became. They reached a crescendo when he finally found what he was looking for, buried in the ground.
Tomin rocked back on his heels, fascinated by the soil-caked object in his hands. His sobs became laughter as he turned around, dirt spread across his cheeks where he’d dried his own tears, and showed me what he’d found.
“This is our way out,” Tomin said, holding up a small box of matches. “Do you see what we need to do? Do you understand what Bahmet is making us do to survive another trial?”
I looked between my grief-stricken father and the box of matches in his hands. Confusion riled through me, as did the disgust at seeing honest emotion like sadness on the face of a man who was made up of stone and hate. “I see a pathetic excuse of a man covered in dirt.”
“Show some respect, Arwyn. We are in the presence of the dead,” Tomin whispered, gazing back to the unmarked grave.
“There was no body to properly bury her. Just the ash collected up. I remember it clear as day. The townsfolk were frightened… worried that her ashes carried curses, hexes and sickness. I did them a service and gathered it up with my bare hands, found a place in our back garden, and laid her to rest. Of course, if I’d known what she’d done to me at the time, I would never have shown the bitch such respect… ”
It was like he was speaking in riddles, his words making little sense without context.
“Who are you talking about?” I asked, stepping cautiously towards him.
“The witch who cursed me. The woman I loved enough to save her from the clutches of evil. My everything, my damnation. My regret.”
“Who!” I was out of patience, feeling like I was getting blood from a stone.
My dad turned to face me again, clutching the box of matches to his chest like it was a child he had so much love for. It was certainly more kindness than he’d ever shown me. “Haven’t you worked it out yet?”
Apparently my silence was enough of an answer.
“The witch who cursed me,” Tomin said, “the first and last woman I loved until I met your mother.”
I held my breath as the curtain to my dad’s greatest secret was drawn back.
“Eleanor Letcombe.”