Chapter 15
Jessamine held her breath, staring at the picture before her. A god on his knees before an old woman who would be a witch if there was only someone to gift her the power. She could feel energy crackling in the air, waiting for Agnes to say the words.
But the old woman had seen too much. She knew what promises were when they fell from male lips and how dangerous they were to believe.
As he’d spoken, Jessamine had walked with Elric through the old woman’s past. She had seen every single moment flickering behind her eyelids as the men Agnes had married died and so, too, had died her hopes and dreams.
Agnes looked at Jessamine then, and she suddenly knew the answer to a question that had plagued her for a long time. What was the role of a gravesinger? Was she only here to raise a god and then blend into the background?
Now, she knew. Elric didn’t have the patience to convince someone on his own to join his coven. Witches had too much history in them. They knew the dangers that came with trusting anyone. She could feel it deep in her bones. The old history never died.
So she met Agnes’s gaze and nodded. “It is time, old woman. You have fallen so far, but we are here to catch you.”
“Fallen? I have not fallen at all.”
Elissa gracefully sat in one of the chairs, arranging her skirts around herself just so. “Fortuna Beaumont runs the entire Pleasure District now. With the king at her side, she will not be displaced. You will die long before you claim this district as your own again.”
It was fascinating watching Agnes’s features change as soon as Elissa said that. She went from a scared old woman to a hardened warrior who had fought far too many people to ever suffer being spoken to like that.
“Watch your tongue, girl,” Agnes snapped. “I have been in this district longer than anyone else. I know the rules of this place better than you or Fortuna. If she thinks she can take this part of the city over, then she’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.”
“She might do just that,” Elissa insisted, but she’d already started wringing her hands in her lap. “We’re trying to help you.”
“By barging into my home? By spelling my bodyguard? By…” Agnes seemed to trip over the next words that she might say because she looked back at Elric, who still had her hand in his grip.
And that was where it all changed, Jessamine could see. She’d been there before. There were so many things wrong with what Agnes had done in her life, but right now, there was a god holding her hand.
Anyone could feel his power. Elric was so magnetic to people who could become witches, though they were terrified of that sensation.
Sybil walked to Agnes’s other side and reached for her free hand. Sybil didn’t hide what her own hands looked like. They were gnarled and old as well. Ancient as time could let them get, and she grasped the old woman’s fingers in her own as she sank onto her knees.
“You…” Agnes swallowed. “You look so young.”
“I am.”
“I can feel the wrinkles of your hands. You’ll be hard-pressed to tell me that you are young.”
“I am two hundred and seventeen years old,” Sybil replied with a soft smile. “And I am young for a witch.”
There it was. All laid out in the open for Agnes to know. They were witches, they were a coven who had come to collect her, and there was a god with them. But more than that, they were offering her immortality.
Agnes’s lower lip quivered before she stiffened it. “Deathless One, please release my bodyguard.”
“When we are gone.”
“Now. He is my grandson, and I wish to speak with him before I make my choice.”
Elric’s nostrils flared, but then he nodded. Which surprised Jessamine, because usually he would have been much more hesitant to release someone who was so aggressive. But then again, he had the man’s soul trapped. Perhaps he knew more about the grandson than even Agnes did.
A gasp echoed from outside the door, and then the man charged into the room. His face was red, his hands curled into fists like he was just waiting to put them through something.
“Easy,” Elric warned with a quirked brow. “I can put you back there.”
It was like watching a wall try to patch itself back up.
The grandson pulled himself back together, bit by angry, vibrating bit, until he finally nodded and stiffly walked over to his grandmother.
He stood behind her chair with his hands on the back of the rocker, holding it still as though his mere presence could keep her safe.
Only then did Agnes drop the mask of the frail old woman. She straightened, clearly far stronger than she had let on.
What a picture they were. An old woman, her hair white as snow, with the young man who was visibly her blood the more Jessamine looked at them.
“You offer me a great deal,” Agnes finally said, her voice still warbling with age.
“But the Pleasure District does not need a savior. Even I, although wishing to restore it to its former glory, am unnecessary for its survival. You offer me a coven of witches, but I have never wanted to bind myself to the weak. Give me something greater, and perhaps I will consider your offer.”
Elric scoffed. “We are offering you the Pleasure District itself! What more do you want, you old bat?”
More wasn’t necessarily the question, Jessamine mused.
It appeared Agnes was of the old blood, just like the queen had been.
Jessamine’s mother would never make a deal with someone who was newly rich, or who had recently taken a throne from another.
New blood hadn’t worked through generations to get where they were, although such thinking had limited who she could work with.
It wasn’t that Agnes didn’t recognize the power before her, but that she had no interest in it if there wasn’t a connection as well.
Jessamine knew women like her. Agnes would make choices based on what other people would think of her.
Would she align with a brand-new coven of witches who thought they deserved the attention of a god?
No. She wouldn’t. No one knew their names.
To align herself with new blood was the kiss of social death.
Jessamine licked her lips, wondering if this was the right time to say anything. But at the very least, she knew they needed more connections. And if Elissa was right, this was the person they needed desperately to make a connection with.
“There was a time when the old blood mattered,” Jessamine said quietly, and all eyes in the room turned to her.
“My mother used to talk about the Pleasure District, not in hungry tones or with the idea that this was where she would disappear. The Pleasure District had a role in the kingdom. Political figures were brought here not to ply them with wine, drugs, and women, but to show them that Inverholm wasn’t just a Factory District.
It was filled with artists that rivaled the greats. ”
“Your mother is a wise woman.”
“She was.” Jessamine noted that Agnes caught the correction.
Good. It was a detail she knew the old woman would remember.
“I came here as a child. I don’t know if I met you then, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I had.
A little dark-haired girl with bottomless eyes, that’s what one of the men here said to me.
He claimed he couldn’t sell me, even if he put my price at the lowest he would take for a pound of flesh.
My mother laughed and said it was good, because a girl like me would only sell her soul for the kingdom, not for a man. ”
Agnes’s grandson shifted his grip on the chair, now clutching it like he needed the support. Agnes’s eyes narrowed on Jessamine, her fingers curling a little harder around the arms of the chair. “This is a familiar story to me.”
“Is it?”
“But it’s not possible for you to be that little haunted girl.”
“Why not?”
The breath caught in Agnes’s throat, a little rattle that reminded everyone in the room just how old the woman was. “Because that little girl died.”
Jessamine moved to sit on one of the sofas, crossing her legs and spreading her arms out across the back. Rather than look at the old woman, she let her head fall back, her scar revealed and her gaze tracing along the wooden knots on the ceiling. “She did.”
“I saw her die. We all were watching the wedding down here. I saw the king in his dark colors and the princess with her wild, dark hair standing there. I saw him cut her throat and watched her body as it fell into the sea with a banner of blood marking her death. No one could survive that.”
“I didn’t say she survived it,” Jessamine whispered. “I agreed that she died.”
“No one cheats death.”
The sound of footsteps approached, and Jessamine’s view of the wood was obscured as Elric leaned over the back of the couch to loom over her. He braced his hands beside hers, staring down at her with those eyes that saw far too much. “Do you ever get tired of telling this story?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you want me to finish it?”
“If you’d like.”
She watched his jaw tick, then his gaze ripped from hers to stare into Agnes’s soul.
“All the gods were dead. All of them except one, who was banished to a dark in-between realm until a gravesinger landed in his lap. And that god decided that death would not have her, because he wished to claim her for himself. Thus we are here, Agnes. We are here to give you an opportunity that you may never have again.”
“Which is?”
He looked down at Jessamine again, as though he couldn’t stand looking at anything other than her for too long.
“Take back the Pleasure District. Help us find out what connection Fortuna Beaumont has to the king, and we will tie you not only to the most powerful coven this realm has ever seen, but to the queen who will take back her throne.”
“If I don’t?” Agnes’s voice cracked.
Elric smiled, and it was the most terrifying expression she’d ever seen. “Trust me, Agnes. You don’t want to know what I will do to all those who stand in her way.”
There was a long silence, and then Agnes’s shaking voice asked, “Haunted girl. What madness made you tie yourself to this brute?”
“I never wanted the pearls or the flowers that all the others brought. I didn’t know what I wanted until I met the Deathless One, and then I realized…
I wanted someone who would destroy the world for me.
” She lifted her head. Jessamine knew they looked a sight.
Two dark figures, with equally messy hair and dangerous power at their fingertips.
“I didn’t want someone who would just promise it. I wanted someone who would do it.”
“Why?”
“Because I was tired of having others constantly decide what my life would be. I wanted power, Agnes, just like you. So, do you want to be in this coven or not? Don’t think I won’t step on you if you get in my way. I will walk right over your cold body to get to my throne.”
Even Sybil stared at her in surprise, but Jessamine was coming to realize it was the truth. She didn’t want to play this game anymore. This game that the courts and nobility had made up wasn’t healthy for anyone. She wanted her throne back, and no one was going to continue standing in her way.
She’d been nice.
Now, she had no more nice left in her.
Agnes stared for a few more moments before she chuckled. The old, raspy voice filled the room with mirth as she laughed until she couldn’t breathe.
And when the old woman finally stopped laughing, running her finger underneath her eye to catch the tears, she said, “Now that is a woman I’ll tie myself to.
I told myself when I was very young that I would do whatever it took to get what I wanted out of life.
I killed two husbands, and look at how far that’s gotten me.
If I’d decided to marry you, I might have been better off. ”
Jessamine arched a brow and nodded. “Might have been. It took death for me to learn how to be this ruthless, however.”
“I have no interest in dying, not even if your man can raise me back.” Agnes gestured with her hand, and her grandson helped her stand out of her rocker.
It took a few moments, but together, they finally put her up on her feet so she could waddle in front of Jessamine.
“You’ve won me over, girl. What does it take to be part of this coven? ”
She didn’t have the faintest idea, really. Elric was the one who decided who stayed and who was sent packing. Thankfully, the god answered for her.
“A sacrifice,” Elric replied. “She might be the gravesinger, but it is still my coven.”
“Ah, a sacrifice. Now, is that in the form of a pig?”
He nodded his head toward Elissa. “She sacrificed a cow.”
“How gruesome.”
Elissa nodded vehemently from where she sat. “It was not something I would repeat. The blood was everywhere. I had to throw the clothes away. Who knew there was so much blood in a cow?”
Well… Jessamine knew. She made a face when Sybil had to cover her mouth behind all of them. But at least she managed to not let out the giggle that was being contained behind that hand. If she had, then the entirety of the room might have broken out of this solemn spell.
Taking a deep breath, Jessamine glanced up at Elric. “Does it have to be an animal?”
“No. Sacrifices are the meaning behind whatever someone offers. Usually it is enough to give something up.” He knew her too well at this point, though. Because his lips twisted in a slight smile before asking, “What do you have in mind, gravesinger?”
She shrugged. “Fortuna gave us an opportunity to see her. The ball is an actual event, I assume.”
“Fortuna’s ball has been months in the planning. How do you know about it?” Agnes asked.
“We peeked inside her bedroom and found the flyer. I have a feeling she wants me to be there.” Jessamine tilted her head to the side, watching the old woman’s features. “I think a sacrifice in the form of an invitation to that event might suffice.”
“If she wants you there, then it’s a trap.” Agnes looked a little unsettled that Jessamine was even asking. “But I can prepare you the best I can for it. And I can get you an invitation if that’s what it will take.”
“Two invitations.” Jessamine gestured to Elric behind her. “A gravesinger goes nowhere without her god, after all.”