Chapter 34 #2
She might call herself a kitchen witch, but there were still knives in a kitchen, and Sybil knew how to use them better than anyone.
“Sit,” Sybil said, her voice low and filled with anger. “You dealt with a god last time, but forgive the poor dear, because he is still a man, and men are such flawed creatures. Now you deal with two witches, and we will be much harder to escape.”
“You forget I still have the blessing of my goddess on my side,” Fortuna hissed.
Jessamine breathed out a sigh. “I see no goddess here. You have the skin of a creature who was more powerful than you could ever hope to be, yes. That gives you some magic. But even the priestesses of old knew to fear the witches.”
“You have no power over me! Get out of this house, Jessamine, or I will banish you from it!”
Jessamine lifted a hand, feeling the shadows coil through her fingers like she held a snake in her grip. “No,” she murmured. “I don’t think you will.”
With the flick of a wrist, she let the shadows fly free and savored the sense of power that came with it.
Coiling around her cousin, Elric’s shadow-snakes swiftly bound Fortuna’s arms behind her and dropped the woman into the chair.
Jessamine noted a heady sensation and a ringing in her ears—this level of power was addicting and amazing and terrifying all at the same time.
If she wanted to, she could really hurt someone.
And that gave her pause. She took a moment, allowing her eyes to roll back in her head as she reveled in the sensation before returning her gaze to Fortuna’s.
“I think you have forgotten what witches are,” she said quietly.
“You think I am weak because I am not like you. You thought I was weak as a child because I saw use in those you did not. Your judgment of other people is your greatest weakness, Fortuna, and my greatest strength is that I see beyond what you do.”
“We are both just women seeking power.”
“I am nothing like you,” Jessamine replied.
She let the words seep from her tongue and sink into her skin, where she knew they needed to be.
She said the words to heal herself and all the past that still clung to her like sticky glue.
“And I cannot express how happy it makes me to know that I will never be like you.”
Silence rang between them, a thousand words said all in an instant.
She could see the fear in Fortuna’s expression, and the thoughts glinting past that sharpened mind.
Fortuna would try to spin a tale now. She would try to appeal to Jessamine’s softer side, hoping to crack open some fissure of kindness that would let her go.
“I don’t want to let you go,” Jessamine said, her voice a little harder than before.
“I don’t want to be kind to you right now.
In case you missed it, I have been kind to you since the moment I stepped foot in this district.
I sought you out, hoping that you were doing all of this without realizing who you had attached yourself to.
I thought you were worth saving, Fortuna. ”
“I am. I have to be. Because there is never anyone beyond saving—that’s what you used to say.
You were always the better of the two of us.
You saw so much more with that kind heart of yours.
I was wrong, Jessa. I was so wrong, and I have given a dangerous, powerful man too much information. I am sorry for it.”
But those words dripped from a poisoned, desperate tongue.
Sybil leaned against the door, her arms crossed over her chest and her dark eyes narrowed. “Lies.”
“It’s not a lie, witch,” Fortuna snapped. “I do feel guilty.”
“You couldn’t feel guilt if you tried. You were the one who set the spell and cost all those people their lives and souls.
You invited them. You provided your home.
You are the reason they are now dead.” Like a raven, Sybil cocked her head to the side.
“Would you go back and change anything you did? Or do you, even now, still think you made the right choice?”
And there it was. The flicker of defiance in Fortuna’s gaze.
Jessamine sighed, then said in a bored voice, “You have one last chance. Tell me what he’s doing, Fortuna, or I will rip the memories out of you.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I can. I already have from others. Benji, your little accomplice. Callum, the man who guided you.” She leaned forward, her hand on Nyx’s back. She wanted Fortuna to look into her eyes and see madness in her own gaze as well. “And I will do it again.”
But Fortuna had never been easily frightened. Her cousin straightened her back on the bed, primly crossed her legs, and looked very much like she wasn’t tied up with shadows in her own safe house. “I will tell you nothing until I am unbound.”
A small prick of sadness broke through Jessamine’s hard shell. “I wish it didn’t have to be like this, Fortuna. I remember when we were young. I remember looking up to you so much, even though you were so cruel to me.”
“And I remember you as a snot-nosed brat who wouldn’t leave me alone.”
Right, then. She had done all she could.
Jessamine stood, shadows roving over her shoulders and around her neck. She stood in front of Fortuna without even a prick of sadness now. “Do you see this scar around my neck?”
“It’s hard to miss.”
“This is where he killed me, Fortuna. My questions will start there. Because I want to know how long you have been planning this with him, and just how deep the poison goes. Do you understand me?”
“My silence is unchanging,” Fortuna spat.
Jessamine lifted her hand, guiding the shadows toward Fortuna’s face.
They sank into her mouth, splitting open her jaw until it nearly cracked off her skull.
She could see the shadows writhing and wriggling into Fortuna’s mouth, disappearing down her throat as they sought out the memories Jessamine needed to see.
“You will tell me everything,” Jessamine replied quietly. “And I will make it painful.”