Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
A rwyn looked down longingly at the blade in his chest. His hands were held up, hovering inches beside the handle of the athame buried between his ribs. He shook violently. His dark brow pinched in confusion as if he couldn’t quite make out what was wrong. Shocked, almost, at the reality.
I stumbled back and watched, helpless and just as confused. It had never been Father Tomin who murdered my mother. It had been the child he’d brought with him. The young boy my juvenile mind had first believed to be Salem. My mind replayed the words, taunting me, as I stared down at Arwyn.
‘I’m looking, father.’
‘And what do you see?’
‘A monster.’
‘And what do we do to monsters, my boy?’
‘Hunt them.’
I swallowed the bile that burned the back of my throat. If I had anything left in my stomach, I would’ve vomited again.
‘It was you,’ I accused, voice meek and numb.
Arwyn looked up slowly, his skin a sickly pallor. Despite the blood, the fact he was still breathing proved the athame hadn’t hit a lung or punctured his heart. But the damage was evident. He wouldn’t survive this. It wasn’t a quick death, but a slow and torturous one. I told myself he deserved it, but it took restraint not to take him in my arms and help him.
‘I told you,’ Arwyn gasped, sagging backwards, the strength leaving his body. He coughed up a splatter of blood that oozed down the side of his mouth. ‘You’d never forgive me if you knew the truth.’
This was what Arwyn feared. All this time, his hesitance and distance, was born because he knew what he took from me. Illusions were one thing, but this betrayal was something that took my heart in it careless hands and squeezed.
I dropped to my knees, feeling fissures lace my heart. There was so much I should’ve asked, but only one word was squeezed out of my aching body.
‘Why?’ One word was all I could manage.
Arwyn coughed up more blood. The contrast of the red against his skin proved that his end was near. His breathing was shallow and rasped, his chest rising and falling dramatically as if his heart was compensating for the loss of blood.
‘I wish…I could explain.’
‘Then try!’ I shouted, snapping out of my stupor. I knew, if he died, he would take the answers from me. I fucking deserved them. I deserved to hear him tell me.
I dragged his limp and useless body onto my lap and held his face in my shaking hands. ‘You owe me answers, Arwyn. You don’t get to die on me before helping me understand.’
Arwyn blinked slowly. Every time he closed his eyes, I believed it was the last time they’d be open. ‘I was a scared seven-year-old boy, longing to make his father proud.’
Of course, Father Tomin was Arwyn’s father. Such evil reality only ever occurred when I was involved. If Arwyn grew his hair out, and manicured a beard, perhaps they’d even have looked alike. But I would never have seen it, not with his gemstone blue eyes, so bright they were enough of a distraction to the dark truth he harboured.
His mother’s eyes, no doubt.
Arwyn got a second wind of energy so suddenly it surprised me. He sat up, growling as he reached for the athame.
‘Leave it in,’ I snapped, understanding the crack in my voice was a side effect of the tears pouring down my face. ‘You’ll bleed out.’
Arwyn rolled to the side and spat a mouthful of blood against the flagstone floor. There was so much of it, it dribbled into the grooves between the slabs and made small rivers of crimson. ‘I’m dying anyway, Hector.’
I opened my mouth to tell him he was wrong, but that would’ve been a lie. Instead, I guided him back onto my lap, heart cracking furiously. I should’ve hated him, and I did. I hated Arwyn for what he took from me, but he had only been a year older than me. I understood how life could turn children into cold-hearted monsters.
Look what had become of me.
Father Tomin had not only ruined me, but he had also ruined his own child too.
I couldn’t begin to imagine what the life of a witch was, growing up beneath the man who longed to destroy them all. Suddenly, the story of his mother being killed by Witch Hunters made sense. We shared something in common.
‘You won,’ I said, peering down at him, drying the beads of sweat from his forehead. ‘I failed the trial, just as you predicated.’
Arwyn’s face screwed up, as if pain lanced through him. But this reaction was not from pain, but the realisation that I was right. He had won.
‘No, Hector…’ Arwyn’s voice slurred, his full pink lips now blue and thin. ‘I’ve lost… everything.’
He said everything , but it was the way he looked up at me, that told me exactly what he meant by that.
A tear slipped from my chin and fell upon the side of Arwyn’s face. I cleared it with a blood-coated thumb, only to find that he, too, was crying. Slow, fat tears that slipped into his dark hair.
‘I will never forgive you,’ I said, as if that was enough for Arwyn to sit up simply in defiance to prove me wrong. But he didn’t.
He smiled, closed his eyes, and replied without opening them again. ‘Remember the man you showed me I could be, not the monster who hid in his shadow.’
That was a goodbye. Goodbyes never came in the form of the word itself, but a feeling. Caym’s had proven that. It was a sense of severance and finality that came with the words provided, and Arwyn’s practically drowned with both of those tones.
‘No,’ I shouted at him, tears pooling, more tears falling. I took his shoulders and shook him. ‘You don’t get to just go. You don’t get to die and leave me like this. You owe me, Arwyn Hopkin. Don’t you fucking dare die. Not like this. I deserve… I deserve to ruin you too, to break you. Not this. This is too easy.’
Arwyn kept his mouth closed, his chest rising and falling slowly. I watched it, not daring to look away, as if my eye contact was the only thing keeping his lungs drawing in breath. Only when he spoke again, his voice a small whisper, did I dare return my gaze to his face.
I couldn’t hear him, so I lowered my ear closer to his mouth, begging him to say it again. ‘Please, Arwyn.’
It was my turn to beg, to try a different tactic at keeping him alive.
‘If you…can’t forgive me,’ Arwyn whispered, his lips so close to my ear they brushed my tacky skin. ‘At least forgive the child who had no choice. He doesn’t deserve your hate, but…I do.’
‘Stay alive and I will consider it.’
If Arwyn wasn’t a dead weight on my lap, I would’ve reached into my pocket and withdrawn Eleanor’s grimoire. But even a powerless witch knew that defying death was not a power in Hekate’s remit.
It was something darker.
My head snapped up, already knowing what I was looking for. There, in the corner of the room, bathed in shadows, was the beast . I knew he’d be watching. And I knew now what I needed him for.
‘I failed. Arwyn won!’ I screamed, knowing my time was running out. ‘He’s your victor.’
The demon stepped into the dull light, revealing his form. Tall and imposing, the face of a goat with curling horns. He wore what looked to be a suit, with the gloved hands of a man but cloven hooves for feet. There was no denying the aura of darkness that clung to the demon like a cloak, which trailed behind him as he walked towards me.
‘I am aware of my own rules,’ the demon replied, burning eyes boring through me. ‘But my victor is dying, rendering him useless to me.’
Without taking my eyes of the demon, I pressed my fingers against Arwyn’s neck. If I focused hard enough, I knew his heart was still beating. The patter was faint, but undeniably there.
‘He still lives,’ I said, almost pleaded. ‘Your victor is not useless yet.’
The demon paced towards me, bringing with him the stench of rot beneath something…sweet. Like roses. ‘And what is it you wish for me to do, Hector?’
This demon had been inside my mother. He had…possessed her, making her the Grand High. The pungent scent of thistlebane followed me from the memory, proving to me what my mother did to the demon. She buried him.
‘Save him.’
A long, heavy breath exhaled, as if the darkness itself breathed. ‘Say my name and I will do it.’
Once again, the viper stirred. Like called to like.
Nine months I festered beside you. My mother had been pregnant, carrying me in her womb, when this beast possessed her body. Was that what drew me towards it? Had a part of the creature been left behind inside of me, after he was banished from her body?
Pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
My blood. The key. Her keeping me away.
The darkness inside of me unravelled, as though it enjoyed the truth I was working out.
I chewed down on my lip, knowing this was all a game to the demon. He sensed my hesitation, gazing between me and the limp body in my arms. There was so much blood now it was hard to discern where it ended and began.
‘Hurry now, child.’
I hissed in the face of evil, desperate but furious. ‘He won. Without Arwyn you’re stuck here. Without him, your freedom is stunted. Save. Him.’
‘All it takes is for you to say my name.’
‘Why!’ I shouted, clutching onto Arwyn so tightly, he would shatter like glass if he was as fragile as me. ‘What does it matter?’
‘Because you are the key .’ There was anger in the demon’s tone. A sense that he was displeased with this fact, and it irked him to reveal it.
The key. The same thing my mother had said to Caym as she conjured him. My blood had opened the portal to the Witch Trials. This was why Caym was adamant about getting me out of the Trials. Because he knew, as well as my mother, that the only way of keeping this demon locked away for good, was keeping me away.
For the first time in my life, I longed to defy my mother’s dying wish. All for a man who likely didn’t deserve it.
‘Say it,’ the beast sang. ‘One word. And I will save him.’
I screwed my eyes closed, watching stars dance in the dark. I refused my better judgement, telling myself that this was the only option. Because I was selfish. I hated Arwyn, but that didn’t mean I wanted to lose him.
Weak hands clutched at me, barely able to grasp onto my shirt. ‘Don’t…do it. Let me go?—'
‘ Bahmet ,’ I shouted to the dark, above Arwyn’s final plea. As if it wasn’t enough the first time, I bellowed the name out of my throat as though I spat flames.
A cold steady peace folded over me. It was as if the atmosphere paused, drew outwards and then flooded back towards me like the destruction of a black hole.
‘Good boy,’ Bahmet praised, two words soft as a father’s admiration.
I refused to open my eyes, to face the possible realities. It was easier, to face the dark in my mind. Familiar. But when Arwyn shifted in my grip, I forgot all of it. My eyes flew open. I peered down at him, holding my breath in anticipation.
Arwyn sat up silently. He tugged the athame from his chest with steady hands, discarded the blade on the floor.
I was speechless as I watched dark veins stitch the wound in his chest together. Arwyn glanced down at himself too, silently pondering the possibilities. Or at least I thought that was what his silence was born from.
Until he looked back at me, with glowing red eyes. He pulled himself out of my arms, but I did little to try and stop him. I was left, dumfounded and frozen, as Arwyn defied death and stood tall above me.
‘Look at what you have you done,’ Arwyn spat, clutching the side of his head. He pinched his eyes closed, stumbling back, as though he waged a war. Which he did, with the demon now possessing his body.
‘Congratulations,’ I said, getting up and putting distance between us, unsure if I should give into relief or the hate that still lingered in me. ‘You won. You are the new Grand High.’
When Arwyn opened his eyes, it was to show the beautiful blue I had become so powerless in the face of. Pools of sapphire I would’ve happily drowned within, until I discovered his truth.
In seconds, he was before me, grasping the sides of my arms so tight I knew my skin would’ve bruised.
‘Listen to me,’ Arwyn said, wincing as he battled against the entity possessing him. Unlike my mother, he didn’t have the thistlebane in his system to render Bahmet powerless.
At least, not yet.
‘Tell them…you won,’ Arwyn forced out as though the words pained him.
‘Tell who?’ I couldn’t grasp the reality that Arwyn had been a thread away from dying, and now stood before me, alive and well.
He held me close, snarling in my face as he forced his words out. ‘The Coven. Tell them you won. It will give you…time’ He fell to his knees, screaming out in agony. I was pulled down with him, unable to break away from his grasp. ‘time to save yourself from what is to come.’
I was stunned to silence, as the reality of everything set in. Arwyn had become the Grand High. I’d passed the greatest power straight into the hands of the enemy.
As if reading my mind, Arwyn broke out of his inner battle and fixed his eyes on me. One was beautiful blue, the other a terrifying ruby.
‘It was Jonathan Baily who sold your parents out. He was as much to blame for the death of your parents as I was. Trust no one. Trust…’ Arwyn silenced himself as Bahmet finally took over. As suddenly as his fight began, Arwyn was calm as the centre of a storm. Both eyes were overcome with the demon’s red. And I knew that I’d lost him.
‘See you soon, my child,’ Bahmet said, using Arwyn as a puppet. He released me, waved a hand in my direction and I felt my body leave the floor. I was forced backwards, torn away from Arwyn as he faded into the distance.
Shadows swallowed me whole, chewed me up and spat me back out. I hit the ground on all fours, unable to steady my breathing. I was vaguely aware of the shuffling of feet, the gathering of people around me.
When I looked up, I was no longer in the castle. Arwyn was no longer standing before me. Instead, I faced Jonathan. I was back in London, in the cellar of the White Tower with the stone archway at my back, the one we’d walked through to enter the Witch Trials.
Fanned out around Jonathan were witches with eyes glowing an array of silver, blue, red, and green.
‘Welcome back, Hector Briar,’ Jonathan said, a hesitant yet knowing smile plastered across his mouth.
There was no time for clear thoughts before I attacked.