Chapter 32 Nes
Nes
When Nes was very little, she thought magic was…well, magical.
She thought it was a beautiful—albeit powerful—part of nature. Like a storm. Crackling with lightning and soaring with the quake of thunder, she believed the trees when they told her magic should be revered. She believed a lot of things when she was young.
She’d been fourteen the first time she deliberately killed a man.
She hadn’t planned to kill him, but when he’d forced her into a forgotten alley, ordered her to stay quiet and wait for a slow death, magic had exploded out of her.
It struck the man only once. But once was all the magic needed to slash his throat all the way around.
A silent, killing blow. The magic of the Witch.
She didn’t feel guilty about what she’d done. She knew what he would have done to her. But she did feel afraid. Not of the murder or her power, but of the fact that she’d liked it. She liked what the magic had done.
For so long, she’d kept her magic at bay, never letting it out.
Never giving in out of fear. Fear that her magic would betray her as it had that day in the Disputed Land when she was six.
But the release of it when she was fourteen had been so much more than gratifying.
It had been exhilarating. She wanted more.
The murder had barely touched the rim of her power.
So she’d made a decision that day. She swore she wouldn’t be like all the Witches who came before her. She would not be the magic’s host.
She would be its prison. And she would never surrender the key.
Captain Fell’s blade felt identical to that of the man from the alley all those years ago. Cold, unyielding, and poised to run blazing hot should he will it. She imagined her own blade must have felt the same against Keifer Harrow’s neck before he chose to warm the steel with his blood.
Nes could do the same. Let her blood run hot and smooth over the metal. But her own curiosity held her still. Perfectly still against the blade, despite knowing her cooperation was futile. Fell would not let her out of this unscathed.
In the time it had taken her to recognize him, he’d pinned her hands over her head.
His knees were on either side of her hips, his weight holding her down.
He was thin, inconsequential compared to the man she’d murdered at fourteen, but Fell was trained.
She felt how he leaned forward so all his weight was focused on her torso while his head ducked close—though not close enough for her to hit her forehead against his—and out of reach of any kicks.
“You’re a clever little thing, aren’t you?” Fell jeered.
She smirked up at him. She needn’t play the terrified, submissive victim here. He couldn’t kill her. Not with a blade. Having already killed one Witch, he should know that.
She didn’t have to pretend to be weak. He knew what she was. There was no point in hiding anymore.
Her magic was alive inside her, no longer satisfied with the lullaby she sang it. With Fell on top of her, it screeched beneath her skin, as if it, too, remembered that first kill. As if it, too, remembered her predecessor’s death. The magic wanted out, and she was half tempted to let it.
With the city on lockdown, it had been weeks since she’d last trekked to the river.
Too long since she’d last expelled a scrap of the magic inside her.
The bit she’d let loose while pulling Toran and Genna from the well hadn’t brought her any sort of relief, while the brief shots of salt water from her flask weren’t enough to truly dampen the strain anymore, and the magic knew it.
She could feel its strength as surely as she could feel the strength of the man holding her down.
But she didn’t need her magic. She could handle Fell on her own.
“That’s me,” she said, tilting her head from side to side, letting the blade slide over her exposed throat. “The clever. Little. Thing.”
Fell sneered at her and pressed his blade more firmly to her neck. She felt it dig in past layers of skin, the bottom resting against the points of her collarbone. Blood wet the edge of the blade, but still, she waited.
“So clever, in fact, that I’m sure I can guess the sort of man you are, Embley Fell.”
It had been eating away at her these last couple of weeks.
That knowledge of Fell’s history. The history she shouldn’t know, couldn’t possibly know, without having been a part of it herself.
Of course she hadn’t been in that underground lake, hadn’t been the one to fall deeply in love with the man who had become the monster holding her down.
But the Witch before her had. And through the magic inside her, Nes had seen it all. All the memories of the prior Witch tucked away inside her head.
“The only man in the world to kill two Witches in a row?”
She shook her head, ignoring the sharp edge at her throat, letting that sharpness fuel the words leaving her lips. “You’re a man who’s afraid of us.”
Fell’s lip curled. “I’m not afraid,” he snarled.
She laughed. “Oh, but you’re only proving you are.
You’re afraid of women, aren’t you? Afraid of not just the magic each one of us has a chance of holding, but of the possibility we may not have any magic and yet still be more powerful than you.
You’re afraid of being less than us, the people you think the least of.
“Is that why you so desperately seek to kill us? To kill me? And why you tried to have Genna Rizzo killed? Was it the reason you attacked the nomads up north and why you told the King the Witch had been among them? Because you couldn’t bear knowing one of them was stronger than you, strong enough to evade your slaughter? ”
Fell didn’t answer. He glared down at her, his mouth opening and closing as if there were so many things he wanted to say but none won out. No matter, she didn’t need his words to confirm the truths she spoke. They were already all over his face.
“Tell me, Fell. How long have you known the nomad girl who followed you back isn’t the Witch? A couple days? A week? Or have you known this whole time? Is that why you’ve been drowning every girl you could get your hands on?”
Nes grinned as a flash of fear, brief but bright like a lightning strike, lit up Fell’s dark eyes.
She went for the blow she knew would push him over the edge.
“Was it fear that drove you to kill the Witch before me all those years ago? Kill her even though she’d admitted the only magic she’d ever used was to keep the flowers in bloom? ”
Horror overtook Fell’s face. “How could you know that? She never told anyone. Only me.” He lowered his voice, and his grip on the blade slackened a bit. “She only told me.”
“She didn’t use the magic inside her for anything but beauty.
Her own fear kept her from touching it.” She lifted her head to press her smirk to his ear, to whisper truths stark enough to unravel him.
“You wanna know a secret? It’s not fear that keeps my magic at bay.
It’s anger. And it’s my anger that’s going to kill you tonight. ”
Fell’s face turned a shocking shade of white. He readjusted his grip on the blade. “No,” he said shakily. “You’re the one who’s going to die. You’ll drown as she did.”
Nes ignored him, barreling on. She had unearthed those memories that did not belong to her, and now they refused to remain buried.
It was as if the anger and regret of the previous Witch had taken hold of her.
“How long did you know she was the Witch before she told you? Did you know she told you because she trusted you? Trusted you because she loved you. Because you, in turn, had promised to love her until the day she died. So what I want to know is, did you, Fell? Did you love her right up until the moment you drowned her in that underground lake?”
She felt Fell’s hand quake under her chin. And, damn, if that didn’t feel good, didn’t give her strength. Wherever she was, Nes was sure the previous Witch was smiling now. Smiling just as Nes smiled.
“You must have,” Nes said. “And you must love her still—even if it is with the smallest fraction of your shriveled heart—to have watched over her son all these years.” She leaned into the blade, her breath tickling the hairs on Fell’s chin.
“But why keep all this to yourself? Is it because you’ve heard the whispers?
Those handful of stories no one believes, about the children of Witches being…
different? Is that why you brought him back with you? To watch for anything odd?”
She shook her head, her grin as wide as the knife at her throat. “Or maybe your desire to protect him had nothing to do with rumors or the last Witch. Could it have simply been instinct on your part?”
“No one knows,” Fell whispered. His gaze was somewhere to the right of her head, seeing his past in the grain of the floorboards. Her every word propelling him to fall faster into his own memories. “No one knows. No one knows.”
“Tell me, Embley Fell,” she demanded, and his eyes snapped back to her.
She swore he could see the wildflower field as clearly as she could.
The gorgeous range of color below white-peaked mountains and the little boy running through the field, laughing beside his mother.
“Does he know? Does Toran know he’s your son? ”