Chapter 96 Maddy
MADDY
We let Sinthy sit with Isme for a while.
I was too emotionally exhausted to do more than sit there, listening to the woman cry for the second mother she’d lost. Nico put an arm around my shoulders, and I stared down at the vial in my palm.
It felt small and fragile. Nothing about it seemed important.
How could the entire world be going crazy over such a small and insignificant thing?
A tiny bit of glass, some blood from a long-dead man, and a little cork and wax.
Nothing more. Even then, as small as it was, I could almost feel the power within it surging and desperate to get out.
Sinthy stood finally and turned to us, wiping her eyes again. “I’m… umm… I got her resting place ready a couple of days before I met you. Once the magic barrier was broken, she knew her time was short. I’m going to take her to lay to rest.”
“Where will you take her?” I asked, my lips almost numb.
“To her home. Her first home. Where she was born.”
“Is that far?” Nico asked.
Sinthy shrugged. “Nowhere is far for us. She was born in a tiny village on the outskirts of what is now Talgarth in Wales. It’s much different now, but the place her parents had lived is now part of a nature reserve. She’ll be able to rest peacefully. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
I nodded. “That’s fine. Take your time. Are you sure you want to go alone? We’d… I mean… we could go along. Make things easier for you?”
Sinthy waved away the offer. “No, no. I think it’ll be nice to sit with her alone for a bit once I get her—” She choked back a sob.
“Um, once she’s laid to rest. Please, make yourselves at home while I’m gone.
There’s food in the kitchen and a third bedroom if you want a nap before the return trip. ”
Without another word, Sinthy knelt, embraced Isme’s body, and vanished.
There was an audible pop, almost like a baby thunderclap, as the air rushed back into the spot where the two had been a moment before.
I stood and walked from the room, not sure what to do with myself.
I found the other bedroom and collapsed onto the bed.
Nico joined me a moment later, sitting beside me. The springs creaked as he leaned over on an elbow and brushed a stray strand of hair from my face. “How are you feeling?”
I chuckled humorlessly. “I literally have no idea. Pretty overwhelmed, I guess.” The vial, still in my hand, seemed to weigh a ton. “What about you? Now you have your own witch. How does that feel?”
He laughed. A real laugh. It made me feel better when I heard it. “I wasn’t expecting it, I’ll say that for sure. Not something you think is going to happen when you’re teleporting across the world, right? Sort of came out of left field. I was so wound up in the story that it caught me off guard.”
The story. That was the big elephant in the room. I ran a hand through my hair and tucked the vial into my pocket. “It’s tragic, isn’t it?”
Nico smiled ruefully. “It’s definitely not what I’d heard. The written accounts, the oral traditions, the stories—the royals twisted it all. The real story is… devastating.”
I agreed. The story of Edemas, Helena, Lillian, and the other children was the stuff of Shakespearean tragedies.
Hearing it from someone who’d actually been there was even more disturbing and heart-wrenching.
Inside, my wolf was calmer and more content than I could remember her ever being.
It was almost like hearing the story had finally let her relax, knowing the truth was finally out.
I also suspected that Isme’s last words to her had a similar calming effect.
“Are you hungry?” Nico asked.
I didn’t want to be, the atmosphere in the little house reminded me of a funeral, but my stomach growled and betrayed my best intentions. Nico must have heard it too. He grinned. “I’ll go see what there is in the kitchen.”
I rose from the bed to follow him. As I walked, I pulled the vial back out of my pocket.
I stood in the doorway of the kitchen as Nico rummaged through the fridge.
I held the vial up and shook it. “Nico, do you really think this little bit of blood is enough to create a poison to kill every shifter? It seems crazy, right?”
Nico turned, holding containers of sandwich meat and cheese, to look at the vial.
He set the items on the counter and walked over to take a closer look.
Sighing, he shook his head. “Maybe. Who knows what they can do with modern medical equipment and labs? Look what they did with your blood. Creating that poison or whatever to force us to shift. If that blood is truly that powerful, then maybe it will be.”
I shook the vial again. “There’s maybe a tablespoon of this stuff. I can’t see how all the awful things that have happened are worth this.”
“I know. It’s a little tragic. The need and desire for power is pretty crazy. Speaking of power, have you decided what you’re going to do with that thing yet?” he asked, nodding toward the vial.
I’d thought I’d known. I’d been fully ready to down the blood the moment I had it in my hand and rain destruction down on the royals, but after the story and what Isme had said, I was questioning myself.
Maybe she was right, and I did need to think twice before drinking it.
Or maybe I should slam the damn thing into the ground right now.
There was more to think about. I tucked the vial back into my pocket.
“Not yet. Still working that out in my head.”
Nico grinned at me and went back to making us sandwiches.
We ate in near silence, unsure of what to say.
The rooms held the memories of its recently deceased resident, and the quiet that fell over us seemed more like a show of respect than an act of fear.
Once we finished our simple meal, we explored the house while we waited.
Most of the home looked like a typical house, but there were strange quirks and items that made me double-take. A shelf in the kitchen held small spice jars, but instead of the typical garlic, pepper, or chili powder, the jars were labeled with things like Horehound, Solomon’s Seal, and Myrrh.
Another that caught our eye was the bookshelf in the living room.
Most of the titles looked to be handbound in leather.
The titles chilled me to the bone. Herbs and spells, Magical uses for mammals and reptiles, and The Book of Shadows.
The largest book was sitting on a small table beside the shelf.
Nico opened it and was flipping through a couple of pages when I leaned over his shoulder to see.
All I found on the pages was a strange illegible script and some obscure hand-drawn sketches.
Flipping through the entire thing, Nico shook his head in wonder. “I can’t read any of this. What do you think it is?”
I touched my finger to the book. The pages were ancient and dry as old bone. “All of this is handwritten. I think this is the spell book Isme spoke about. This has all her spells.”
Nico let out a laugh. “I can’t get over it. Witches are real. I’ve never met anyone who’s ever met one. Now I have one bound to my pack. It feels a bit like we’re inside a fairytale, doesn’t it?”
He was right about that. Everything that had happened to me over the last few months seemed surreal. “Do you think it will help?”
“It will, but it’ll also put a much bigger target on our back. Once Viola and her people realize we not only have the vial but have magic on our side too, things will get pretty crazy.”
The strange air pressure pop happened again, and I turned to find Sinthy standing in the living room with us.
Her face was red and splotched from crying, and she looked like a little girl instead of the young woman she was.
I stepped forward to check on her, but she waved me off.
“It’s fine, I’m fine, it’s all fine. Please, don’t worry about me,” she said and wiped at her nose with a silk handkerchief that appeared from up her sleeve.
“So,” she went on after composing herself, “are we ready to go? It’s about time I got you back home. ”
Nico nodded. “Yeah, things are getting bad back home. The sooner we get back, the better. You can stay in my guest bedroom as long as you need until we get you your own place set up.”
Sinthy froze mid-nose-wipe and looked at Nico. The expression on her face was one of confusion. “What? A place?”
Nico frowned and glanced at me. I was no help because I had the exact same look on my own face. Nico glanced back at the witch again. “Well, yeah. A place for you to live back home. I don’t want you to be like a hobo or something. You need your own place to live.”
“But… I…” Sinthy closed her eyes and shook her head like she was trying to clear it. “You want me to live with you? In your pack lands?”
“Uh.” It was the only sound Nico could make, so I stepped in to speak.
“I thought that’s what we just talked about—you coming to live in the pack lands and offer your services. Right?”
Sinthy blinked at me in confusion. “I thought you all would go home and then call on me when you needed help or something.”
That was not what I wanted. I looked around at the quiet little house and how empty it seemed with Isme gone.
This woman needed more than these four walls and a spell book.
I shook my head. “No. You are part of the pack now. You are not the hired help that we forget about until the right time. You are part of the pack now, not an employee.”
Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks, and she smiled. “Seriously?”
“Yes, now pack up what you need, and let’s go. You can always come back and grab some stuff if you forget anything.”
Sinthy grinned and grabbed a canvas bag from a cabinet and put the spell book inside first, then started grabbing clothes and a small, framed picture that sat on the kitchen counter.
Before it slipped into her bag, I caught sight of a man and woman holding a small baby.
The parents were smiling, and the woman looked a little bit like Sinthy.
I had to assume it was a photo of her parents before the royals killed them and stole Sinthy’s entire life.
Again, I felt a connection to this young woman and her life.
She headed down the hallway to another room. While we waited, listening to the rustle and thump of drawers being opened and closed, Nico leaned in and put his lips to my ear. “Why does it feel like we just adopted a teenager?”
All I could do was laugh. He wasn’t wrong.