Chapter 28 – Rorik #2
Aurora’s eyes widen at this information.
A relative. I forgot to tell her about this.
To be fair, a lot has been going on, and I forgot.
It’s fine, though. Once we take care of this nasty witch, Aurora will have plenty of time to connect with Saoirse who is likely her only remaining family. She’ll need community after this.
“I’m not giving anything up,” Ciara continues, and she fires one of her magical lightning bolts at Saoirse. The witch is hit in the chest, not expecting the sudden attack. She falls to the ground unconscious. I listen for a heartbeat and sigh in relief when I hear it.
Good. She’s still alive.
Ciara uproots the ground underneath a few monsters who start pouring out of the tree line toward her, sending them deep down into holes.
Goddamn it! They were supposed to wait for our order too.
The witch aims her palm at a few vampires, picking them up by their necks with telekinesis and tossing them into the trees behind them.
A few become lodged onto branches, straight through their hearts, and burst into flames before turning to dust.
“I need to do this now,” Aurora whispers next to me. “I don’t want anyone else to die.”
She steps forward before I can argue. Not that I would have tried to stop her. I mean, I want to stop her, but that’s just me being scared of losing her.
“What do you want, Mother? Besides taking over the world and enslaving humans. That’s not going to happen so what else do you want?”
Ciara is on the move, slowly walking towards my little lamb.
When she gets about a foot away, so close that she could reach out and grab Aurora, Ciara leans forward.
“I want you dead,” she whispers.
She shoots out her hand, zapping a demon that had emerged from the woods. She’s manipulating his will and forcing him to fight for her. He runs toward me. No… he’s aiming for Aurora.
I push her behind me and catch the demon on the arm… then I rip his throat out. Some demons are nearly impossible to kill. Not this one. It’s in a host body, which crumples to the ground, and the demon possessing it has been sent back to hell or wherever demons live these days.
“Trying to get a demon to do your dirty work?” I say to Ciara.
The witch growls and tries to hit me with a magic fireball. I jump out of the way just in time. Ciara was expecting a fight, so we’ll give her that, but we want her to believe she’s winning.
Aurora must have fallen to the ground when I pushed her out of the way because she’s wiping off her hands when she joins me by my side. Her hair has a few leaves in the bun too.
“How long have you known Rorik was my mate?” she asks.
Ciara stares at us for the longest time. Her arms are by her sides, her hands opening and closing into fists.
“I've always known. You were destined to be his since birth. He was meant to find you twenty years ago, but I worked hard to keep you two apart. The number of spells I cast on you to hide your soul from him…”
“What? How? I wasn’t anywhere near you—”
“I didn’t need to be near you to cast a spell. I just needed something you owned. Like the necklace you got from your father.”
Aurora ghosts her fingers over the pendant. “That’s why you took it from me?”
“It was meant to call him to you. I couldn’t let that happen. So, I took it and made you believe it always belonged to me.”
“You fucking bitch,” Aurora growls.
Ciara ignores the comment and points her finger at Aurora. “You are the reason my powers are weakening. You took them from me when I birthed you.”
She’s wrong. It doesn’t work like that.
“Then why not kill me yourself? Take my magic once my heart stopped beating?”
Ciara laughs and laughs. A little too long if you ask me.
“You dumb little girl… well… not little, are you?” Aurora ignores the comment. “Don’t you think I wanted to? Or that I tried? A witch cannot shed a relative’s blood to claim their magic. Only you can will your magic to me.”
“Then why did you give her to the hunters?” I ask. “You said you wanted them to kill her.”
“Because I made a deal with the God of Death last year. I promised him I would send him as many human souls as he could ever want. In return, he’d replenish my powers.”
“But that didn’t work, did it?” I say, smirking. “All your plans to kill off humans failed.”
“Unfortunately,” she seethes. “So the God told me if I sent him my daughter’s soul, he’d give me her powers. Except, I wasn’t allowed to kill her.”
“You’re an awful, awful woman,” I say. My fury boils within me. I want nothing more than to rip out Ciara’s throat like I just did to that demon.
Aurora takes my hand in hers again. She weaves her fingers with mine, allowing me to breathe.
“And you,” Ciara growls, sending death glares my way. “Did you really think you were worthy of a third soulmate?”
“What?”
“Brynn and Eden?” Ciara chuckles. “They were never your true mates. I cast a spell on their souls. It was never real. I forced you to fall in love with them. I manipulated their will to love you back. Then I killed them. I made you believe it was your hands that took their lives. I needed you to experience the pain and become so angry that you lashed out on humans.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She shrugs. “Fine. I don’t care. But tell me… is your connection to Aurora different? You can’t hear her thoughts, can you? Your heart beats now. I can hear it from where I’m standing. She’s your true mate and because of that, your soul is healing. Which is why you also must die.”
Ciara snatches the knife from Aurora’s hand, which I hadn’t noticed she’d pulled from the sheath. The witch then uses a spell to zap me immobile... and drives the knife into my chest.
I collapse to the ground.
“No!” Aurora screams.
She falls to her knees beside me and wraps her hands around the knife’s hilt. My mate’s tears are real. Even though we knew this was going to happen, it’s all too real for my little lamb.
The knife has pierced my heart. My vision begins to blur.
It’s happening.
I’m dying.
I’m finally dying.
And now I can be at peace.