20. Flavia
Flavia
I left Ysu’s grove, my heart heavy. He spoke of desire for comfort masquerading as affection.
But I knew that wasn’t true. I missed his web, his protection, that was true, but it was because it was his.
I missed the patterns he had woven above my hammock, beauty he had created just for me.
I missed waking in the day to the sight of his slumbering face, at peace and not filled with the harsh lines created by his unending hunger.
Like being with me was enough, that I allowed him some peace.
Tears rose in my eyes. He had seen me when I didn’t deserve it. I had lied, I had been desperate, but he had claimed me as his all the same. Like I had been worthy. Perhaps I had been, but he had believed it, and that had allowed me to believe it, too.
And I had used him. Intended to renege on our bargain. I had come into the woods seeking a monster, when I had been one all along. I had used his power for my revenge, but when the strength and possessiveness that had drawn me to him slipped past his control, I had fled.
He deserved better. He deserved for me to tell him how I really felt, even if it didn’t change what I needed to do.
I turned around, determined to return, but the forest had other plans.
The path that should have led to him twisted back on itself, and mist rose from ground that had been dry moments before.
The trees pressed closer, their branches forming a tunnel that led not toward home but deeper into the wild.
“Daughter.”
I froze. That voice—soft, accented with the old tongue. My mother stood at the heart of a stone circle, but not as I remembered her. This was the woman she’d hidden—tall and proud, wearing robes that seemed woven from moonlight. Her hair, the same moon-pale shade as mine, writhed with its own life.
“You’re dead,” I said, though in this place, the word held little meaning.
“Dead, alive—such limited concepts.” She gestured, and I saw the truth written in the movement of her hands. “I am memory. I am bloodline. I am the curse trying to complete itself through you.”
The scars at my throat pulsed, Ysu still trying to protect me from the forest’s manipulations. Her form wavered, but I gently traced over the raised lines along my neck. Let me hear her. The scars quieted, but waited, watching closely.
The forest around us shifted, showing me visions from across time.
My grandmother speaking words that spoke to the heart of the wildwood.
My great-grandmother offering sacrifices to the spirits in exchange for the power to fight the invaders.
Back and back, a chain of women who bargained with darkness until darkness became their blood.
The woman before me was my mother, but she was also every woman who had come before her.
A chain of memory and burden back until the beginning of us all.
“Tell me.” The words came out part hiss, part plea. “Tell me what you did.”
She gestured, and the mist shaped itself into images. I saw a circle of women, naked beneath a blood moon, standing around stones that looked freshly carved.
“The Romans had burned the sacred groves. Salted the ritual grounds. Killed our druids.” The image shifted, showing legions marching through forests that withered at their passage.
“We were desperate. So we called to the heart of the forest, and it let us reach into the spaces between—the void where the oldest spirits dwelt. We called them by their true names and offered them flesh anchors in our world.”
“The guardians.”
"They were not guardians then. They were...hunger. Pure appetite given form. The spider that weaves reality. The serpent that swallows suns. The wolf that runs between worlds.” She shuddered, the terror of those ancient powers palpable.
“We offered them human vessels in exchange for protecting the land. They accepted.”
The mist shifted, and I saw them again, the thirteen priestesses and the standing stones.
Then, at the center, a man bound and gagged, with a face that I knew.
He was human then, but the dark hair that hung in his face couldn’t hide the sharp jaw and face that clung to my heart.
His eyes were wide with fear. He may have been a monster now, but then he was just a man, his choice stripped away.
He struggled against his binding as a priestess approached.
She wore a robe that covered her head, and a mask made from the skull of a deer, her antlers extending to the sky above.
She held out her hand, slicing across the palm until blood dripped to the forest floor.
She traced that dark liquid over his chest in whorls before stepping back to join her sisters.
Their chant rose, resonating with chords that called to the world beyond as the ground cracked open, a dark mist breaking through like the hand of death.
It had no true form, a spirit of pure appetite.
It writhed and reached with appendages that extended in all directions, until it located its prey.
“You seek flesh,” she spoke in the old tongue, her voice carrying power that shook the trees.
“We offer anchors. Take this vessel, be bound to mortal form, but know this—as we give, so must you. Blood for blood, venom for venom.” The spirit resisted until she drew her ritual blade across her palm, letting her blood drip onto the man who would be Ysu’s lips.
The exchange was sealed—the spirit flowing into flesh, screaming as infinite hunger was compressed into finite form.
The mist showed new horrors—the spirits taking their first hosts, transforming them into things that were neither human nor beast. Villages emptied as people fled. The very forest began to change, growing stranger and hungrier with each passing season.
“We summoned them, and then realized our folly.” Her laugh was bitter. “The guardians were too powerful. We had thought to control what cannot be controlled. Just as arrogant as those Romans we fought.”
“We won battles against our enemies, but the spirits... they wanted more. Always more. They began taking whoever entered their domains, friend or foe. Creating armies of transformed humans to spread their influence.”
“So you cursed them.”
“We bound them.” The correction came sharp. “Thirteen priestesses, one for each moon of the year. We carved limits into their very essence. Could only hold territory, never expand it. Only transform those whose spirit was willing.”
I thought of Ysu in his grove, ancient and patient and unable to leave. Of the wolf-woman speaking of territorial boundaries. Of how I had walked into the forest of my own accord.
“But magic has its own will,” my mother continued.
“The bindings we created... they changed us too. Every priestess who participated carried the mark in her blood. Our daughters would be drawn to the spirits. Would hunger for something beyond human life. Would owe a debt to the forest who had helped us open the door.”
The spirit before me solidified, my mother’s face the one I remembered so well.
“I felt it too, but then everything changed. They enslaved me, stole me from my grove, and stripped me of all that was sacred. I had no power left.” Her hand reached out to cup my cheek.
“But then I had you. My light in the darkness, and for a few years I was happy. I would have lived it all again to just hold you in my arms one more time.” She reached out her hand to my face to me then, but all I felt was the cold kiss of mist.
“I used what little power I had left to convince your father to adopt you. I had wanted to hide you from the curse that lingered in my blood. I wanted to save you from the monsters of my past, not deliver you to new ones. I failed on both counts. I am sorry, my daughter.”
“You didn’t want me to become a Roman’s wife?”
“I wanted to keep you. I was selfish. I wanted you to be human, as I had become. But curses cannot end in shadows. They can only end in blood.”
Light glittered on her cheeks, a ghost’s remorse. “Instead, my own hubris led you down a path straight to a human monster.”
“His cruelty drove me straight to Ysu.”
“The curse’s irony. Or perhaps its intention all along.” She began to fade at the edges, and I scrambled for her. My hand passed through her, and her smile held a sadness that all mothers knew.
“What am I becoming?”
“What you were always meant to be. The serpent that devours its own tail, the cycle that completes itself.” Her form began to fade.
“But know this—when you consume the one who broke you, you won’t just gain power.
You’ll gain memory. Every woman who came before, every bargain made, every terrible price paid.
The full weight of our bloodline’s choices. ”
“And if I refuse?”
Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “You live forever incomplete, hungry for something you’ll never name. We cannot escape what we are, my love. We can only choose how we embrace it.”
I woke up gasping on the forest floor, scales covered most of my skin now, iridescent in the moonlight.
Around me, the forest waited. I could feel its attention like weight on my skin. Waiting to see if plans laid over centuries would come to fruition.
My fingers dug into the soft forest floor, my nails filling with the dark soil. The forest thought to use me, another weapon in its revenge against Rome’s crawling spread. But as I knelt there, feeling the earth pulse beneath my palms, I realized the truth was far simpler—I would use it right back.
Every scar Tiberius had carved into my flesh, every night his men had held me down while he watched, every moment they had made me believe I was nothing—it all crystallized into a hunger so pure it made my serpent nature seem tame by comparison.
They had tried to break me. Instead, they had forged something infinitely more dangerous.
What had started as the forest’s scheme would become my weapon, its power the instrument of my vengeance.
The forest had tried to manipulate me with ancient magic and ancestral debt, thinking me just another pawn in its war.
Instead, I would take that very power and bend it to the revenge that had always burned brightest in my heart.
Let the old magic flow through me—I would channel every drop of it toward the reckoning my former husband deserved.
I rose—movement somewhere between standing and uncoiling—and breathed deep. The air tasted of blood, of a change that had long been foretold. Somewhere to the south, in a villa that had been my hell, waited the final piece of my becoming.