Chapter 11
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
EMBER
The last Curse on Everden sterilized us all.
— Jaxan D’Oron, Echelon to the
School of Dark Magic
After I returned from the Allwitch temple, regret fell heavily on me. I stared out the front window, watching light-gray clouds tumble across a pale sky, before finally deciding to step outside for fresh air.
I dangled my legs over the side of the little bridge, resting my head on the bottom rung of the wooden handrail. For a few minutes, I visualized Gray in the stands at my high school graduation, and without realizing it, my legs started to swing over the water.
When the last of the sun faded behind the hill, the air grew too chilly to stay out any longer.
I went back inside — and stopped short by the letterbox at the sight of two tall shadows standing in Helen’s kitchen.
Small hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I surveyed the shrouded shapes that looked a lot like the dark magic spell, Shadowcover.
The shadows dissipated, revealing a curvy, dark-haired woman in her fifties and a second witch, more slender than the first, who could have been the first witch’s sister, if siblings were possible here.
The two middle-aged women had dark hair and smooth, pale skin.
The first witch smiled sinisterly at me while the other hummed vacantly up at the ceiling.
Fully attired in black lace, billowy skirts, and long, bell sleeves falling to their knuckles, they were reminiscent of old storybook witches who baked children into pies and summoned spirits out of cauldrons.
My legs were weak and trembling because it should have been impossible for them to get past the wards.
“Pleasant walk?” asked the first witch. She lifted an antique magnifying lens that hung on a long, silver chain around her neck to her eye as the second witch cowered behind her.
After studying me through the lens for some time, she dropped it back to her blouse, and said, “Stop your shaking, child. I’m Sinora.
” She waved a hand toward the other witch.
“My sister, Sabrina. We’re your aunts. Your mother’s sisters. ”
“Aunts?” I repeated. There were no aunts in Everden. No full siblings, apart from me and Ash . . . or so I’d thought.
“Well now,” said Sinora, the floor creaking as she strode around the kitchen, “let me guess. You didn’t find the Sword of Shifting. I suppose I could have told you as much.”
“You knew about that?” I asked, moving to run a hand through my hair, then remembering I was holding a flask.
“The Lens of Intentions showed it to me.” She tapped the glass of her lens then removed it from her neck and took a few steps forward to hand it to me.
“It’s the artifact of enchantments. It shows you the intentions of anyone you point it at.
Have a look if you like. You will see. I won’t hurt you. ”
Lifting it to my eye, I peered at her. I was slightly suspicious, but if it did do what she said, if it wasn’t some trick, then she was telling the truth. She didn’t want to hurt me. Actually, she wanted the opposite. She wanted to help, as much as Helen would allow.
I scanned for familiar aspects of their appearances and found a few mild resemblances.
Their skin tone was a shade darker than Ash and Helen’s, but it had the same porcelain quality to it.
Their hair was closer to black than brown, but they both had the small, Blackburn mouth that Jaxan had so keenly pointed out I didn’t.
There was also the fact they’d entered the house, passing through the Blackburn wards without my permission, and that certainly indicated a relation.
And, I thought, starting to come around to the possibility the more I thought about it, if I did have aunts, was this not exactly how Helen would see fit to tell me?
“Thanks,” I said, giving her the lens back.
She flipped her hand in an unconcerned gesture, then retreated back to the kitchen, where she made herself at home, opening and closing cupboard doors and jostling stubborn kitchen drawers to get them to pull out.
Her sister, Sabrina, mostly hid behind her, only every now and then she’d peer around Sinora to look at me.
Her hair was frizzier than her sister’s, the thick, dark curls spiraling down to her hips.
Occasionally, her eyes looked wild and alarmed.
Most of the time though, they roamed vacantly.
She’d obviously deteriorated, which meant the witch who’d cast the Shadowcover when I’d stepped into the house, the Dark Witch, must have been Sinora.
“Our fathers are different,” Sinora said, and I realized I’d been staring. “Ours and your mother’s. Your mother’s a full blood, and we’re like you. Only halfs.”
“I was the second child,” Sabrina sang in a voice that was eerily sweet and high-pitched.
“What were you thinking going to that temple?” asked Sinora as she crouched behind the kitchen island to check the open shelves there. Sabrina shot down to join her. “What with the Council watching your every move. Did you not see the stories in the paper?”
My forehead wrinkled. “No?” I’d closed the paper last night after Farrah started droning on about childbirth, and all the babies that wouldn’t be brought into the world now that Trist was gone. “What stories?”
“Warning about you,” said Sinora gravely. “Prone to fits of rage.”
“Fits of rage?” I repeated, unable to control my volume, and prompting Sinora to haul herself up from the floor. “Why would she say that?” At the way Sinora was eyeing my balled fists through her lens, I forced myself to unclench my hands. “I’ve barely been here.”
Slow and confused, Sabrina finally rose from behind the counter, shocked to find herself standing exactly where she had been. Then her dark-brown eyes panned to me, and she started humming.
“You’re a half witch,” Sinora explained. “And the Goddess wants you to be a powerful one. That’s how Farrah’s reported it anyway — ‘Half Witch is an Eight.’ ‘Half Witch Destroys Circle of Seven.’ ‘Half Witch and Truth-Teller in a Mud Brawl.’ ‘Half Witch Barks at Echelon to School of Dark Magic.’ ”
She raised her lens again, her almond-shaped eyes shrinking to narrow slits as she peered at me through the old artifact’s cracks and fog.
“Oh, it’s not all bad,” she said, lowering the lens and smiling kindly.
“There was a charming picture of you and the Truth-Teller sharing meat pastries on a park bench. Well, he was charming. You, my dear, were covered in quite a lot of mud.”
“Destiny,” Sabrina said wistfully.
Sinora thwacked her on the arm with a backhand. “I see you’ve been wondering if she’s deteriorated,” she said.
I assumed her lens showed her.
“I’m afraid she’s been this way a while now.
She’s meant to be an Allwitch, you know, but she never even made it to first year.
No, it wasn’t easy being a half witch in our time.
How your grandmother, Leda, got the idea to reproduce with a human, I’ll never understand.
” She sighed. “The woman loved the human realm more than her children. She’s the one who first discovered it, you know, that mating’s easier with humankind.
She would’ve taken that secret to her grave, but then Helen went and followed in her footsteps.
And when the realm found out Ash existed, well, let’s just say they weren’t happy about it. ”
“They hid me in the basement,” Sabrina said, the words airily fluttering out of her.
I swigged from my flask and tried not to think about her condition, how that might be me one day. Deteriorated.
“Yes, the basement. I was getting to that,” Sinora said, shaking her head in distaste.
“What Leda did to Sabrina — she said it was to keep us safe. Maybe she was right. Look what they did to your sister when they found out about it. Leda protected us from that, at least, but . . . Sabrina was neglected.”
“Like you,” Sabrina added delicately. She stared up at the hanging bundle of tarnished silver pots with the fascination of a baby staring at a crib mobile. Then she started singing. “The second child belongs to dark. The other schools will leave their mark.”
“Sabrina!” Sinora scolded, and swatted her arm for it.
“Helen is . . . Well, she shut herself down after they took Ash away for the half-witch experiments. Now you’d have to out-Mentalist her to know what goes on in her hard head.
She’d shut it all down before she’d let herself get exploited like that again. ”
I stared out the window, watching the tree sway and shed blossoms, the petals blowing and dusting the neatly trimmed blades of waving grass.
“We don’t mean to frighten you, dear,” Sinora said.
“Times are changing now. Everden will need humans to reproduce, with pregnancies hardly happening anymore, and nine times out of ten, the mothers aren’t surviving them.
Allwitches and Dark Witches — they’re the only ones strong enough to endure the labor required to deliver a full witch, and no one wants more of them!
No, they’ll need you here. Times are changing, and if the Council has any wits about them, they’ll turn you into an example.
A harmless half witch to welcome in a new era of cross-breeding.
“Look at Ash, a half-witch Allwitch, and she grew to be beloved. Granted, she played the game. Worshipping at the Echelons’ temple.
Pledging herself to the Echelon to the School of Dark Magic and telling him her gift.
” Sinora huffed a laugh. “I thought she was a bootlicker for it, but look where she is now. Safe in Alchemia, and not a witch in Everden will tell you it was the wrong move. Otherwise, she would have turned into . . .”
She didn’t finish the thought, but I knew she meant Sabrina.
“Sevens are meant to be Allwitches — in full power, with all seven light magics in their blood system.”
“I saw Ash on the mainland,” Sabrina said softly.
Ignoring the comment, Sinora uncapped a small jar and sniffed.
“I don’t understand — ”
“And Helen will have our throats if you ever do. Come, help us find the mugroot.” Turning back to the kitchen, her fingers flickered across a tall rack of bottled spices and crushed herbs, with Sabrina scanning from behind her as she worked.
“It looks like minced basil and smells like . . . Well. When you smell it, you will know.”
Deciding they were harmless, I joined them in the kitchen. Sinora had taken the time to explain things to me that no one else had. And Sabrina . . . I could only imagine how long it had been since someone other than her sister really spoke to her.
I searched a rack behind a thick, velvet curtain while Sinora talked about what it was like to be a Dark Witch.
She said she’d made a few good Deals and at least one bad one, but shadows never got old.
I tried asking about Jaxan, but after Sabrina clapped her hands over her ears and wailed, Sinora warned me not to speak his name unless I wanted to set her off again.
I tried asking Sabrina what she meant by “the second child belongs to dark,” but Sinora gave her a sharp look and Sabrina didn’t reply.
I unscrewed a green-tinted bottle and nearly passed out.
I’d thought the iron smell of magic was bad, but this .
. . This was the decay of curdled milk, served with a side of rotten meat.
“I think . . .” Holding my breath, I held the jar out to my aunt.
“Oh, it’s awful.” I turned my head to the side so I could breathe enough to speak. “I think this is it.”
“Well done, child!” said Sinora, giving it a sniff and grinning as Sabrina clapped.
“What’s it for?” I swiped my nose, nasally sounding as I tried to block out the overpowering stench.
“Why?” Sinora gave me a pointed look. “You going to tattle?”
“No.” I fussed with the straps of my sports bra, hiking it up. “I wanted to take something to town to trade so I’m not standing around in this for the rest of my time here.”
“Ah,” Sinora said, tapping the side of the bottle. “Not this.”
“It’s not valuable?”
“Oh, it would be extremely,” she said as Sabrina nodded enthusiastically beside her.
“But not for you, I’m afraid. No, I wouldn’t be getting mixed up in it .
. . not unless you enjoy a dark corner and a cold pile of straw.
Mugroot’s a contraceptive here, and Helen might be the last witch with any left since it was outlawed. ”
“A contraceptive?” I asked. “Like birth control?”
Sinora lifted her chin in confirmation.
“But. If mugroot’s illegal, why does Helen have it? And why are you — ”
“No one pays attention to us, dear. Some might suggest you do the same.”