The Bonds of Indigo (Of Bonds & Hexes Duet #1)

Prologue

The Night of the Emethye

They screwed up by not killing me when they had the chance.

I’m sure they regret hesitating to pull the trigger as they rot in the pits of the Beyond. If they’d have trusted me, maybe Vendra would’ve favored them.

I’d call this an inconvenience, but watching this little boy scream “monster” at me hits a bit differently. The blood coating me doesn’t help—it makes things a little more complicated than any single word could capture, anyway.

“Monstrum! Monstrum!” he just keeps screaming in their old tongue. The old tongue, Latin. “Monstrum occidere!”

Lifting my hand, I drag trembling fingers across my cheek to my nose, where I can feel the split flesh and the cold kiss of bone. I hiss immediately and slump backward. Everything fucking hurts, and it goes without saying, I’m not in a good position.

Tilting my head back, I stare up at the sky, bathed in the deep purple glow of the Emethye Moon—an anomaly that appears only once every fifty years.

And of course, it would arrive with the slaughter of hundreds around me.

They speak of sacrifices made by us Witches, but they never said it would be like this.

Nothing like this.

I drop my gaze and as much as I don’t want to look at the carnage around me, I can’t just sit here with my eyes closed.

I have to see what I couldn’t avoid, and take witness to not just one body.

There are dozens strewn across the heart of this quaint, quiet little town that clings to the mountain ridge of Uhara.

Fuck, I’ve made such a mess.

“Monstrum! Timeo…”

“Me too.” I’m barely able to say those two simple words, my throat’s sore from screaming.

I drag my gaze to the family huddled against a building—a mother, father, and child. The mother’s throat is torn out, the father’s head completely gone. The young girl… well, like all the other children here, is missing her heart.

Footsteps pound against the wet cement, splashing through puddles of blood. They’ve come for me. I’ve had plenty of chances to run, but godsdamn if I’m not tired.

With a frustrated grunt, I press a hand to my thigh and push myself upright. The boy screams bloody murder, and I stumble forward, nearly tripping over the dismembered body at my feet. I turn away from him, clutch my shredded left arm just above the elbow, and begin channeling.

Vendra is trying, but her world is as exhausted as I am. I’ve taken too much from her, and it shows in how hard it is to mend the wound.

“Asshole…” I breathe out before sucking sharply through my teeth.

I’m surprised I make it twenty feet to the broken water fountain in the middle of town, now completely diluted with blood. My knees knock against the concrete, and I roll my shoulders, watching as my white hair falls over my chest.

Biting down on my bottom lip, I weave between the bodies and the shattered structures littering the ground—destruction I tried so hard to prevent. But that matters very little. I’m a fucking Witch, not some godsdamn divine being who can twist time on a whim.

Fucking Beyond itself.

“Find the girl!” someone shouts from the direction I came.

Good thing I wasn’t trying to flee or anything. Vayl forbid they actually try to be stealthy.

I clutch my arm tighter, silently pleading for Vendra to hear me, to let me siphon just a little more of the energy below.

But there’s no response. No tingle at my bare toes, no burn like the embers of the Beyond.

No breeze curls around me, offering the shelter the old texts say you feel at the Vayl’s entrance.

I know you’re tired, too. I’m so sorry.

My pace quickens as I turn down an alleyway.

The shadows cast by the buildings are too thick to see where I’m going, and I nearly trip over a bag of what I can only assume is trash.

The automatic lights stay dead as I pass, and the distant ring of a phone behind one of the doors feels deafening in the silence my head has forced me into.

I wind through a second pathway and spot the metal gate ahead, its door slightly ajar, the one that leads to the trail cutting toward the park at the mountain’s piedmont. I don’t know how much longer I can last like this, but it’s better than being—

“There you are!”

My gaze snaps upward. On the rooftop above, bright crimson eyes flare in the dark. I barely have time to breathe before the figure leaps—dropping four, maybe five stories—straight toward me.

“Fucking Vampires…”

I take ten quick, desperate steps, just far enough to get past him before he hits the ground and cuts me off. My stride falters; my left ankle screams with every step, protesting even as I force myself faster.

Footsteps thump behind me, and I know they’re closing in. Godsdamn it, I just need to make it to the soil—then I can steal the energy from the earth, summon Thornwyn, and disappear.

I’m almost there, close enough to the wired fence that I can taste the metal in the air, when a rough hand clamps around my throat and halts me mid-motion.

“No!” I jerk my elbow back, but I’m no fighter, not physically, anyway. His kind is built for combat: stronger, faster, tougher. I’m just a mind meant for magic, trapped in a Mundane’s body.

He disrespects me by letting my hit on him land… and then laughs.

In the next instant, my back slams into hard, cold concrete. Pain explodes down my spine like lightning, stealing the breath from my lungs. I cough, gasping, as the Vampire leans over me, grin wide and cruel, fangs glinting past his lower lip.

“Gotcha, bitch.”

I shout and shrug my shoulders, but it’s useless. I’m not able to use both arms to push myself up. I’m drained of power, and though I can feel Vendra reaching for me, it’s no use. My vessel is too weak. Maybe that’s why she hasn’t pushed any more energy into me… She fears killing me.

He drags me backward, away from the nature I’m desperately clawing toward. The energy rising from the grass seems to be stretching out like an arm to grab me.

No…

My body feels unbearably heavy, and I’m almost grateful I don’t have to walk back to my own demise—just hauled along by the throat like a damn ragdoll.

There’s no point in fighting. The moment this Vampire had me in his grip, it was over.

“My child… I am sorry.” My god has spoken—she can’t help me anymore, and after tonight, I have no one else that will either.

Monster…

“Your heart has the destiny of a monster, Amarah. The more you fight it, the harder it will be for you.”

The bright purple night casts back down on me as I’m thrown like trash back into the streets. Fire I hadn’t noticed on my departure burns to my left, while blood covers the buildings to my right.

“Do not let her corrupt you.” I drop and shake my head, willing the voices to stop. “To be able to use the raw energy from Vendra is a gift, but using it for evil will consume you… and this world.”

“A Holloway.” The voice outside of my mind drags me from my mother’s words.

I look up and see him: a tall man with blond hair and blue eyes that, under the Emethye Moon, almost seem lavender. But I know better. Only Demons and the cursed are granted such a damning.

“Do you know who I am?” he asks as he steps to me, just as I’m thrust up onto my knees and sat back forcefully onto my calves.

I shake my head. My guess is he’s with the militia, like the rest of the mortals surrounding me. After all, I was the one who alerted them. They just took their sweet fucking time.

Gentle footsteps pull my gaze downward. The young boy—the sole survivor of this little town—stares back at me.

He’ll grow up haunted by what he’s seen, if he chooses to live through it.

I wouldn’t blame him if the first chance he gets, he downs a bottle of painkillers and drifts into the everlasting sleep.

May Serynne grace him passage to the Vayl, if that’s the case.

There’s no point in trying to smile at him. He saw what he saw, and there’s no trying to convince him otherwise.

“Hoccine monstrum est?” the man asks.

“Monstrum!” He points directly at me, and I drop my chin to my chest and close my eyes.

Fingers thread through my hair and yank my head back. If they’re looking for a reaction, they won’t get one. Every hard line of my face stays defiant. I know my fate’s already sealed. I won’t beg like a bitch for mercy. If I’m to be cut down, just like my parents were, then so be it.

The Holloway family will end with me, right here. It’s not like I had a touch worth leaving on this gods-forsaken world anyway.

Honestly, I just wish the Vampire holding me would snap my neck and be done with it.

Make it quick. I’ve lived twenty decent years, that’s long enough.

While my mother had cast the spell of eternal life on me, my plan was to make it to sixty, strip away the immortality spell, and slit my wrists in some overpriced bathtub—go out on my own terms.

Forty years short. Eh, close enough.

“It seems death isn’t enough of a paragon for your kind.” It’s a female’s voice this time, but I don’t open my eyes to see her. “Tonight, we should make an example of her and the Yldarwrights.”

I shake my head. “Just… kill me.”

The woman laughs. “No, I don’t think so.” Footsteps approach, and I can sense a body before me. “Vendra may favor you, but Mundane laws do not.”

A sharp jerk of my mangled arm sends pain shooting through every inch of my body I can still feel.

It rips my eyes open, forcing me to stare at the woman before me.

She wears a hooded cloak and a mask pulled up across her nose, hiding everything but her eyes, ones that burn like fire.

Not just red, but a fierce blend of orange and yellow.

She’s a Witch.

But not my kind. A Hexborn: A mixed breed, often called a modern Witch. Whereas me and my family are known as Yldarwrights: taught in the old, forgotten magic that bows to no law but Vendra’s.

We hate each other.

The moment she begins speaking again, I feel fear for the first time since the night started. “Hexes of Blight—”

“No!” A blanketing darkness shrouds over my vision. “No! No! Don’t!” I shout through the burning fire in my throat.

“By the strength granted by our Mothers.”

My palm ignites in a flame so fierce it’s almost unbearable, and I scream. It’s not ordinary fire. No, this is something otherworldly. The pain digs deep, burrowing past flesh and muscle, straight into the bone.

“Roots and thorns bind her.”

“You son of a bitch!” I reach for Vendra through any thread of energy I can find.

Please, please, don’t let her do this!

“I’m here, but if I interfere, it will kill you.”

Let me die, Vendra, let it end!!

“I cannot lose you. I am sorry.”

“May death always escape her, and life torment her.”

The cursing enchantment ends, and instead of black, I see flecks of violet and flames of lilac. I feel the sensation of the rune in my palm disappear, but it’s replaced with the needle-like scratches crossing my eyes.

I’ve been hexed.

As my vision slowly returns, I stare up at the sky that no longer has color, and a world of grays greet me. The hues will return, but it’s a telltale sign of what she’s done to me.

“Lock her up and let her stew over the crimes she has committed,” the Hexborn says in a mocking tone. “She’ll be…”

Her voice fades, but as it does, the agony of what has happened wrenches my very soul.

“I’ll always be here, Amarah.” I’ve never hated a lie more than I do now. “Don’t give up.”

As if giving up was an option now, Vendra…

They’ve cursed me to not be capable of death. Which after what I’ve done, that is all I want.

Gods be damned.

Why has this happened to me?