Chapter 18
He hadn’t thought to ever come back here. And considering the state of the place, it was very likely that no one else thought anyone would return either. He had thought perhaps Sybil would take care of the old haunts, but she had only taken care of the house.
He trudged through small, tangled brambles with Sybil and Jessamine behind him. The others remained back at the castle. He hadn’t wanted them to see this place. Perhaps they had a right to see it, but the fewer witches here, in the dark place where it had all began, the better.
The thickets that surrounded the path had once been a beautiful, manicured mess that only witches had known how to traverse.
Now, nothing remained but spines and jagged edges.
Plants that had been left too long on their own.
They were enchanted beings in their own right, their roots remembering that magic had once fueled them, and they seemed to follow Jessamine and Sybil as they walked behind him.
Elric could feel the foliage turning toward the witches, ready to cut and slice in case there was magic in their blood.
He reached above his head, ignoring the way a thorn bit into his palm as he moved vines out of their way and revealed a cave beyond.
It was as beautiful as it was intimidating.
A spear of sunlight illuminated the glen beyond.
Emerald green covered everything, dripping from the branches that framed a cave that was now barely visible.
The earth had started to reclaim it, as if trying to conceal what had once been done there.
Once he saw the maw that disappeared into the earth, it seemed as though the entire world tilted sharply toward that darkness.
Vertigo hit him hard. He staggered into the clearing, barely catching himself as the shadows in that cave reached for him.
He wanted to go in. But he was terrified of what he would find. Of what he would recall.
Even now, Elric could see the ghosts of all the witches who had come before.
They chanted in his ears, old words that were meant to be worship but had only torn him apart for centuries.
They wore dark robes, as they always had.
Tall, small, wide, and strong. All different types of women, all accepted here, as they walked with him toward a cavern where they could tear his body apart for their own pleasure.
Eyes locked on those shadows, he took another step toward the cave. Then again.
“Elric?” Jessamine’s voice whispered through his reverie. “Elric, what are you doing?”
He didn’t know.
Something called to him. A wanting. A needing. A devouring presence that sank its teeth into his conscious and yanked him back toward the past.
“He’s all right, Jessamine,” Sybil replied, because he couldn’t speak. “This is an old place. We have seen much here, he and I. Memories overwhelm him.”
“What memories?”
He remained still as Sybil walked around him, her hand touching his arm as she passed by him and reached for the dead branches that hung in front of the cave’s entrance. “Sacrifice, Jessamine.”
It was here, he wanted to say. It was here that he was killed.
It was here that he was sacrificed. Over and over again.
He remembered every time that it happened.
Every knife. Every cut. Every drop of blood was seared into his memory.
He had done all he could for the witches who worshipped him because that was what a god should do.
They gave him everything of themselves; therefore, he gave them everything of himself.
Jessamine walked up to his side and threaded her fingers through his. “Elric, there will be no more sacrifice. Not from you.”
“You cannot promise that, nightmare.” He tore his eyes away from the shadows and tried to smile for her. “But we are here now, and you wanted to know if the gravesingers hid any secrets in this place. If someone could find those secrets, it would be one of their own.”
He could see how uncomfortable that made her, and he didn’t blame her for that. There was something deeply unnerving about all magic. Anyone who had gotten too at ease would soon find their spells going terribly awry. That was how it worked. Magic insisted upon respect.
Jessamine walked ahead of him with Sybil, and they both stepped into the cave. It took him a few moments to be brave enough to follow them. As he walked behind them, he knew exactly what he would find.
Though age had rotted everything, it was exactly as he remembered.
The entrance to the cave had many chairs.
Thirty of them, although the legs had broken on a majority of them.
Moss covered the ones that had tipped over.
They were all facing the back of the cave, where a hole in the ceiling allowed light to spill in.
Golden rays illuminated the altar there. He recalled the first time he’d ever seen that altar. Drunk and barely able to walk on his own, he had thought it was stunning. Made entirely out of pale quartz, it fractured the light within it until it almost appeared to glow.
The quartz was dotted with moss, and a beam of sunlight seemed to be absorbed into the stone. It glowed, somehow. He remembered it was the same with moonlight, although then it was almost blue.
Sybil walked all the way to the altar, trailing her hands along the fissures on the sides. He knew what she was picturing. Years and years of his blood had run in rivers down each of those fissures, filling them up and then flowing onto the floor.
“This is where they killed you?” Jessamine asked.
He finally mustered the courage, or at least could fake it enough to walk up to the altar. Stopping just before it, he moved some of the earth and grime on the floor with his foot. Just that small nudge revealed channels that had been carved into the stone.
“First, we cut the god and let the blood run out,” he murmured. “His sacrifice gives us magic. His death gives us strength. His pain absolves our own.”
The old words made a chill dance down his spine. Some part of him whispered to lie on the altar again.
It was a sick need that still existed in his entire being. Elric wanted Jessamine to cut him. He wanted to give all that he was to her, because what other option was there? He was the Deathless One. The god who gave himself so that others could know what it was to feel divine energy.
But he did not. Instead, he turned toward Jessamine and tried to pretend that he wasn’t affected.
“This is where the gravesingers always met. I was not privy to their conversations, nor did I intend to be. They were here for themselves and for the coven. I would only distract them with my own wants and needs. If there was anything for you to find, it would be in this place.”
“Elric.” She stepped closer to him, her gaze searching his in a way that made him deeply uncomfortable. “We can leave. We don’t have to be here. Like you said, there must be another way.”
“This was your choice.” He cupped her jaw in his hand and smiled down at her with that false expression that had always made others move on. “I am fine.”
But her troubled expression didn’t change. Because she knew him. If anyone did, it was her. Even though she didn’t know all of his history, they were intertwined now. Two people who had become one.
She stared at him for a few moments more, then lowered her voice so only he could hear her. “Are you sure you can manage this?”
“I can.”
Jessamine pursed her lips, and then nodded. “If it becomes too much, you will tell me.”
“Jessamine, I have been here a hundred times in my life. I have had centuries to deal with how this room makes me feel.” Except he hadn’t ever dealt with those emotions. He’d just buried them deep, deep down until he hadn’t thought about it anymore and therein lay the issue.
He wasn’t going to tell her that, though.
Not when he was certain there were a lot of good reasons for her to be here, and it made sense that she might find something.
All he had to do was keep her here long enough for the old souls of the gravesingers to realize that one of their own was within these grounds.
Except, all the gravesinger souls were trapped in his own realm and they couldn’t get out.
Maybe he had been foolish to bring her here.
But then she walked away from him, into the sunlight, and he saw how it curved around her, holding on to her body like an old friend.
Even the sun didn’t want her to leave its sight, and he knew that feeling well.
Elric himself didn’t like watching her leave.
Only there seemed to be more to that sunlight than just rays that beamed down upon her.
It clung to her too deliberately, as though it were trying to tell her something.
“Jessamine, don’t move,” he called out, walking up to her and reaching for those golden tendrils. He had never seen anything like this before.
The moment he touched one, they disappeared. Similar to the tethers he used to see connecting the two of them, but these were gold. They were strong as well. A thrum of magic thrilled through his body as he touched them.
“What are those?” Jessamine gasped, immediately trying to rub one away from where it had attached to her shoulder.
“Don’t do that.” He touched the same one, feeling it vibrate at his gentle flick. “These aren’t mine.”
“No, I suspected they aren’t. Why are they on me?” All the hairs on her arms had visibly risen. “Elric, I can feel them sticking to me. Please, for the love of all the gods, get them off.”
“Loving any god other than me will get you in trouble,” he murmured as he circled her, trying his best to find a way to remove them. “I don’t know what they are, nightmare. So I don’t know how to get them off.”
Sybil walked around the altar and looked with him, her brows creased in confusion. “I have never seen magic behave this way.”
Strange. Everything in this room was strange, however. He asked, “The other gravesingers in this place didn’t have tethers?”
“No. They didn’t really seem to do much in here. They hummed, they chanted, they rocked side to side. Regular witchcraft.” Sybil’s frown creased even deeper. “If I didn’t know better, I would say this is something else entirely.”
Jessamine looked between the two of them, her eyes growing wider with every word. “What do you mean, something else? If we don’t know what it is, then how do we get them off?”
He lowered his voice and scolded her, “Don’t panic.”
“When in the history of time has telling a woman that ever worked?” she hissed.
“Just breathe.”
“They’re writhing against my skin. It’s like I’m covered in snakes.”
But they weren’t moving. At least, not that he or Sybil could see. They were just draped across her body. But the more he looked, the more he realized maybe they might not be seeing the same thing as Jessamine.
“What do they look like to you?” he asked.
“Snakes,” she repeated. “I know they aren’t real snakes, because they’re golden. Their eyes are slitted, though, and they keep flicking their tongues at me and staring.”
“They’re just ropes to us.”
“I don’t care what they are to you, Elric. Get them off!”
Her shout echoed through the room, and before he could stop her, she flinched away from him. Two steps, that’s all it took, and suddenly she froze. Jessamine now stood in the shadows away from the sun, staring at the back wall.
He wasn’t sure what she was seeing, but he couldn’t imagine that it was good.
“Jessamine?” he asked, hoping that he might guide her through whatever affliction had settled into her body. “What’s the matter?”
“They’re everywhere,” she murmured, lifting her hand, which was now wrapped in all that gold. Like someone had tied the ropes in loops around her arms, they traveled all the way up to her chest. “You don’t see it all?”
“See what?”
“The writing.” Jessamine shook her head, and her eyes widened in what looked like wonder. “It’s all so beautiful, Elric.”
He looked over at Sybil, who just shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I don’t see anything either.”
Jessamine let out a little laugh. “I guess this was all left by the gravesingers, then, if neither of you can read it. There’s so much here that they wrote, Elric. Stories about you. About their lives.”
He watched her walk over to the wall, her fingers trailing over invisible words. He hadn’t seen her this enchanted in a long time. Perhaps it was connecting to people who were supposed to be just like her. Or maybe it was something else entirely. She was just… happy to be here. Surrounded by magic.
No longer was she afraid of the snakes that coiled around her shoulders as she pointed out pieces of the stories that neither he nor Sybil could see.
“This one’s talking about a lover,” she said with a soft laugh. “It seems he was a rather dense young man, and never knew that his new bride was a witch. Imagine his surprise when he walked into their bedroom one night and discovered her sacrificing a chicken.”
He grinned at the thought. Elric never thought he would laugh in this room, of all places. “I imagine that would be startling, but my old covens were very good at hiding who they were. They had to hide themselves, after all.”
Then her fingers trailed over another section. “Wait, this… this is talking about the gods. Sybil, come here. If you don’t mind recording what I’m saying. Maybe… maybe there’s something here we can use.”
He watched as the two of them gathered together. Sybil pulled a small notebook out of her side pocket, and they started murmuring together. It was a scene he had watched so many times in his life, and yet it still made him dizzy to see the witches doing what they did best.
Working together. Always.
Quietly, he backed out of the cave and allowed them to be witches without the eyes of a god on them.