10. Chapter 10
Chapter ten
After cleaning up and making themselves presentable again, the trio grabbed what they needed from the pantry and made their way back out into the kitchen. Having completed her task, Hestia sat at the counter with Regina as the pair watched Amelie finish prepping dinner.
“So, you’re telling me that you would fuck a man?” Hestia leaned her cheek on her hand as she watched Regina.
“That is what I am saying, yes.” Regina chuckled; as she watched Hestia’s face twist in disgust.
“And you?” Hestia turned her attention back to Amelie, who had just finished putting the pie into the oven.
“I wouldn’t now.” Amelie shrugged. “But I did, when I was 18. I never really understood the excitement around sex, so when my boyfriend at the time said he wanted to, I just said okay.”
Amelie wandered up to the island and leaned forward onto her elbows. “It wasn’t bad or traumatic or anything; I just thought I was asexual afterward for at least a year or so before I had my first experience with a woman.”
Hestia hummed with a nod. “That makes sense. I just always knew that I didn’t want anything to do with men or their weird man penises.”
“Weird man penises? Really?” Regina laughed, hiding her face behind her hand.
“Yes.” Hestia nodded. “It only took one curious Google search for me to realize they weren’t for me.”
“Well, you’re far braver than I am.” Amelie giggled. “I grew up with a brother, so I would have never in my life searched the internet for something like that. We shared a computer growing up, so there was no way I was going to risk him stumbling across my search history.”
“Must be nice.” Hestia propped her chin up on her hands. “Having a sibling.”
Amelie shrugged. “I don’t know that nice would be the right word for it, but it is comforting, knowing that I have someone there who understands why I am the way I am.”
Hestia nodded and opened her mouth to speak again, but stopped short, her gaze pausing at the doorway. Amelie followed her gaze and came face to face with a tired-looking Delia, carrying several books.
“Delia.” Amelie straightened and walked over. “Did you find a solution?”
Delia avoided her gaze for a moment, running her fingers up and down the spine of one of the books in her hands.
“No,” Delia admitted. “I just…”
Amelie paused, waiting for the shorter witch to continue. Though when it became evident that she didn’t quite know what to say, Amelie stepped forward again, taking some of the death witch’s books.
“Come on. Dinner’s almost ready, and it makes sense for us to all be together just in case something happens.”
Amelie half expected Delia to fight her on her declaration, but when she looked back at the smaller witch’s expression, the relief she saw told her everything she needed to know.
Gesturing for Delia to follow, Amelie led her over to the table and placed the stack of books down next to the window.
“We were talking about siblings.” Amelie began. “My brother Rowen is a stubborn jackass, but I love him, and Hestia here is an only child.”
Delia snorted under her breath as she settled into the chair. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Hey.” Hestia retorted, a pout playing across her lips, but Regina placed an arm around the redhead and pulled her in as a distraction.
“I have two sisters.” Regina offered, running a comforting hand through Hestia’s hair. “Both older.”
“Would I have seen them around town?” Amelie perked up, mentally going through Pumpkin Hollow’s residents and trying to match any of them to Regina’s features.
Regina laughed, mouth behind her hand.
“No.” Shaking her head, Regina smiled. “I wasn’t actually born here; my family lives in a town further South of here, Raven’s Glenn.”
“I didn’t know that.” Hestia turned her head slightly so she was looking up at Regina from her shoulder. “How’d you end up here then?”
“Mmm.” Regina tapped her lips with a single dark finger.
“That’s… complicated. My mother and eldest sister are very powerful Divination Witches and were both stationed as Seers.
My mother was at Raven’s Glenn, and my eldest sister was on the West Coast in a town called Harvest Point.
I was originally intended to take over my mother’s position in Raven’s Glenn, but my second eldest sister was placed on the Council, and she convinced them to allow me to take on my own post.”
“Wait.” Amelie stood up straight again. “Your sister is on the Council of Seers?”
Regina smiled with a nod.
“Why did she send you here then?” Hestia piped up.
Regina sighed deeply and pursed her lips in consideration. “She told me that she had a vision about my placement, but I think she just wanted to give me a chance to live my own life outside the expectations and shadow of our mother.”
With a shrug, Regina continued. “But the reality is that I will never know the truth; the fact that she told me that she’d had a vision about me at all was already abnormal, so it could have been a lie.
Either way, I am eternally grateful to her, as had she not done that, I would have never met any of you. ”
The kitchen fell silent for a moment as everyone absorbed Regina’s words, but then a soft voice was heard from the kitchen table.
“Do you think the people who make placements ever make mistakes?”
Amelie turned her attention to Delia, who was staring directly downward at a book, chewing her lip.
Looking back at Regina, Amelie watched as the Divination Witch’s expression softened. Getting up and bringing Hestia with her, Regina walked over to the table and sat down; following her lead, Amelie met them there and sat in the seat directly next to Delia.
Surprised by everyone’s presence but seemingly accepting of it, Delia just sat there, watching like a feral cat.
“I think.” Regina started, folding her hands in front of her on the table.
“That the people who make the placements deal with many complex magics on a daily basis, including the strings of fate. So perhaps something that seems like a mistake may not be a mistake at all. Rather, an administrative blunder that put someone right where fate wanted them to be and vice versa.”
Regina shrugged, watching Delia across the table. “Who’s to say? I don’t think anyone knows. Why do you ask?”
Amelie turned her head to Delia, who had begun to fidget with the pages of her book as though she was contemplating something. Then, right when Amelie was about to interject, she sighed, bravado leaving her body as she slumped back in her chair.
“I don’t think I was meant to be here,” Delia mumbled under her breath.
“Why do you say that?” Regina prompted.
Delia pursed her lips and rubbed her eyes. “I just… I don’t have the full skillset of a necromancer. When my twin sister and I were born, she inherited the abilities associated with life, and I inherited all those in death’s domain.”
Shifting in her seat, Delia leaned forward onto her arms. “Stealing life from the living, necrotic and decay-related things, and enfeeblement or anything that has to do with weakening or incapacitating - those are things I can do. I’ve tested the efficacy of my strength in each category more times than I can count.
But a true necromancer can also act as a medium, communicate with the dead, heal and preserve living beings, and even raise the dead.
In theory, my sister inherited the ability to do those things, but she never showed any proficiency in any of them.”
Delia shifted again, absentmindedly flipping through her book.
“I’ve done a lot of reading on it, and most witches who don’t have access to both sides of the spectrum end up either just becoming healers or death witches. You can’t be a true necromancer until you master both sides. Walk the blade’s edge, so to speak.”
“So.” Amelie posited. “You don’t consider yourself a true necromancer. Is that why you’ve been so insistent that you don’t know what to do?”
Delia nodded. “It’s also why I kept to myself for so long. I knew that if any of you spent any time with me, you’d know I was a fraud.”
The kitchen was silent save for the gentle, intermittent hisses from the oven as the food cooked.
Amelie remembered how she felt coming into the cathedral only a couple of days ago and how unprepared and frightened she’d been.
She couldn’t imagine being in the same position but knowing for a fact that she couldn’t do aspects of what she was expected to do.
“None of us think that, Delia.” Amelie reached out, taking Delia’s hand in her own.
It was cold but also full of life, pulsing with the undercurrent of an icy magic unlike anything Amelie had directly experienced before.
It wasn’t just a void of life as she’d previously thought; it was invigorating in its own way, a magic almost opposite in wavelength to her own.
As she held Delia’s hand, she watched the death witch’s wide eyes meet hers, and she knew that the other woman could feel the resonance too.
Amelie smiled and squeezed Delia’s hand. “None of us know what we’re doing, but that’s why we have each other. Hestia and Regina were able to erect the barrier earlier despite their lack of specialization. You may not be able to do it all by yourself, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it at all.”
Delia’s eyes widened, and for a moment, Amelie thought she saw tears gathering at the corners, but once the white-haired witch blinked, they were gone.
“So.” Hestia piped up, breaking the bubble that had formed between the pair. “Now that Delia is part of the group, she also needs to answer my question.”
Amelie furrowed her brows and turned to Hestia, wondering what she could possibly be talking about. But Delia, her hand still in Amelie’s, straightened in her seat and faced Hestia head-on.
“Of course. What is it?” Delia replied, a nervous timbre to her voice.
Hestia adjusted in her seat, sat up straight, and folded her hands on the table in front of her. The seriousness of her expression had Amelie worried for only a moment, but when she looked at Regina, the Divination Witch only looked entertained.
“Would you ever fuck a man?”
Amelie choked on her breath as the question hit her ears, and she immediately directed her gaze to Delia, who sat there with her mouth open and face red as a tomato.
“I… what??” Delia squeaked out.
“Well.” Hestia continued as though she hadn’t dropped the most unexpected question possible given the situation. “Regina is pansexual, so she would, and Amelie has, but we are both lezbanese to the core.”
Amelie couldn’t help it; as the laugh tumbled from her lips, it just wouldn’t stop.
Soon enough, she had to physically hold herself together with her arms as she gasped for breath as Delia stammered her way through a very embarrassed explanation of her bisexuality and experience of only ever being with men.
When she finally wiped the tears from her eyes and made eye contact with Regina, who was also giggling, a knowing smile on her lips, Amelie thought to herself that she might finally have a bit of insight as to what sort of future Regina had seen.