Chapter 26
Barely larger than a small brown bear, Selene sat on a large boulder as bright sunlight shone down on her.
She was awake, her head raised to peer into the forest with her wings drooping against the rock to catch as much of the heat as they could.
Her front paws were crossed, her back legs pushed to one side, and her tail was draped over the edge.
An arrowhead tail tip swayed to the right, curling before hanging languidly.
Carwyn stepped back, seeing no need to remain in this memory.
“You come every night, I presume.”
Carwyn jumped in surprise that she’d been caught already. Selene didn’t move or cease staring into the dappled light within the brush.
“Yes.”
“Quite persistent, aren’t you?” Selene sneered.
“Some would call me stubborn,” Carwyn answered, braving a step forward.
It was rare that Selene was willing to speak with her. Usually it ended horribly.
Maybe she is feeling at ease due to the nature of the memory? She was sunbathing, the forest was quiet and peaceful, and it was calm. If Carwyn were in her position, she’d be sleepy – a good nap in the sun always did her wonders.
“But I truly want to help you, Selene. I have no ill intentions, and there’s little I can do to harm you more than you have already been hurt.”
Selene’s maw tightened at that, the dragoness eyeing her with mistrust despite the fact that Carwyn could see she had no argument.
“How long has it been?”
Even though they weren’t staring at each other, Carwyn still shied her gaze away. “I think a month since you were taken. A little over two weeks since I started visiting you.”
“I see. That’s not very long.” Selene tapped a claw, mulling over something.
“You say you want to see what happened that night. To see the hex they laid upon me.” Her spiked brows furrowed as her scaled lips tightened, only to soften.
“Is that all you wish to see? Not what happened directly before?”
“Yes. I... don’t want to see what happened before, and I don’t want to force you to relive it if I don’t have to.”
Selene tapped faster. “I will, either way. In order to bring you to that moment, I must find it. I’ll have to be reminded.”
A wave of fear, disgust, and sadness washed through Carwyn, both Selene’s and her own. “I’m... I’m so sorry.”
“Your apology does nothing,” Selene bit out, tipping her snout downwards to look at her claw scratching at the rock. “It changes nothing. It doesn’t make me forgive your kind for what you did to me, and what you have taken away over the centuries.”
Carwyn drew her eyebrows together, lips pressed into a thin line in sympathy. “I know.”
A small silence was shared between them, and it was wrought with mistrust from Selene. It weighed on Carwyn, heavy, barbed, and cruel – none of which she deserved to feel, or have shoved upon her.
Selene finally turned her head to face her. “Fine. I will take you to it. Whatever will get you out of my damn mind. I tire of fighting with you and would rather get this over with.”
The edges of the memory wavered like the reflection of one’s face upon disturbed water.
Darkness crept in, and at first, Carwyn thought it might be Selene’s shadows.
Then everything disappeared, and she found herself in the subconscious of Selene’s mind, where the inky waters played out scenes of Selene’s past at her feet.
For only a short while, Carwyn remained there alone, patiently waiting, although fidgeting because finally this might all come to an end. Her heart did swell with a sad ache, knowing that if she got what she wanted, she’d soon be free.
All time spent with Kier, as unfortunate as it’d started out, would soon end as well.
The light conversations that deepened with each one.
The touches that had started to set her skin on fire and leave anticipation and longing for more afterwards.
The sense of closeness she’d desired – even though the pain that it was limited tried to overshadow it.
She’d... miss it.
She’d miss him.
Regardless, she did allow a soft, sorrowful smile to form. But it was never meant to mean anything. She appreciated what it was, what it’d given her.
One memory slipped from the ground to hover in the air vertically like a floating mirror, cloudy and impossible to see into. She waited for Selene to appear, and when she didn’t, she approached it cautiously.
She stepped through the cloudy-white threshold and into a dimly lit ritual room.
A permanent circle had been carved into the wooden flooring surrounding a stone altar where Selene lay.
The candles around the altar were the only ones shedding light, and they barely reached the timber walls, casting a flickering, ominous glow.
Lanterns sat on tables of ingredients, but rather than being filled with flame, they had creatures inside them, trapped and defeated from trying to escape the glass. Their wings produced constant light, which indicated they were fairies rather than pixies.
A man in a long white robe, half open to reveal his nakedness beneath it, stepped away from the foot of the altar. A constant growl bubbled from Selene as she watched him like a hawk, as if she weren’t chained to the altar by her wrists and ankles.
“So you found something,” he said, just as a woman appeared out of thin air from beyond Selene’s peripheral vision to hand him a spellbook.
“Yes. Something stronger than our sleep potions. She shouldn’t be able to wear this off.”
The blond man snatched it from the woman with a sneer, his brown eyes hostile as he glared at Selene. “Good, because I know we all tire of her insults.”
Selene laughed darkly. “It’s more than you deserve, you putrid creature. You’re so pathetic that you need these spells and chains to keep me here.”
The man glanced at the spellbook, and a disgusting smirk crept onto his face. His eyes glinted with cunning mischief before he broke into a wild laugh. “Yes, well, that’s the point of this, isn’t it? I want power, and I’ll take it from you.”
A thick dollop of spit splattered across his cheek, Selene’s accuracy was impressive across the small distance, and his eyelids lowered in annoyance.
“I’m tired of that, too.” He sighed and wiped it off with the sleeve of his robe.
“My shit has more power in it than you’ll ever have.”
“Ignore her,” the brown-haired woman said sternly. “You have a task to complete.”
He scoffed. “Why do you think the other covens took males? Dragonesses are known to be hard to conceive with.”
He gestured for the woman to leave before lifting the edge of the page to read with interest.
“She also fucking bites,” another man snapped at the woman as she left to disappear into the nothingness, this one with a reddish tinge to his blond hair.
“Not anymore,” the first man said, gesturing to the book. He lifted it open towards Selene. “Would you like to know what this is?”
Carwyn tried to ignore their conversation, the scene, what it meant. She came closer, and Selene’s gaze cut to her, following her movements as she leaned across her on the altar to read it.
Carwyn started to whisper the words out loud that ran inside the curves of two circles, committing them and the symbols to memory. A crescent moon – she figured there would be one for such a hex – and multiple stars, then a triangle intersected by a small circle on its top right edge.
He started to take the book away, muttering something cruelly, and Selene started screaming at him, yelling like a ferocious, wild creature.
The words “fuck you” were loud, but they didn’t fully register with Carwyn as she slipped her body through the altar like a ghost, chasing the page to keep reading it, to sear its contents into her mind like a brand of evil.
“Have you got what you needed, witch?” Selene asked, her voice overlapping one of her shouts in the memory, punctuated by the rustling of her chains as she fought to be free of them.
Carwyn winced with her eyes glued to the symbols, trying to make sure she had a good estimate of how far apart each one was.
“No. I’m so sorry, but there’s two words in it I’m unfamiliar with. I’ll need to hear him chant it.”
“That’s fine,” she answered, her voice at ease. “From here on, I know nothing but darkness.”
Those words instilled a wretched amount of pity in Carwyn’s soul.
The kind that could tear someone to pieces.
But she knows what will happen. Carwyn could sense her fear of the unknown, the lack of control.
She wanted to be absent from it, but a part of her needed to make sure that the result they sought never came, or if her next heartbeat would be her last.
She winced when she thought she might have heard something rather sickening come from the man, something sexual that she didn’t want to fully register, but her body and soul had other ideas.
She wondered if her mind felt it so deeply that her skin truly prickled in repulsion, especially when the other man grabbed Selene’s face to compliment her with a sneer.
Her heart raced as she fought the welling of tears.
Was this what it was like for Aldora? Did they mock her, compliment her with nasty and cruel faces?
Carwyn did not like experiencing this – it was horrific and disgusting – but she resisted the urge to back out of the memory when the original man laid the book down to begin the incantation and ritual.
Blood was drawn from Selene, as she was the most powerful being in this room regardless of the trapped fairies, and they used it to draw on the side of her stomach. Then the chanting started, and Carwyn muttered it.
It was a lot of information to remember absolutely perfectly.
She narrowed her eyes in determination.
Got it.
Kier’s gut tightened when tears bubbled from the corners of Carwyn’s sightless, cloudy eyes and trailed down her cheeks. They left heavy, glistening tracks before dripping from her jaw to the ground. The stone darkened from each splattering droplet.