Chapter 22
Iwake up to the sound of low voices, and they are unfamiliar.
My face is sore, and I instantly remember passing out face-first onto the tiles.
Despite passing out, I feel a lot better and less sick.
There’s a smell of herbs in the air, and I’m assuming the enchantress healed me.
This is too much to process, and I know lying here with my eyes closed is not going to help.
I need to get back to my bonded and out of here.
There’s a thick blanket thrown over me, and my head’s lying on a soft cushion.
I open my eyes to dim lights and find the enchantress and a man both standing in front of a lit fireplace.
They’re talking quietly, and the man turns his eyes on me.
I realize he’s definitely a shifter, maybe a snake, and he reminds me of Parker’s bonded.
His blue eyes have a scaly quality to them I’ve seen before, and he is dressed casually in a thick blue sweater and jeans.
I hope Parker’s okay. I told him to hide while everything was going on, and he said no.
He was going to fight along with his bonded.
Just like I should be doing right now instead of lying down.
I sit up fast, and the room spins.
“Please take it slow. I did a spell to speed up healing, but you must rest for a few hours, Juniper. Please, I don’t want to see you hurt again.”
“How are you feeling?” the man asks, his accent strange.
The way they move together when they come closer confirms to me that this is one of her bonded.
I lean back away from the enchantress when she tries to tuck my blanket around my lap, and pain cuts across her eyes.
She takes a step back. “I understand you don’t trust me or know me.
I’m sure you have someone you called mother growing up who looked after you. ”
“Every parent I had growing up is dead.” I don’t mean for my words to come out sharp, but they do.
Her voice is sad. Soft. “Not all of us. We would have done anything, everything, broken through time and space itself to have a single day with you. There has not been a moment I haven’t begged to see you.”
“I know that you’re my mother, but that’s about all I know,” I say carefully. “I did a spell to pull you to me. Did you mess with the spell and bring me here? Where is here?”
“I didn’t mess with the spell, but when you were a baby, I put a hex on you that if you ever did try to make a spell to find me, that it’d bring you to me.
It wasn’t done with malicious intent or anything like that.
I just, it was a last-ditch attempt, a failsafe, just in case everything went wrong,” she explains.
That’s why. The spell mixed with the hex and did this.
It dragged me to her instead of the other way around.
“It seems like everything went wrong until this moment. Thank the goddess. Doesn’t she look like the perfect mix of you and Obsidian? Sid would—”
“She does.” The enchantress actually cries.
The villain, who is said to have destroyed the world, made Mindless, and is evil, is crying because I look like her and her dead bonded.
I think Obsidian must be my father. It’s good to know his name at least. To be fair, I’m sure I would destroy the world or more if I lost one of my bonded.
If I lost my baby too…I’d be a villain too.
The man rubs his face, his own eyes wet.
“My name is Zephyros, one of your mother’s bonded and, if you will have me, a father in spirit and bonds to you.
Your father was a fierce dragon who had no other heirs or family, and he never once thought he would have a child.
He loved you. Always and forever. When you’re ready, there are many stories I wish to tell you of him. ”
“And my name is Lyra Daygan. I don’t like being called the enchantress.
That was a name that they made up for me,” Lyra finishes.
“We both wept with joy when we learned of you. You are so wanted, Juniper. You always have been.” She sits down in the chair opposite me.
Her bonded stays still, arms crossed, watching me, protecting her like mine would do.
He smiles at me when he sees me staring, and I look away.
“What happened when I was a baby?” I clear my throat, and I tug the blanket around my legs.
I’m still filthy with blood and dust, and I know if I tried to get up, I would pass out.
“In fact, you need to start telling me everything if you want me to trust you.” I look at the closed window.
“I need to get back. My bonded is in trouble at Bloodstone Academy. I can’t stay here. My friends—”
“Juniper. Time works slightly differently between that world and here. You will have time. It will go slower for them, faster for us.” Zephyros gently cuts my rant off.
“What do you mean?” I sit forward.
Lyra begins to explain it all. “Bloodstone Academy, it’s a pocket world.
It’s not real. It’s a world made by witches to be a safe place that we could go whenever we were in danger or we needed a place to train.
The realm was the birthplace of the goddess and, because of that, it existed.
This is the real world, Juniper. That place, it is not. It was never designed to be like that.”
She gives me a moment to let that sink in before continuing.
“I’m over a thousand years old, Juniper, and back when I was born, humans ruled this world.
They have always done so for so many years.
They always have, and we were happy to let them.
There are other supernatural races in this world, so it was easy to stay under the radar and out of the way.
But when we are training as young ones, our magic can be volatile, and we needed somewhere that we could hide.
That’s when Bloodstone Academy was built, with the help of the small creatures.
The strongest of us went there to train and make connections, and to come back and lead the clans and continue our race in peace.
A group of older witches, close to the end of their lives, sacrificed their lives every year to expand the realm to mimic our human world, to make it possible for witches to hide there.
The human world was at war, as were the supernaturals, and we wanted a safe place.
That choice was the downfall of our people. ”
“So you’re telling me I’ve been living in a pocket of a world, not the actual world, for my entire life?” I whisper. Holy fucking shit.
“Yes, Juniper, and I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry that all of you are trapped there, but now you’re all that’s left. You’re our hope for our race.” Her voice softens.
“If you wanted to help, is that why you began the war? Is that why you’re fighting us and killing witches and shifters? Is it why you hide here and just let your army of Mindless do it?” I ask, trying to keep my voice neutral.
“I don’t control the Mindless or make them.
The Umbral Authority do,” Lyra explains, and I don’t know what to say to her.
The Umbral Authority control the Mindless?
How is that possible? “The Umbral Authority, they make the Mindless, not me.
The Mindless can create others by biting them.
They only had to make a few at the beginning, and soon they had an army.
They made up the title of enchantress to make me an enemy because I fought back against them.
Because I was helping witches get out of the pocket world and into here.
I was trying to warn their clans so that we could run.
“The Umbral Authority were all my best friends, but power…it became all they craved. They took over when the witches were at their weakest, when the war in this world was so bad that every witch clan sent all their young children to the pocket realm to keep them safe. The Umbral Authority cut them off from their children and wiped their minds of this world. So many clans actually lived in the pocket world by this point too, and they were made to forget. The Umbral Authority claimed it was the only way to keep our people safe and that the pocket realm could be our world.” She gulps.
“They wanted to be kings and queens without any opposition. They stole humans, wiped their minds, and made them slaves. They did the same to shifters. Shifters began to change over time from what they were, the magic of that world messing with them. It alters everything there.”
Zephyros explains more. “Our ancestors used to be able to shift almost like Nexus beings. I’m not sure if you know what they are, but shifters are called Nexus here.
They are like us, but different. We are a version of them, changed within that world.
We were never bonded to witches in the beginning.
Our races rarely agreed on much, and we took over the forests of the pocket realm.
I was the first to ever bond to a witch.
The Umbral Authority twisted what it was meant to be when they realized that bonded will protect the witches, and then they started building an army of Mindless with shifters protecting them. ”
My headache is a drum now. “But why would they build an army of witches to fight the Mindless? Why make witches more powerful at Bloodstone Academy? It makes no sense. They’ve got the Mindless and the control. Why send witches to kill their own monsters they’ve made?”