“Eden? Are you in there?”
“Yes,” she said. “Coming.” She opened the door and let Leo past her. His hair looked a little longer too, and he was holding his mouth weird, as if he had just stuffed a handful of M&Ms into it and he didn’t want his mother to notice.
“It’s over,” he said. When he spoke, Eden got a glimpse of his teeth, four of which were sharpened to a knife-like point. “They retreated.”
“But why? It looked like they were winning.”
Leo shook his head, although not as a gesture, it appeared, but as a means to help the transformation process along. After he was done shaking, his mouth looked normal and Eden guessed his teeth had finally finished shrinking back to their regular size.
“That’s better,” he said. “It’s so hard to talk through those damn things.” He walked over to the chair in the corner of the room and sat down. “They weren’t winning necessarily. They caught us off guard, that’s for sure, but once we got all our soldiers out there fighting, they could tell the tables were turning. Besides, I don’t think their goal this time around was to actually defeat us.”
“What then?” Eden sat on the edge of the bed across from him.
“I think they were trying to get the lay of the land, so that their next attack, which will be even bigger, they will be able to hit us where it hurts most.” He put his head in his hands and breathed out heavily.
In that moment, and for just that single moment, Eden considered telling Leo about the Hadron Collider. He looked so desperate for a solution and she had one. Granted, an incomplete one, but still. But then she remembered Chris and thought better of it. Don’t trust anyone. That had always been her rule, and now wasn’t the time to start breaking it.
“The good news is,” she said. “It’s over. We won today, and we can deal with the next attack when it comes, right?”
He looked up and smiled. “We?”
She dropped the sympathy act and painted her face once again in a defiant expression. “Don’t smile at me like I had a choice in the matter. I’m not going to help you out of the goodness of my heart. You bought me as a slave.” She said the last sentence slowly, over- enunciating each syllable.
Leo’s smile ran from his face as quickly as it had appeared. He brought his gaze back down to his feet. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I—”
“You want to make it up to me?” She could tell he was genuinely upset over what he’d said, and she could use that.
He frowned at her as a response to her question.
“Take me on a tour of the castle,” she said. “I feel really cooped up. I want to see what else is here, what else you guys redecorated.” She couldn’t have cared less about the history of the interior aesthetic to this place, but she thought that might get Leo interested. He seemed very proud of what they’d done with the place when the subject was brought up the day before. “Maybe I could even meet some of the other witches, if they’re not too tired. Since I’ll be working with them soon enough.”
Leo stood. “Yeah, okay!” He grinned. “That could be fun. I’ll let you get dressed then and we can have breakfast before we start.”
At the suggestion she get dressed Eden remembered what she had worn to bed, and what she was, consequently, now wearing while talking to Leo. She’d found a two-piece silk pajama set that was dark purple and two sizes too small. She wasn’t a big woman, but she did have some curves, curves that could not fully be squeezed into an extra small pair of shorts and a tank top. Her chest was nearly spilling out and she worried if she bent over too much, the shorts would rip down the center.
Suddenly very aware of how much skin she was showing, Eden crossed her arms over her chest. “Sounds great!” she said. “See you downstairs.”
Leo excused himself and Eden changed into the clothes she’d worn the night before. She had left her sweatpants and sweatshirt in the hamper in the bathroom after her shower the day before, but when she walked in this morning, they had been washed and were folded in a neat pile on top of the hamper.
She said a silent prayer to Tessa, the witch goddess her mother used to pray to, even though Eden didn’t much believe in higher beings. These would be her pajamas from now on.
As she brushed her teeth, Eden found herself absentmindedly rubbing her head with her other hand. Being a witch, she looked younger than her actual thirty-two years. The magic coursing through her veins also made her hair and nails grow faster and her skin stay unwrinkled. Her hair had already grown close to half-inch since she shaved it off a few mornings ago. If she left it to grow, she’d have an afro like her mother’s, thick, wild, and beautiful, in a matter of weeks.
There was a fleeting moment, as she looked at her reflection, into her own dark brown eyes which had flecks of gold in them, that Eden wondered what Leo and Chris would think about her growing her hair out.
She quickly pushed the thought from her brain and scolded herself for caring, even if it was only for half a second, what her captors thought of her.
“You are better than that,” she said to herself. “You are better than them.”
This was the mantra she silently repeated to herself many times that day, as she spent time with the cousins, and found it harder and harder to deny her attraction to them.
Chapter Seven
Biding Time
“And, now we’re back to the kitchen,” Leo said as his tour came to an end, right back where it started. “That’s pretty much everything.”
He’d shown her some of the other bedrooms on the upper level, including his and Chris’, which could not have been decorated more different from each other. Chris opted to keep the traditional Victorian decor for his room, whereas Leo chose to really lean into the mid-century modern look, to the point where Eden thought he might have been trying a bit too hard. Leo told her the designer they hired was a bit eccentric, and that he’d sort of given her free reign over his room. He seemed to enjoy the bright colors and oddly shaped furniture however.
The other two guest bedrooms on that floor were locked. They were home to two of the battle witches, and Leo didn’t feel comfortable barging in on their private space, even though he had a key. “They don’t spend much time in their rooms,” he explained. “I think they sleep most nights in their workstations in the basement.”
That was what Eden wanted to see most, the work stations. But first, she had to endure another forty-five minutes of the tour. Which, in hindsight, wasn’t actually so bad. Leo was having a grand old time, and his excitement was infectious.
The basement was dark, dreary, dungeon-esq. This made sense, considering it was once used as a literal dungeon. The rooms where Leo’s grandmother used to throw prisoners and traitors now housed work stations for the witches and bedrooms for the dragon shifters.
“The dragons we hired don’t care about comfort it seems,” he said as they passed Brack’s cement cell, which had no door and only a large mattress pressed against the back wall. “We offered them real bedrooms, like what the witches have, but they said no.”
The work stations were set up in the larger cells. Two of them were currently occupied with witches; one of whom was casting spells and the other appeared to be cooking up some sort of potion. Eden waved as they walked past but both women were too focused on their work to notice. Unlike them, Eden was on high alert, looking for anything in this castle that might help her escape.
The final room Leo showed her before they two of them went back upstairs was an area he called the “miscellaneous room.”
“It’s where we throw everything we get that we think might be useful to the witches or dragons.” Leo let Eden walk around a little bit. Her eyes went immediately to a pile of tech equipment in the back corner. “We’ve got pieces of old plate armor, spell books we’ve found at auctions, and of course a bunch of random hardware stuff. Chris likes to invent things, like that bracelet you’re wearing. He isn’t great with computer stuff, but he’s trying to learn.”
Eden wa
sn’t listening. She was too busy trying to figure out how she would sneak out of the castle with the microwave size nuclear fusion generator that was sitting on top of the pile. It was exactly what she needed to finish the Hadron Collider. She doubted anyone in the castle even knew what they had, considering how lazily it had been tossed in with a bunch of broken computer monitors and car batteries.
Back upstairs, at the end of their tour, Eden and Leo were waiting for Chris to come back from running an errand so that he could explain exactly what it is he wanted her to be working on.
“I’m sure he just wants you to focus on battle training for now,” said Leo. He was sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, nursing a cup of tea. “That’s what he had all the other witches do when they first came here. They will be the ones to teach you, them and the dragons. Do you know anything about battle magic?”
Eden sipped from her cup of coffee. “A little,” she lied. Her mother had shown her the basics of battle magic when she was growing up. After she killed herself, and Eden was left all alone in a world that was dangerous for women and doubly dangerous for witches, she took it upon herself to learn the rest. She wasn’t an expert by any means, and she’d have very little hands on practice, but she knew she could handle herself.
“They can show you whatever you don’t know,” said Leo.
“You said you hired those other witches,” said Eden. “Same with the dragons. Meaning you didn’t buy them from black markets.”
Leo nodded and avoided eye contact.
“So they aren’t slaves. You pay them? They are here on their own terms?”
“Yes.”
“What the hell!” Eden put her mug down on the counter, just hard enough to make a
sound which punctuated her words, but not hard enough to break it. “Why am I here as a slave then?”
“Chris thought, uh, well,” Leo stammered. “It was Chris’ idea that—”
“What was my idea?” asked Chris as he waltzed into the kitchen.
Eden turned her eyes and her anger on him.
“Leo just told me the other witches and dragons are paid to be here! And they have a choice as to whether or not they can leave. I want to know why it is then that I am here as your prisoner?”
Chris gave his cousin a look. “I thought I told you not to mention that little fact.”
“She would have found out anyway!” said Leo. “The other witches would have told her.”
Chris sighed and looked at Eden. “Look, witches are very, very expensive. I had to offer them a lot of money before they agreed to come work for me. Then, when I heard that there was a witch being sold on the black market, I thought it would be a good solution for everyone.”
Eden raised an eyebrow. “I’m waiting… How is this a solution for me exactly?”
Chris scoffed. “Are you serious? If we didn’t buy you, you would have been sold to some big angry brute who only wants you around for one thing. I saved you!”
Eden laughed. “Funny. I don’t see it that way.”
“What more do you want?” asked Chris. “I gave you a great room in an amazing castle. You can eat whatever you want, we can buy you anything you could ever desire. In return, you get to work on magic all day with other witches and… occasionally you have to go into battle.”
“Ha!” Eden felt the simultaneous urge to both keel over with laughter and to slap Chris right across his smug face. She did neither. “That’s rich. What you’re saying is that you saved me from being a sex slave and that I should be grateful, because I have a cushy bed and silk pajamas. Oh yeah, and there’s one itty bitty little thing that I have to do some times. What is it again, oh yeah, put my life on the line to save the same men who are holding me hostage! But you’re right, it’s no big deal. It just might kill me, but whatever. You can always buy another witch.”
“We fight too!” said Chris. “This isn’t about saving our lives. It’s about saving everyone! It’s about saving the world. If we can get enough people—”
“There will never be enough!” said Eden.
“There might be!”
“No,” she said. “There won’t, and you're an idiot if you think you’ll win this war through brute force alone.”
“I don’t see you coming up with any alternative solutions.” He walked over to the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. “This is a waste of time. You want to get paid? Fine. I’ll pay you. Same rate as all the other witches.”
“I don’t want money,” she said. “I want my freedom. I want this stupid bracelet off!” She shook her wrist in front of his face.
He shook his head no. “Sorry. Not an option. We need you.”
“Lot of good I’ll be for you with this thing on!” she said.
“We’ll take it off once we know we can trust you.”
“That’s convenient.”
“I have work to do,” he said. “Go down and find the witch Amira. She’s the one who will be training you.”
He walked out of the room without another word.
Eden looked at Leo, expecting him to say something. Anything. But he remained silent, staring into his mug of tea as if it had all the answers. She sighed, rolled her eyes, and stormed out of the room.
“Are you Amira?” Eden asked, or more, demanded, of the first woman she ran into on the basement level.
“No,” she said. She was tall and very pale. Her lips were deep red, even though it didn’t appear she was wearing any makeup. That was just their natural color. “I’m Olive. Amira is in the room at the end of the hall, on your left.”
She spoke very politely to Eden, which made her feel bad about how gruff she’d been. “Thanks,” she said, trying to sound as friendly as possible to make up for her earlier tone. She didn’t wait around to see if Olive bought it. Instead, she walked past the skinny witch and headed towards the last room on the right.
“Amira?”
“Yes?” She was an older witch, maybe in her mid-to late fifties, although her face looked no older than thirty-five. She was hunched over an ancient looking book, with massive, yellowing pages.
“My name is Eden,” she said, walking in tentatively. “Chris told me to come find you. He said you would be training me to get ready for battle.”
“Ah, yes. Come in.” She didn’t look up from the book. Eden approached the table upon which the book and a few other seemingly random items sat; a pocket watch, a pistol, and a twisted and gnarled horn that didn’t look like it came from any animal Eden knew. “I’ll be with you in just a moment,” said Amira.
“What are you doing?”
Amira put a finger up to hush Eden. She stared intently down at the book, muttering the words she read aloud to herself quietly. Finally, she came to the bottom of the page, flipped it, and looked up.
“Sorry,” she said. “I needed to concentrate. I am trying to translate this book into a language that’s a little more accessible to the other witches. I speak this tongue, but they don’t, which makes it very hard for us to do group spells from this book.”
Eden nodded. “I see.”
Amira grabbed a piece of paper from the stack next to the book and started scribbling something down. “The problem is, I have to get the translation perfect, or the spell will be wonky.”
“What language is it written in?” Eden asked, eyeing the pistol for a moment and then moving her gaze to another random object in case Amira was watching her. Older witches, Eden learned at a young age, had a way of watching people even when they weren’t looking at them.
“It’s an old witch language, Muru,” she said. “Do you know it?”
Eden walked around to the other side of the table and looked down at the page. “My mom taught me a little. Maybe I can help you. There’s not much else I can do with this thing still on.”
She held her wrist out for Amira to see.
Amira grabbed Eden’s arm and stared curiously at the bracelet. “Wow. I can’t believe he actually got it to work. When he first showed
me the prototype, it seemed like he was years away from building a working one.”
“You helped him build this thing?” Eden instinctively pulled her arm out of the woman’s grip. “Why would you help him make something that imprisons other witches.”
“There are other uses for a bracelet like that than just imprisoning witches. If he can build a strong enough one, it could stop shifters from being able to transform. Besides, Chris is a good guy. I knew he wasn’t going to use it for nefarious purposes.”
“Uh.” Eden widened her eyes and pointed her the bracelet. “Hello?”
“He’s not going to make you wear it forever,” she said. “Just until he knows he can trust you. You have to understand that.”
“No, actually, I don’t.”
Amira rolled her eyes. “He told me you were difficult, but what he should have said was stubborn. And young. Too young.”
“I’m not as young as you think.”
Amira narrowed her eyes and sized Eden up with a single glance. “I’d say you’re about… thirty-one, thirty-two maybe?”
Eden wasn’t sure how to respond. She wasn’t used to people guessing her age. Humans and shifters would always guess too young, not knowing how witch aging works. And the few witches she’d encountered in her adult years always guessed too old, because of how mature and capable Eden appeared. Amira saw right through that however, right to Eden’s immature and stubborn core.
“Thirty-two,” Eden admitted.
“I knew it.” Amira shook her head. “You’re too young. I’ve been telling Chris he needs to find older witches who actually know what they’re doing. But he keeps bringing me young pups like you.”
“Look, I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me here. In fact, if you want to help me get this bracelet off, I’ll get out of your hair right now.”
Auctioned to the Werewolf Princes Page 7
