by Jamie Magee
“If you have some advice this go ‘round,” Reveca said, crossing her arms, “you better make it crystal-fucking-clear. I’ve just pissed off a Lady of Death, among others. I don’t have time for this shit.”
Windsome smiled, a warm welcome.
Shade snapped to life and somehow processed knowledge he didn’t know he had. In a breath, he retrieved his sword as if it were the only weapon he’d ever known, and he was before Reveca, prepared to lay his life down for the Queen who had given him life.
The room erupted into arguments given in calm “you need to think about this Shade” words. He wasn’t thinking, and he didn’t care.
“She’s his lover,” Shade seethed, thinking of the king who had killed him and ordered that Gwinn was put to death. He thought of the time he and Gwinn were forced apart.
“Shade,” Reveca said putting her hand on his shoulder. “She’s my friend. A sister.”
“No,” he growled through gritted teeth, gripping his sword tighter. “She loves him. She granted me mercy but they took Gwinn. All this time!”
“I’m right here, Shade.”
His jaw flinched, but he kept his stance and he half-wondered if this blade was spelled since Windsome had swayed back.
“Whose lover? What are you talking about? Shade, I think you’re confused.” Reveca said, coming to his side, showing no fear or reason to give him space like the others. She approached him like a mother mending a wound on her child.
“Donalt. King of Fear. King of the mortal world Esterious,” Shade seethed. “She loves him. She bares him heirs.”
The weight of his words settled over Reveca. She knew Windsome had children. Giving them safe harbor was part of the debt Reveca had made the prior month. But this? How in the hell could Windsome do this?
The very idea of curling up next to Revelin was grotesque to Reveca because, like Windsome, she saw and felt more of an essence than an appearance when she took a lover. The Gods were vile, and Donalt had to be one of the worst.
Reveca didn’t know where to toss her support. She wasn’t standing before Windsome as an old childhood friend, as a fellow witch. She was standing before her as a protective mother, one who would not settle until every lash upon those she cared for was answered for.
These supernatural entities were going to regret knocking on the door of her mortal world if their intentions were anything but just.
She’d vow it.
Episode Ten
Chapter One
Most people have a hard time tracking close friends over the spans of seasons in their life. Invariably, something happens to cause a division.
It’s not always a harsh disagreement, the burning of bridges. Sometimes, people grow in different directions, the elements of their lives will perpetually guide them to a new town…a new world. Other times, you never notice, not until a moment begs you to feel nostalgic, and you do. Then you look back with a smile that is scarcely pained realizing the soul in your thoughts is lost from your life now.
It’s much the same for immortals, only worse. They do not have eighty years or so to track, but ages. The vast time includes circumstances that are often attached to an era of events and not the soul.
Immortals discover the true word behind friend. There is nothing superficial about the term. It is equal if not greater than the term family.
At the same time, because the loyalty runs so deep, the betrayal is felt as deep as the bones. The very thought of it blushes the body at once, all adrenaline rushes to the heart, as if to protect it. Then a sick feeling comes, ushered in by both denial and the reality that once again you must see the world through new eyes, for what you deemed impossible had occurred.
Reveca had reached the point of a blush, she felt her adrenaline, her denial, but she wasn’t ready to feel sick over this—to think she had trusted falsely.
Windsome had always been one the most trustworthy witches in the coven. Small for her age, she was strongly connected to powers that be—to spirits that lurk in everything with life. She carried a simple bliss that anyone could see—and anyone would want to protect and hide from danger.
The truth of the matter was not very often, if ever, did Windsome need protection. Her parents, who feared how small she was, had instilled her lessons deeply within her. Magic was her first language. Her astute mind could twist the most skilled scholars. In all truth, the reason Reveca was so practiced at bartering and sharp wit was because being close to Windsome had taught her nothing less.
Windsome’s meek appearance, coupled with her dainty beauty had always turned heads. She could humble any man with a glance. If she dared to smile at one of them, everyone knew the man in question was now enchanted, forever her pawn.
She told Reveca once, “A man has to be confused when it comes to his woman, if he is, his interest will never waver. The thirst of discovery, the desire to conquer—both elements dwell within them, excite them, and make them feel alive.” Then she’d scarcely smile as if she held the biggest secret in the world. “The irony of it all is every woman wants to be understood but never can be, not in the truest of senses and loves.”
So needless to say, Windsome linked with one the most notorious Gods the prophecy had predicted was nothing less than insanity.
Someone like her would never fall for the lust of the eyes, much less create children by him.
Then again, the sovereign in question was not only very “godly” in his appearance, at least when he was not posing as a mortal, but he was also known for his elaborate schemes, more so than the others. In fact—he helped the other sovereigns create their defenses, their schemes. Windsome always fell for a brilliant mind, one that would be her very own mystery to unravel, that would make life a constant game.
“This is true?” Reveca asked with a lifted brow, doubt was heavy in her tone.
Shade was still behind her holding a sword that was so prevailing Reveca could feel the surge of power waving across her back. Any soul with half their sense should know to stand down when it was drawn.
Shade had been awakened. In some form or fashion, the Shade she had raised as one of her own was not the same man she watched ride out with Gwinn earlier in the night.
Cashton had his hands raised in defense, with good reason. He needed a peaceful resolve to this. Windsome had not only told him he would see his sister once more, but also he would find the Queen of the Veil. Cashton needed more than a promise—he needed a direction and whatever direction he could hope for was about to go up in smoke.
Gwinn was star-stuck not understanding why she could finally see the haunts about and why Shade, or at least his gaze, was trapped in a time she could feel but not see.
Bastion, as always, was relaxed, leaning against the table, his arms crossed and an amused glint in his gaze—one Reveca was sure he inherited from his uncle Zale.
Windsome didn’t speak. The dead could not in this realm. In all truth, Reveca wasn’t sure how Windsome had appeared at all, but then again, everyone agreed Evanthe’s home was spelled as a passageway since the first moment King had begun his ghost hunt.
Reveca heard her thoughts.
At least in some strange way she did. It was a reflection. An eye-opening spell.
When you are asked why you did something or if you did, the one who spoke the question will remember emotions and experiences in their own life that mimic the answer.
The spell’s purpose is to invite unity and understanding. The classic, if you were in my shoes you would’ve done the same.
With her slight grin in place, Windsome’s dark eyes stared into Reveca, and as she did, the past assaulted Reveca.
She remembered hearing the thunder of horses’ hooves but ignoring them because she was focused on her spell at hand—the resurrection of the dead flowers. She remembered seeing King for the first time, her Kenson, who the sun was in love with—it spilled across him gloriously.
She saw their courtship, how innocent the love was, the power that was there
, but pushed it aside for the sake of the youthful emotion between them—their initial fire, the one spark that promised a rebirth.
Life would never be the same again. Come hell or heaven.
Windsome didn’t show the horrid separation of King and Reveca. Only the reunion. And not the reunion Reveca would have guessed. It wasn’t her seeing him in Crass’ lair. It wasn’t the boat ride home, the short words they had as they passed each other day in and out, not even the moment where she surrendered to his touch in the closet in the name of saving Gwinn, nor the brash conversations they stole where he told her he’d always loved her in his own way. No, that reality was not reflected. Something far stranger was.
A truth was revealed, one which stated her and King’s initial fire had never been doused—they had never been separated.
Reveca remembered coming to this world. How impossible the spell Saige and Jamison wanted to do seemed. She was determined to stay behind or at the very least, damn them all for their abandonment.
But when she sat in the circle of twenty-two, for a moment, she forgot her grief. It could have been because she saw the innocence of Windsome’s gaze, her sisters, maybe Evanthe’s—it could have been anything but when the spell began to break apart. When death was promised to those around her, she fought and she pulled from deep within.
Agony ripped through her.
And just as she was sure they’d failed, a rush of energy that Reveca only assumed was a second wind came from nowhere; it encircled and empowered her. The scent was undeniable, it was him, King. Pure, clean. The hint of earth and flowers.
Their strength saved the coven.
At the time Reveca was sure it was simply her memory of him, her grieving love. Believing it to be true caused Reveca to plummet back into grief once the spell had met its goal and moved the coven to land that was still unfounded.
The rush, the energy, was something she vaguely noticed over the years, but yet she knew it always came in a desperate hour and empowered her, made her bold.
Bold enough to walk through an army camp looking for support from the leader, a man who could save her mortal friends who were in danger—the rush of power walked her right up to Talon.
As Windsome’s spell rushed through Reveca’s mind, she saw her life with the Sons—she didn’t see it side by side with Talon. She saw a different layer, one that could be felt but never really seen because it was designed to be sacred.
It was there, though.
At various times each year, energy would expel from her. And when it returned to Reveca, she was all the stronger, all the more hopeful. Windsome’s spell was causing Reveca to see that the same occurred with King. His and her energies had unknowingly collided often.
In effect, Reveca was seeing her soul and King’s merge over and over, gently making love across an unknown plane.
Then the vision slammed into a recent reality, and Reveca was standing in the woods in a cocoon of nature she had made for them. He was circling her, and then he took her, flesh to flesh. The memory alone nearly stole Reveca’s breath.
Reveca jarred back, which caused the entire room to tense for a fight. But she lifted her hands to stop them then closed her eyes and grasped every angle of what was shown to her.
Reveca was sure, as always, Windsome had more than one intent with her spell.
Right now, though, Reveca couldn’t see it. She was too pissed. She felt like the last one invited to the party.
Talon knew. Talon knew it was King who had always empowered her—how in the hell did he know if I didn’t!
If he knew what she just saw, if King knew it—why in the hell were they not telling her? She doubted it would make the circumstances any easier to contend with, but still. Reveca had felt cheated and ripped apart because Talon had Ambrosia all this time—they had a child—only to find out, in some way, she had never left her first love.
Reveca shook her head to clear it. No matter what Windsome’s multiple purposes for showing Reveca what she had—one of the reasons was simplistic.
She wanted Reveca to understand she and this God, The King of Fear, were much the same in the way of love. This king was a cruel, vile soul. So wicked he had taken human form, and aged as such. He was cursed, unbelievably so. The very idea that Windsome would love him the way Reveca loved King was insane.
Reveca was ready to call bullshit on all of this. “It cannot be the same. Nothing makes it the same,” Reveca argued.
Windsome lifted her chin. Visions slammed into to Reveca, almost painfully. Reveca didn’t see the sick sovereign her people had predicted, the one King told her came to pass. She saw a godlike boy, chiseled features, and a warm smile courting this dainty beauty in death. Reveca saw their children, two boys, and one girl.
She also saw the curse.
Windsome could not control him. It was a war of wits, and at the moment, anger and his selfish plots blinded him.
Windsome loved him still.
She recognized the evil but saw beyond it, to the sweet boy who courted the girl when she found herself in the Veil searching for her family.
Reveca lifted her arms to the side, one reaching toward Shade, the other to Gwinn. “He slayed two of my own, and for all I know, he has entrapped Cashton.”
Windsome’s stare was full of irony, she even carried a smirk. There was no reflection spell given in this answer, but Reveca knew the rebuttal—they would not be Reveca’s unless they were slain and led to this life in the first place. Windsome, with all her cool audacity was trying to state in a roundabout way they were a gift from her lover.
Bull. Shit.
Windsome’s glance to Cashton reinforced her original promise to him. One Reveca heard in her own thoughts as well—he’d know when his escape was upon him when his sister was at his side and Windsome’s very own daughter was before him.
“Are you in danger for helping them, then?” Reveca asked. “Is that it? I will harbor your daughter—her answers?” She nodded to Shade. “You sent this soldier here and his witch lover for protection over your uprising against a man—God—you love?”
It was a stretch for Reveca to come up with the conclusion she had, but it was the only way she could see Windsome’s family and hers fitting together—Reveca would be damned if she ever lost a soul under her watch, including Cashton. Before she understood what he was, maybe she would have kissed his cheek and let him go, but now—the only place she was releasing him to would be his throne.
Windsome gently moved her head to the side, not a denial, but not a confirmation.
“She loves him in the past and in the future and is at war with him now, living in exile,” Bastion said like this was old news.
The entire room looked in his direction. Windsome appeared before him and traced the back of her hand down his face, earning a wink from him.
“You know her?” Reveca’s tone was not forgiving. She was sure Bastion had his mother’s gift of not saying what she knew in order to protect balance, peace, and fate—which Reveca despised.
“She helped me pass a history test or two.” Bastion’s gaze, filled with curiosity, trickled over her. “Her story, his—it will twist the sanest minds, but that is the simple rule of it. Like the others, like our people predicted, the Gods are sick with worry and plots, anything to stop the rise of the new sovereigns.”
He stood up straighter and pulled a grimoire closer to him. “Now, it was also predicted a coveted soul would earn absolution and it would be earned by granting favors to her lover’s enemies. The absolution she receives will be hers to grant, however she can only grant her prize to a humble heart.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Reveca groaned, speaking to Windsome as if this were ages before and they were girls fighting over childish things. “You are peddling advice to free him!”
Reveca was enraged. If there was a pardon from the slaughter that had to happen for the new sovereigns to rise it would King’s—not some vile beast who had damned an entire fucking dimension!
If any of it were true, Reveca was going to wage war. She would do what she had to in order for Windsome to grant this absolution to King. That is, if she had already earned it. Fuck, she should have been reading up on her warped family history long before now. Denial is another form of procrastination, and it had just bitten Reveca in the ass.
“Well,” Bastion said. “Not him, because the him you speak of does not have a humble heart, he would be in the present. I hear things change, though. Everyone stay tuned. The future King of Fear may have a humble heart.”
“He will. Because it won’t be fucking Donalt, the reigning King of Fear!”
“Not what I meant,” Bastion corrected, a sly grin creeping across his face. “The future Donalt, he can not have the absolution without a humble heart—but Windsome has loved him in the past, present, and future. The state of his heart at the end? Who knows?”
Reveca ignored him and stepped forward. “Why are you haunting this house? Ripping me apart. You tell me to send King away, and I do, and what fucking happens? He comes right fucking back here!” She leaned forward. “Was that it? You wanted him to leave so I would not think of this clause? I would not go hunting for a way to steal it—give absolution to the soul that deserves it!”
“No, she sent him away to free him,” Bastion said. “You know, that whole thing he had with not saying how he really felt—fear of four letter words—denial of his source of power—his freedom. It was his, always. He just had to realize it.” He nodded to Windsome. “She helped. In his defense, he did break your spell on his own and found his way to her.”
“What. The. Fuck.” Reveca said, forgetting the ghost and stepping up to Bastion. “You listen to me. You are under my roof. You are the son of Thrash. You are royalty in this Club and loyal to me. What you know, I know—” Reveca didn’t realize she had been leaning forward until she felt Shade and Cashton drawing her back. She must have looked lethal, and she instantly regretted losing her cool, even though Bastion seemed unbothered by the event.
