“There is only one way to save Augusta, Kyle. We just haven’t figured it out yet.”
“She thinks she has.” He shot back at me. “She isn’t going to budge past it.”
Knowing how quickly emotions build and become heated, I shot out of bed and left my room. Destination: Valerie.
Courage, clear head, and logic would change any battle, especially one with a witch who thinks herself superior to those who surround her.
I didn’t knock on her bed chamber door, I took the knob and pushed open with a force I hadn’t expected. She stood in the center of her room, as if expecting me to come barging in.
“I was right.” She smiled.
“Because I am so predictable?” I asked, my manner crude and filled with annoyance.
“No, because you are your mother’s daughter.”
“What is the way, you think will save Augusta from Kalvati?”
“Summon him Celia.” She spat out, “He is after all, your biological father.”
Her words sent a severe chill to travel down my spine, much like ice water being sent through my veins.
“Oh come now. You can’t be totally surprised. You did have plenty of interactions with him as a child.” She continued. “Even here, in this castle, when the rest of us were trying to create peace, your mother was wreaking havoc on our future.”
Dmitri walked in the room, Kyle behind him. I looked at Dmitri, with questions filling my heart, ones that were clear to reach him.
“Of course Ciara would tell you that you would be the key to all this. He is your father, Celia.” She sneered at me.
“Val, you need to stop. Celia isn’t to blame in any of this.”
Slowly, logically, everything began to make sense. Why my mother never talked about my father, how most of my questions were redirected to some other topic of conversation, how even my memories were blocked of being in this place.
She loved you very much Celia.
“Did she tell you he is my father?” I asked her, my voice was darker than I had expected.
“No,” she shook her head, her body slowly taking a defensive stance, arms crossed at the chest. “But you can’t tell me it never crossed your mind.
“No, Valerie, it didn’t. I’ve always believed my father to be dead. No one ever refuted that truth until now. This callous display of hatred is the first instance I’ve ever questioned my paternity.”
“I don’t hate you, Celia.”
“And yet, I would never treat someone I hated with as much distain as you have treated me today.”
I turned to Kyle, “She doesn’t know how to save Augusta; She is just a sad, pitiful, and hateful woman with nothing better to do than to spread her anger of being less powerful than a fellow coven witch.”
“Celia!” Kyle reacted, shocked at my words.
I’m leaving. I said to Dmitri.
“But what about the coven?” he asked as I passed him. “What about Augusta?”
Without turning around, leaving the room, I whispered, “I’ll save her myself.”
I entered my room alone, yet the room wasn’t empty. Dmitri beat me to the punch, “You can’t be like this, Celia.”
His stature in front of me, forced me to pause and take in a breath I hadn’t needed.
I slammed the door, the thud echoing throughout the room. I shook my head at him.
“All I asked was for you to be there for me. ME!” I repeated.
“And I am,” he closed the distance that separated us, taking my shoulders in his grasp. “I love you, Celia.”
“Love?” I repeated, still upset about Valerie. I forced his hands off of my shoulders.
“You can’t love someone you are constantly lying to.” I turned to face the bed.
“I didn’t lie to you; I just don’t know the truth, and I’m not certain Valerie does either.”
“You were her protector, how could you not know who my father was.”
“Because her love life was not my priority.”
I snapped around, meeting his glare. “It should have been if Kalvati was involved.”
He shook his head at me, “Kalvati wasn’t in her love life, Celia.”
“Then why would I have Valerie throwing this in my face? Why would I have a memory of a man, who I know as Mr. Harrison, in this room with my mother during a coven gathering?”
“You are grasping at connections that may not be certain.”
“Or my gut is dead on and Valerie is right. Kalvati is Mr. Harrison, and was right under your nose the whole time.”
There was a knock at my door, pulling us both at attention and silencing the conversation.
“Come in.” Dmitri called out.
It was Kyle. He walked into the now stuffy room, and closed the door quietly behind him.
“Look, I’m not sure what you are doing, but I’m going to take Valerie and Lisa back to Brooksville. This trip turned out to be a bust. The coven, incomplete, is incapable of doing any magic to save Augusta.”
“We will be heading back as well; however, being the circumstances as they are, we are going to go back on a different flight.” Dmitri replied.
“I agree. That is a good suggestion.” Kyle looked from Dmitri back to me.
“I’m truly sorry that she treated you like that. I’ve never seen this side of her and I offer her no excuses. Your mother was a beautiful person, and her memory doesn’t deserve to be tarnished in that fashion.” His sincerity touched me but also had me feeling a controversial anger I’d never known before.
“I will find the answers I need Kyle. Either your memory of her will remain intact or it won’t but one way or another, I will find out who my mother truly was.”
“Have a safe flight. I will see you back at school.” He offered, before leaving and shutting the door behind him.
School. It occurred to me that school, and reality for that matter, had continued on without us. Everything in this world seemed detached, as if being a witch was like closing off a real part of one self.
“I will go ahead and get our tickets situated to head back home. Maybe you should call Olivia to let her know we will be back tomorrow.”
I didn’t respond to his words, just withdrew my cell phone from the pocket of my jean shorts and dialed Olivia’s number. While it rang, I sat on the sofa in the room, staring out one of the thin windows.
She answered, finally, but sounded winded. “I was wondering when I would hear from you.”
“It hasn’t been a good trip.” I admitted; the softness in my voice returning.
“Aaww, what’s wrong. Your mother was always so excited when she traveled to the castle.”
I wanted to lash out at Aunt Olivia but I caught myself. It’s not her fault my mother wasn’t who we thought she was.
“I got into an argument with one of the other coven members about mom.”
Olivia sighed, “Let me guess. You and Valerie had it out finally.”
My eyes widened at her statement, “How did you know?” Asking, more because Olivia might know more than anyone what my mom was capable and not capable of doing.
“Valerie has always been jealous of the other witches. First, it was at Pricilla for supposedly stealing Victor from her, then, Nanette for defending Pricilla and Victor’s love. Eventually, she became distant with everyone because she didn’t have a positive thing to contribute.”
“Did anything particular happen between Mom and Valerie, though. Maybe the year she took me when I was a little girl?” I asked.
“Oh, boy, that was a long time ago, Celia.” She gasped, making a sighing noise as if she were thinking about my question.
“No, but she was going through a lot right around that time. You were maybe three years old, asking for your daddy left and right. She struggled with that. Many times she’d call me in the middle of the night crying that she was a bad mother.”
“Olivia, are you sure John was my father?” the question came out before I had the chance to process that
I was asking it.
“Celia, what are you asking me?” Olivia countered the shock clear in her voice.
At this point, Dmitri stood up and walked over to the sofa making certain that I knew he was listening in on the conversation.
“I want to know if John was my father, or if there is any possibility that mom only said that to cover up a lie she didn’t want anyone to know.”
“Your mother did a lot of things I never agreed with Celia, but I can’t believe she would lie about your paternity.”
“Even if my father was someone like…”
“Celia…” Dmitri interrupted. His hand was up in a stop motion. He didn’t want me to say it, not out loud, and especially not to Olivia.
“Even if who, Celia?” she asked, waiting for the rest of my sentence.
Dmitri shook his head. Don’t go there Celia. You have no idea what danger you could put her in.
She isn’t in danger she isn’t even a coven witch.
“Someone like Kalvati,” I finished, needing to hear Olivia’s reaction.
“I never heard her say his name until the last year of her life, Celia. She didn’t know much about him until he attacked a witch a few months before her death.”
“Wait, what about a Mr. Harrison? Did mom ever mention to you anything about a George Harrison?”
“Well, yeah. George was one of your mom’s closest friends.” Her sentence washed through my ears like a flood breaking through levies that were meant to protect all in its path.
“Did she ever have a romantic relationship with him?” my tone deep.
“Celia, what are you thinking?” she asked me reacting the way any parental figure would.
“When I was a little girl, there was a man in mom’s room when I came from the castle garden to bring her wild flowers. She made it clear the man was important to her. That he made her as happy as I did. Olivia, she had tears in her eyes when she told me.”
“Oh, honey. That can mean all sorts of things. Your mother was a tortured soul. She was always fighting her emotions for the men that came into her life.”
“And yet she never married any of them. She never had a real relationship with any of them.”
“That’s because no one was good enough for you.”
“Or because my father isn’t dead, because he didn’t want to give her up, because he is a bad man.”
Dmitri reached out and took my loose hand. “You don’t know that.”
I shook my head at him, Neither do you!
“George would have said something to me if he knew he was your father, Celia. He has been a part of this family since we were young children.”
“I just saw him the other day at the clinic in my school.”
“What?” she asked shocked.
“Yeah, right before you came to pick me up, he walked in and talked to me. At first, I didn’t get why a complete stranger would attempt an interaction with me, being that I had only just moved to the school, but now it would make sense, especially if mom kept him away from me.”
“Celia, if your mother kept you away from George Harrison, she had a really good reason to do so.”
“Again, who is to say that Kalvati isn’t this George guy?”
When Olivia didn’t respond, I worried that Dmitri was right. Especially if she knows what Mr. Harrison looks like? To make the connection she would only need to see a picture of Kalvati to know for sure.
“We will be home tomorrow. Please don’t do anything until we get back. Don’t contact him or anything. I don’t want anything to happen to you too.” I begged her. She is after all everything I have left.
“I’m fine, sweetheart. But to make you more comfortable, I promise not to go anywhere.”
We said our goodbyes and I felt the emotions echoing through the phone receiver.
The little bit of sunlight beamed through the sliver of window.
“Will you take me for a walk through the gardens, Dmitri?” I asked him, knowing that being cooped up in the room wouldn’t help my current frame of mind.
CHAPTER Twelve
The sun was low in the sky, the pink and purple hues making a canvas for the whole region to awe over. Oh, what it must be like to live in this place.
“This garden was your favorite as a little girl.” Dmitri admitted, the statement forcing me to ask the obvious question.
“How old was I when you stopped being around?” the words came out as I snapped a flower from a nearby bush. The action made me wince for the poor little flower.
“You were about 4.” He started, “Your mother said she couldn’t raise you the way she had been raised. She wanted a different life for you and that meant I had to keep my distance.”
“That had to be harder on you to protect her.”
He nodded, following my movements, picking a flower from a different bush, bringing it up to his nose to smell.
“It was never easy.” He admitted, his eyes opening a little wider as he said it.
“You helped her with the store though, didn’t you?” We turned a corner and mazed through a different part of the garden.
“I tried to be there for her, always. Our thoughts were connected like yours and mine, but your mother learned early on how to block me, to keep me distant.”
My hand reached out towards his, taking it in my own, locking our fingers together.
“I miss the care free us of a few weeks ago.” I admitted heavily, thinking of the first time I kissed him.
He slowed me down and pulled me close to his side.
“You have changed everything for me, Celia. I don’t know how I have survived my whole life without you.”
“So you feel differently for me than you felt for Allura?” I noticed how he smiled when I asked.
“I could never choose this life knowing I wouldn’t be able to feel this way for you. That I wouldn’t be able to hold you like this. Secure in my arms.” He smiled, his features softening.
I leaned in, my lips softly caressing his. That was all it took. A kiss, and my senses were in overdrive. Each nerve ending electrified. His masculine scent filled my nostrils.
He opened his mouth and kissed me back, the fervor ignited the instant his tongue met mine.
But as quickly as our moment began, it ended. A noise further in the garden startled us.
Two figures stood, at the gate we were heading for. “I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to interrupt.” Desmond, Beatrice’s protector said softly.
I giggled, wondering what type of grief, if any, the other protectors give Dmitri regarding our relationship.
“Don’t worry about it.” I covered my mouth and giggled to myself.
“Do you remember this garden Celia?” He asked me, walking ahead of Beatrice towards me.
“Everyone asks me that and I don’t but it is very peaceful here.” I mused, looking out into the distance toward the rolling hills and the scenery.
“It is because we had never experienced such a joy as watching your fascination in this place. Your gift to us was in how you cried out in excitement as the butterflies fluttered around you.” His smile was natural, the memory clear on his expression.
“Would you like to visit the great tree again?” he asked in a manner I almost understood.
“The Great tree from the spells?”
“It was your favorite spot. One time, you got away from your mother, probably playing with the butterflies, and we spent the entire day searching for you.” Desmond, laughing turned to Dmitri who chimed in.
“Your mother, frantic, asked the entire coven to join in on a locator spell to find you.”
“It didn’t work, and she flipped out.”
“So how did you find me?” I asked Dmitri, confused because a locator spell, cast by the coven, should have been able to find a needle in a very large haystack if need be.
“I found you.” He mumbled, looking down as we walked the path.
We turned down a thin path, the sides filled with over grown bushes.
“Why didn’t the spell work?”
“No one knows. When I found you, you were sleeping so soundly, I wondered if someone had cast their own spell on you.” He admitted gravely.
“She held you so tight I thought she would squeeze you to death. But you were so tiny back in those days, with your precious dark eyes. They looked like dark chocolate morsels in a batter of cream skin.” Desmond recalled.
Broken (The Immortal Coven Book 1) Page 19
