Death's Primordial Kiss (The Silvered Moon Diaries Book 1)

by Romarin Demetri

  Exile confirmed: Two Positions in London Coven open for Autumnal Equinox.

  “This is happening exactly how it was supposed to!” I exulted, starring down our dream since we were just little girls. “It just has to be Water and Spirit who got kicked out, and our elements are up for grabs.”

  “Water, both our families,” Helaine nodded, talking herself through it, “and spirit, a line in my family, but also a wild card, a power anyone with witch blood can commit to without much trouble.”

  “What does it say?” I asked, leaning into the page.

  Helaine’s long red hair spilled onto the page as we both squinted at the fine print of the article that was to be published in four hour’s time.

  “It says Water is open… and Fire.”

  The contentment I felt when I thought everything was locked into place evaporated. Our families both came from long-standing water lines, and it had been decades since someone was brave enough to attempt to initiate under an element that wasn’t in their blood. He had failed, just as the last daft witch centuries before him had. Worse, their families had been disgraced, and no one with their blood was ever chosen to serve in the Coven again.

  I didn’t know whether to look at Helaine or stare blankly at the page burdened with disappointment, so I glanced to her, silently asking her how I should be feeling at the moment, dreading the auditions we were about to endure, and feeling the whirlwind of emotions in the back office collide, cutting through me like a double-edged sword. I felt her surprise morph into a morose competitive demeanor laced with guilt, trepidation, and a bit of excitement. My own thoughts turned to a place of feeling betrayed by a coven I wasn’t even a part of yet. I felt a bitter resentment toward Spirit for messing things up and leaving us with only the element of water. The adrenaline from our excitement fizzled out. Our tiredness was no longer disguised by the giddiness of rule breaking, and I fought a lump forming in my throat, hoping that two a.m. left my stomach empty.

  Don’t do it, I thought, talking myself out of vomiting all over the desk. I hated throwing up more than anything, but it wasn’t unheard of for me to have physiological reactions when emotions got as jumbled and complex as they were now.

  I gulped down the bitter taste creeping up my throat, swallowing hard, the realization grounding my excitement, worn weary with disappointment. This was the worst possible situation an empath could be in.

  “Are you okay?” Helaine asked me. Her eyebrows creased above her large brown eyes as worry replaced her other emotions, allowing my stomach to settle.

  “No, I’m not okay at all.”

  Helaine and I would have to fight against each other for the destiny we always thought we’d share. Only one of us could take our place on the London Coven, and the girl who made it would be leaving the other behind for ten long years. That decade would arguably be the best years of our entire lives… said every eighteen-year-old ever.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Independence

  Helaine

  No, it’s not like I didn’t have a conscience. I knew breaking into the paper in the dead of the night was wrong; However, in my little corner of the universe I like to call reality, I didn’t need to have a strong conscience when everyone in my bloody life made me accountable anyway. Not that I was complaining, but the love in my family fed the warm fuzzies so gluttonously, that they resembled rotund monsters in my mind. If anyone thought I had a normal family, well, then they were dead wrong.

  University was going to give me the independence that burglary charges couldn’t, but now, my new prospect was a place on the London Coven and being a witch not only meant total freedom, it meant a totally new identity. It meant my own identity. No parents infringing upon my every thought. No being told I couldn’t wear what I wanted or go where I pleased. I had aced just enough A Levels to know that any seventeen-year-old out there wants autonomy, but I needed it, lest I would spontaneously combust.

  After this morning I no longer wanted to become front page news. I wanted to be the solution to its problems. With so many people in this city, there were more crimes to be solved and criminals to catch than I could count. And I wasn’t just talking regular crime. I was interested in supernatural crime, and when you threw powers and oppression into the mix, the underbelly of London had the worst criminals, murderers, and baddies you had ever seen. And pure evil? We had only the purest.

  My plan was phenomenal, but it was also spoiled in a massive way. One of my greatest competitors was my best friend in the entire world, and it really threw a spanner in the works. My independence meant leaving behind one of the people I loved the most. Would she understand? Maybe not so much if securing my place meant destroying her chances. I stared at the ceiling of my room as the gray light of the afternoon filtered in through the fifth-floor window, remembering a conversation I once had with my best friend.

  One day when Rose and I were twelve or so, awkward-looking pre-teens (around the time she was trying to grow her bangs out), it came up once; What we would do if I or Rose was inducted into the Coven alone… if there was only one spot for an initiate. We agreed that we would become rivals and the best girl would win. We shook on it, and the pact still resonated in my palm, just as potent all these years later. We were red belts at the time.

  I was now grounded until the equinox for breaking into a building that I technically had a key to, an adventure no one was supposed to know about but did. Rose, however, got away with it as always. It wasn’t that being an empath made her charming, not when her parents could see through her powers, but it was the fact that she excelled at martial arts and got a full scholarship to university that could potentially make them let it slide when she did something out of character. She was responsible beyond her years and more disciplined than anyone I knew… unless emotions were involved, but then, she relied on intuition to get by. With that kind of balance, I hated to say she’d make a great witch.

  I stretched out on my bed, resituating myself, not ready to get up yet. What was the point when I was grounded?

  At least they let me keep my lock-picking kit, I thought.

  I wasn’t sorry for reading the headline before all of London undoubtedly did this morning. I was mostly sore that Spirit didn’t get kicked out instead of Fire because Rose was supposed to be Water and I was supposed to be Spirit since we were six years old. The article divulged that the vacancies emerged because it was some kind of romantic mess between the water and fire witches, and London loved romantic messes more than I valued my independence.

  The Coven members were celebrities, and not because of their parents or because they could charm the public without needing to do a sodding thing for anyone. They were revered as being forces of good and led dangerous and busy lives keeping the city safe from threats. You had to be eighteen to twenty years of age to be inducted, and you served ten years—if you made it through your first two years as an initiate. Once I was in the Coven, my social status would finally equal my father’s.

  I ruffled my sheets again, this time looking back at the ceiling. Could I really take being grounded until initiation?

  Auditions took place during the next change of seasons, on the following solstice or equinox and I was seventeen until mid-September. The autumnal equinox was right around the same time as my birthday.

  I felt the colour drain from my face, maybe even from my freckles, melting into my feet as I sprung up from my bed, leaving my bed sheets in a pile on the floor. I began a frenzied search for a calendar.

  What day was the equinox on this year? Would I be old enough to compete?

  My room was often messy (nothing that a good half hour couldn’t fix); However, it was holding me up from finding a calendar, and I much preferred paper to using the one on my watch. I looked around the small, mint-green room with one window, running into the hanging fringe of my macramé plant holder. There was a cloud-loving cactus inside that I hadn’t managed to kill or impale myself on yet.

  I found my desk cale
ndar that was still stuck in April, ripping the pages to get to the autumnal equinox.

  September twenty-third.

  My birthday was the twenty-third.

  The time of your birth didn’t matter (only the date) and I would fight for my right to compete if I got a rejection letter as the response to my petition.

  My sigh of relief was a muffled scream. I knew my colour was flushed with pink now that it returned; something that always happened to pale redheads when our tempers got the better of us.

  I stepped over June and July and peered out of my room to see if my sister’s door was cracked open.

  “Helaine,” I heard her call.

  Perhaps she was doing better if she was awake.

  “Oi,” I said softly, walking the few paces into her room. “Feeling better?”

  Brittany’s faint smile was wider than it had been in ages. Her eyes looked enormous enough to peer into your soul when they were puffy, and she was the only person I had met whose irises appeared prettier—a gold brown—after she’d been crying. Apart from our round faces and petite body structures, the two of us looked undeniably different.

  “I am feeling better because my sister is going to be the next water witch initiated into the London Coven,” Brittany replied. Her voice was always calm, no matter how excited she was, but there was always the hint of a squeak waiting at the end of her words when something elicited her interest.

  “You read the paper?” I beamed, sitting down next to her on her made bed.

  “Nope. I had a dream,” she explained.

  At once, I was wary but with piqued interest, as Brittany’s dreams tended to tell the future and her accuracy was massively impressive, for better or for... oh here it came.

  “It’s the first dream I had since…”

  She didn’t have to tell me twice. I diverted my attention to the lime green wall of her bedroom in silence.

  “I know it will happen,” I said gravely. “But it means…”

  “That Rose won’t be a member of the Coven. I know you always wanted it to be the two of you. I’d love to see the both of you as initiates too, but you’re Water… I know it.”

  “You think so?” I asked, my eyes scanning over the band posters and magazine cutouts on the walls as I searched for something encouraging to say. She nodded. “You seem to be doing better. Do you want me to bring you some toast?”

  “I’ll go get some. Taking care of your big sister is a massive job when she’s like me.”

  “I don’t mind a bit,” I said, now on my feet. “You should come to dinner tonight. Everyone misses you and they notice that you’re not there.”

  As much as my skin tone liked to betray my stonewalled inner secrets by flushing pink, my eyes were worse and watery when it came to the people I loved. I could feel the glossy tears magnifying my eyes, averting my gaze from Brittany, trying to filter them back into my head. I was rarely an over-emotional wreck, but this would do it.

  “Helaine, if I go to a dinner here with everyone—the sixty apartment residents and fifty some people transitioning to supernatural life—all anyone will say is ‘I’m sorry for your loss’, no matter how many times you tell them not to say something to me. I don’t think they have the right, and I…”

  “I understand. At least come see mum and dad for tea time tomorrow. They know not to say anything, and they’d rather see you awake, drinking your favorite tea, instead of tucking you in when you’re pretending like you’re sleeping. They’ve made blueberry every teatime for a week, you know.”

  Brittany’s laugh came out like a stunted snort and I was glad for it. That was the closest hint of joy I’d seen in an age or two.

  “You know me too well,” she said.

  “I’ll make you some toast when I get back.”

  I left to change into clothes that hid the fact that I was sulking about all day, and went to the only place I wasn’t grounded from: Group.

  Making it to Group was yet another thing that was expected of me. I was too stubborn to admit that I’d miss talking with my supernatural peers when I was initiated into the Coven, but I knew I would.

  I let the front door of the flat slam, enjoying the illusion of freedom smashed into the door jam, as I descended the winding stairwell and passed the mail room on the first floor. Our building had been around for quite some time. The stairwell had a thick wooden banister that had been painted ebony, but there was no modernizing the book-like smell that the wooden floors and stairs ingrained in the hall all those years ago.

  The wall that separated the apartments from the lobby was a two-way mirror only the residents could see out of, and you had to buzz in or swipe your key card to make it into the stairwell. My family’s flat was on the fifth floor because this is where my father worked. It was easily locked down in the event that it had to be. There had only once been a scare in the Hallowed Locus’s entire history of attracting the troubled.

  The lobby of our building was never empty, and when I passed through the two-way wall I saw a familiar face, a boy around my age with light hair, sitting in a chair against the dome-shaped windows on the exterior wall. It was all rather dodgy, so naturally, I had to instigate—I mean, investigate.

  “Esper, what are you doing here?” I asked. “Are you actually going to Group today?”

  He threw his head back against the chair, responding boredly as if he had already told me the story but I had forgotten. The to-go coffee mug in his hand stayed steady.

  “It’s more like—and I quote—‘You’re sixteen. When you can act it you can come back to my home. Until then, go live with your father.’”

  “You were kicked out?” I asked with a smirk. Esper was harmless. “For what?”

  “Someone stole two bottles of mum’s wine, and it couldn’t be Emmy,” he said of his sister.

  “Emmy’s an angel,” I agreed with feigned seriousness. “Your punishment is Group?”

  “Yea’, but I’m not going.” Esper shrugged; an expression he shared with his aforementioned twin sister Emmy. When they were younger they could have switched places without anyone realizing, and one time they had. “Mum just dropped me off here to hand me off to dad, since it’s no secret he’s ‘working all the time’ which is code for living here now. He said all’s well if I come over, and I’ll probably go to Gray’s house anyway. Group is for the troubled, not the framed. I don’t need any help with my powers.”

  “Your powers have been perfected since day one,” I admitted, wishing I had some kind of active power of my own, and not just the ability to morph and change water that had come after years of practice.

  “On one side of the family tree,” he retorted. “But it’s not a bother to me.”

  “Group at The Hallowed Locus is for people with powers who want to be around their peers,” I said, defending my punishment. “I’m trying to get Brittany to go.”

  “How is she?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said truthfully.

  “Foreseeing your boyfriend’s death and being unable to stop it isn’t something I could get over quickly either,” Esper replied. “Luckily, there are lads out there who can’t die.”

  He grinned at me and I said nothing as usual. Dodgy.

  “Once mum’s well on her way home in that taxi, I’m leaving for Gray’s house. Good luck,” he said unenthusiastically.

  “With group today?”

  “No,” he answered. “With initiation. You’re trying out for the Coven, right?”

  “I am. I sent in the pre-screening information today and I’m waiting for a letter.”

  Well, I have to do it tomorrow. But first thing.

  “You’ll get it.”

  “You think so?”

  “You’re the President’s daughter. Of course they’ll let you try out,” he said cynically.

  “Thanks, Esper. And this is why Emmy is my favorite just like everyone else,” I said, as my smile deflated with my ego. It was no secret that Emmy and I were friends. “B
ye, Esper.”

  “See you later,” he said unapologetically.

  I walked past him, temper fuming, but keeping it cool. If I wasn’t the Presidents’ daughter I would have round-house kicked that wanker in the face. Then again, if I wasn’t the President’s daughter, I wouldn’t have even needed to think about it.

  As I darted down the lobby hallway and walked up the back stair well to group, Esper’s words stuck to me, heavy as a pound of bricks, as stiff and unchanging as a board. I knew what I was facing, and the order in which the tests would be given.

  First, there was the screening process to become an initiate, and the letter I would receive when I passed. The pre-initiation social instructions were on the letter, and there, I would meet the witch elders called Mages, as well as my fiercest competitors and peers. On the autumnal equinox, I would state my name, family claim, and element in front of the Coven themselves. Then there was a round of questions about history and rules, followed by my favorite part, a show of power that brought out the creative sides of all of the initiate hopefuls. I had seen it before because my Mum was invited to watch one year and took me and Rose when we were six. Finally, I’d wait thirty minutes to an hour alone in a room while the existing Coven member’s debated over whom they would choose. All of those steps led up to the hardest part, one that spanned two years.

  The most difficult challenge of them all would be the two year period as an initiate when all of London wanted to see me fail so a family member of theirs could take my place instead.

  And during those two years, everyone would say that my hard work didn’t matter and that the only reason I succeeded was due to privilege. I would be the least liked in the Coven, and thousands of people would be ready to see me fail as if my life were a game, mere entertainment.

  I’ll show you entertainment, I thought. And when I save your lives, you’ll have to thank me then.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A Family Secret