Everything within me drops and my legs become weak; he doesn’t recognize me.
Is it because of my hair? He already knows how it’s changed.
My posture, how I’m presenting myself? Donovan already knows how I’ve changed while being here in Ellevil.
It doesn’t make any sense.
He turns back around to walk to his bench in the cell and says, “You’re not my Rose.”
Chapter 14
The jackass who’s saved me countless times, and who’s always there for me no matter what, sits on the bench in his cell, his back facing me. I think of all the reasons why he didn’t recognize me. The first time I came down here looking for him, he knew about my hair.
I’m sure Christian got to him first before disappearing from Ellevil.
He messed with my mind and it’d be stupid of him not to mess with Donovan’s, because we’re the only witches in Ellevil. Anything that stands in his way is a threat, so of course he’d come for Donovan.
Why didn’t he kill him off then?
“Donovan,” I say.
He grabs on his chains, slamming them against the ground. “Say my name again and you’re the first on my list to gut, Mystic.”
“I’m not a mystic…look at me.”
He turns around, his eyes furious, staring at me. It’s hard to see him act this way. I’m stranded alone in the dark without him dashing in to save me like he always does. His veins outline the skin on his arms as he stares me down, wanting to kill me…wanting to kill this mystic in front of him.
I lift up both of my arms to show him the two markings I have on my skin. The right side is silver and the left side is green. I pull down my shirt a little to show him the silver tattoos on the side of my neck.
“Rose?” He backs away. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m trying to tell you, I’m Eliza.”
“Why are your eyes glowing green? Do you think I’m stupid?”
That’s probably why my eyes freeze sometimes, and my markings numb my skin. They wink on, like Christian’s and Emily’s. I blink and keep my eyes closed, focusing on how to prevent them from irritating me. The feeling gradually fades. I look up at him, concentrating on keeping control while I wait for him to say something.
“What’s going on?” Donovan asks.
“I found out some information.”
“I’m listening,” he says. I don’t think him being stuck down here during that storm caused him to become sick. It went by so fast, and now it’s pretty warm outside. I look at his face and search his body for any signs of sickness or anything strange.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he says, looking down at his wrists and the black pants he’s wearing. “These chains are starting to irritate me. What’s wrong with you?” he says.
I swallow the lump of air in my throat. “I think I’m some sort of a cross between elf and witch. Miss Canary says I’m a—”
“You’re a myth,” he answers for me. “Watching you fight and how you knew things before it happened, I knew.” He shakes his head, pacing back and forth. “You tried to cover up your green markings, but I still noticed them.” He stops to look at the wall beside him. “The time you were in the forest when we first came to this place…” He wraps his fingers around the bars in front of him. “I had suspicions but wasn’t sure they were real.” His expression is blank; he’s figured out the reason behind my eyes glowing and why I’ve come down here. “What did you find out with Christian?”
“Donovan, I think he’s corrupt. I delivered a protective charm to the King of Fairies.”
“How was that?”
“It was interesting.” I glance down at the lock on the cell. “The thing is, the king himself said that witches or anything corrupt couldn’t enter his kingdom. I entered, but Christian couldn’t.”
“Well you’re half elf. You can enter.” He looks up at me and scratches behind his ear, thinking.
“Christian’s corrupt.”
“I was thinking the same thing too. When we kissed he—”
“You did what?” His voice is louder and his eyes grow wide in shock.
“It wasn’t done purposefully. He was in my mind and the temptation was too strong to fight against him,” I say. “His eyes were black and it felt like he triggered the myth within.”
Donovan steps back a bit, pacing back and forth in his cage. “What else…anything else?” He stops to look at me.
I remember the rose Miss Canary took away from me and how it’s connecting us. I clear my throat. “I’ve been betrothed.”
He looks at me, and I sense his emotions raging inside of him. Being half elf, I can feel these things. I kind of figured it out a while back, but now I’m sure he’s angry. He crashes against the bars. The sound of the metal from his chains scrapes against the bars that hold him captive. He’s angrier than before learning this new information.
“I’m betrothed to Christian.” He kicks the bars, his teeth showing; he’s out of control. My heart begins to beat frantically, afraid that he might hurt himself. “Calm down, you already know this cell is hexed.” He continues to kick the bars.
“You need to break the betrothal right now before it’s too late,” he grunts, and then he calms down, his breathing becoming normal.
“When Christian and I were young, I knew something was strange…Mom sounded like she was fighting someone as soon as she closed the door, but my rose.” I rub my forehead, trying to remember what happened exactly. “The rose, it turned into ash; it was fake. Christian was holding one too, so that means we were both betrothed that early.”
“Myths corrupt easily, Eliza,” Donovan says. “It’s not in a witch’s nature to handle both traits magically.” He pokes his hand through a space in the bars, trying to unlock the lock to the cell. “Myths are rare. It happens when a Mystic is involved with a witch. A cross develops and creates…well, you.”
“My grandmother was a Myth. She’s the one who started the cross in my blood. I think she was talking to a fairy or an elf or something. I think she got pregnant by one.” I lift my gaze up at him and fix my hood back over my head. “I keep having these visions. It’s weird. It feels like I’m in pain and then my mind ventures off into a dreamlike state and I experience these events and it’s like they’re bound to happen soon.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. You’re half elf. Which means your mother was messing around with an elf. Your grandmother and everyone else has nothing to do with you being a myth. Your mother does.” He cracks his neck. “Unless your mom was already a myth, and it was passed on, but she wasn’t; she was just corrupt.”
I scrunch my eyebrows. “That means my—” I glance up at the ceiling, hearing movement. “They’re looking for me.”
“Why would they be looking for you?” Donovan asks.
“I kind of killed an elf, in the castle, when there were other elves around. Canary tried to lock me in my room when I found out about the rose.”
“How did you get here?” he asks.
“I broke free,” I say, keeping my stare locked on his rough face.
We stand silently exchanging eye contact. His blue eyes—his chilly eyes, they glared at me.
“You’re stupid. How are you going to get out of this place without eventually getting caught?”
He is so insensitive. Sure, I look a bit different than how I arrived here, and yeah it was weird and random.
I always hated whenever we would move to a different state or town. I would have to go to a new school and remake friends; it was hard to fit back in socially. Especially when I was late finding my class, and as soon as I would enter the dreadful room, every beady eye would be on me. I felt really self-conscious about myself and the way I looked.
It’s starting to happen again.
“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out,” I say. “How are we going to get you out of this cell?” I can’t help but wonder if Donovan’s really okay with me being who I am. Would
this make us even more awkward with each other? We kissed. I know it wasn’t anything but a move to try and save me from being impulsive.
Out of all the things he could’ve done to hold my attention, he figured a kiss would stop me. It did stop me.
Maybe I’m overthinking things.
I hear movement once again above me. I don’t know what I’m going to do when Canary finds me.
“You need to get the rose and break the connection.” Donovan walks toward the wall that separates us. “I don’t care what you are. We came here together—we leave together.” He presses the palm of his hand against my knuckles holding the bars.
My breath is so cold it feels like I’ve had a peppermint or something.
“I’m going to look for the key to get you out so we can leave, okay?” I say. There’s such a difference between us it’s crazy. I feel my eyes freezing up again; I close them because I know it might frighten Donovan.
“Hey…open your eyes. They’re beautiful,” he says. I open them up to see their green reflection in his eyes. “Don’t forget the rose. Do you have your broomstick?”
“It burns me whenever I touch it.”
“Because mystics can’t touch it, but I think it might warm up to you being half.” I rip a piece of cloth from this robe, wrap it around my hand, and reach in to grab my broomstick. I glance down at it, press the button, seeing it resize in my grip, and its long twirling baton shape warms up the cloth around my hand.
Donovan reaches for my hand, unwrapping the cloth.
“What are you—” I manage to say before feeling the metal burn my skin. I cringe, my teeth clench, and my ears twitch.
“Relax and feel the energy inside of you. You’re two different people.”
The pain is unbearable, and I feel like I’m going to drop my weapon, but I remember Mom, Jared, and Dawn and how much I’ve missed them. I think of how much I want to leave this place and never return, and how I want Donovan to get out of this cage.
I close my eyes, and my elf markings settle from vibrating.
“There you go…you gotta tame her,” Donovan says, eyeing my hand. My green markings wink off as I click the button, resizing my broomstick again. “At least you smell minty and not that vinegar stench I usually smell from mystics.” He smiles down at me.
I don’t want to laugh or smile at this moment, but something about Donovan accepting who I am helps me feel a little bit better. His face changes and his eyebrows come together, a crooked grin appearing across his face.
“You’re still a jackass.”
“You know it’s for a reason.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.” I roll my eyes. “I’m going to go and find the key and the rose.” I shuffle my boots around the gravel, the long ends of my robe twirling around with me as I glance up at him. “I think the game’s over.”
“You got down here by yourself and handled a corrupt mystic with no help. I know you got this.” Donovan clears his throat, watching me leave his cell. His silver markings glow in the darkness once more.
I feel my eyes beam their green light while I walk toward the exit of this basement.
***
I step out of the holding area and walk up the stairs. Elves are waiting upstairs on my left and right. Each and every elf that lives in Ellevil is here waiting for me. Elves mumbled in shock and confusion. I walk toward the entrance to the elf castle. There’s a pinch inside of my head, and I twist back around, sensing a rock is flying in my direction. I grab the rock in mid-air and eye the person who chucked it. There’s a collective gasp from the crowd.
“She is one of us,” an elf said.
“She’ll never be one of us. She’s the real monster, not us!” another shouts.
“Tie her down and feed her to the shifters!”
“No, let her drown in the ocean with the mermaids.”
“Shut up, the best solution is to numb her thoughts and emotions with the fairies.”
Standing at the top of the stairs, Miss Canary claps her hands and the sound roars around us all. She leaps over the railing, drifting down past the chandelier and landing on the ground gracefully.
“Off to the forest, all of you,” she says, looking around her at her elf family. The elves around her continue to mumble. I’m losing control of my emotions, and another headache is coming on.
“Now!”
They run for the door, pushing me on the floor. A warm wind from outside enters the castle, and there is the sound of many shoes racing away from us. Miss Canary helps me up, then walks over to close the front doors.
“They’re upset that a witch has now become an elf myth. We accepted your mother into our family. This is why she kept disappearing; she would come here and be one with nature.” She turns around, grinning at me while her eyes flash on for a second; my markings vibrate with her eyes.
“Why would my mom come to a place like this?” I ask, following her up the stairs.
“Running after your father, obviously. He was affiliated with Ravamaere, and the two of them blew up the balance between the mystical world, the real world, and the corrupt world.”
My heart sinks in my chest. I knew one of them had to be an elf. I’m happy it wasn’t Mom. Dad, on the other, was never in my life. I guess this explains his disappearance.
I have to find out more…I need more time. Then something unexpected happens. I forgot I was in another world, a magical one at that. I’m losing myself here. I remember jumping into the Ellevil portal and that’s it.
But what happened before? My mother is what happened, and I killed her, because apparently she fell into corruption.
“I’m sure you knew she was corrupt,” I say, realizing Miss Canary, the person I was to trust the most, had hidden the fact that my mother was fading away into darkness.
“Yes I knew, but if I were to tell you the truth, the future would have changed and you wouldn’t be here with us today. Who knows what could have changed during the process?”
We walk into the library and the same box I noticed earlier with vines wrapped around it glows in front of me. Miss Canary walks over to the box and waves the palm of her hand over the surface. The vines move around, slithering off the sides and corners.
“I told your mother I would not open the portal for her anymore, that I could sense the corruption building inside her. The only other person who knows about the portal is—”
“Jared.”
Chapter 15
The silence in the room crawls between us. I knew there was a reason why that black cat at Witcher’s Place chased Jare out of the shop. There’s a reason why he was limping when he got home that night. I glance at Miss Canary, my eyes flashing. She moves her hand away from above the box, and the vines retract back on the sides.
I follow her to a vine-infested bookcase on our right. She trails her index finger over the spines of the thousand ancient books in the library. I can’t help but notice how calm and graceful she is. You’d think she’d be freaking out as much as the other elves were when they saw me. I’m the monster; I’m the one thing that will be able to kill them all, even in their own forest.
I tilt my head back to look at the top of the bookcase, amazed at how tall it is.
I must’ve walked past this one when I was here with Christian.
I’m still curious to know what’s so bad about being a myth. Doesn’t that help me kill mystics even faster now? Why would she even lock me up in my room in the first place? Did she think I was going to kill her and the rest of her little elves here in Ellevil? The queen thumbs through her dusty books, her eyes narrowed in focus. I can feel her energy, like how Christian felt mine. I could anticipate another’s actions; I could plan my attack before they could even think about enforcing theirs. This makes elves the most dangerous mystics alive, close to mermaids too. I understood what I read from my grimoire for the first time. Since, I guess, I’m one of them now.
“Ahh, found it.” Miss Canary pulls the book she was looking for off th
e shelf. “We need to figure out how to control that myth of yours,” she says dryly, glancing at me.
“You’re two different people,” Donovan said to me, and I know it’s true. I still can’t believe that with all this time Mom wanted to keep it hidden from me. She’d risk her own life to keep the secret; she’d go to Ravamere and hang out with members of the Verel to keep me from knowing the dark mystery. She’d sleep with an elf, have a relationship with a mystic, resulting in having a mixed baby—all to keep one secret. She couldn’t say, “Eliza, you’re a witch, but you’re also an elf!”
That day I stormed out of the house? I would’ve thought she was still crazy, but hey, at least she’d say something about it. I would have been upset but eventually would come to terms with it. Being a witch and an elf hybrid is not normal; then again what’s the big deal? Maybe it would’ve changed my future; maybe she’d still be alive today if she had said something…anything. She was too focused on keeping me safe and not telling me anything about who I was, the witch and elf that I am, because of them.
She didn’t want to tell me the truth.
My mother and Jared never intended to tell me a damn thing, because of the mystics out to get me, or them, or whoever mentioned anything about being a witch. How was I supposed to ever learn anything about this culture I was thrown into? All I had was that dumb grimoire.
Now I’m stuck in a world not by choice but by force, and I know for a fact that if I take this old lady’s neck and smash her head against the bookcase in front of her, I’ll have about two point five seconds before she predicts it. Which also explains the two mystics waiting behind the glass walls. They are holding their weapons and chuckling together. I’d have a fifty percent chance of getting away freely, without any confrontation. I’d break off a piece of glass and gash the end right into one of their smooth faces.
I shake my head to clear it from the haunting thoughts. The sun is fading away, and gray clouds are scattered across the sky. At least the random feelings from my arms start to fade with it. There is still a slight sensation in my right arm though; my silvery tattoos start to glow.
Mythical (The Mystical Series Book 2) Page 15
