I took a stuttering breath, squatting down. I rocked forward onto my knees to sit in front of the fire. It comforted me—melting the shard of ice in my chest that hurt so bad it was difficult to speak.
I couldn’t choke up now.
“Breathe,” Violet whispered. “I’m with you.”
As odd as it was, her being a soul and all, I found comfort in that.
Enough so that my chest loosened and I began to speak, recalling those days after Daizlei’s collapse. The nightmares that plagued me. I talked about Lily and Victor. How he pulled her from a dungeon just to chain her in other ways. How the Vampires used children to train her—to break her. How they starved her, and beat her, and would have done worse—had she not defended herself. I talked about the ticks and tells that she’d unwittingly told me of Vampire society. I spilled her private thoughts and fears and dreams with them.
And by the end of it, a single tear had escaped my watering eyes, silently sliding down my cheek. But I had told them the truth—almost all of it.
All except the darkness that had long been settling in.
“Those are nightmares, girl. They’re not rea—” Oliver started to say. I clenched my hands into fists, digging my nails into my palms. I wouldn’t plead or beg him or anyone to understand, but I wasn’t yielding either.
“She’s telling the truth.”
It wasn’t Ash that spoke, or even Alexandra.
It was Johanna.
“You can’t possibly believe her, Jo—”
“I can, and I do,” she replied sternly. “You should know by now not to discredit something just because you don’t understand it. As Jayma would say, we live in an impossibly possible world.” Oliver flinched like he’d been slapped. Whoever Jayma was, I got the impression she wasn’t around anymore.
“Be that as it may,” Alec interjected, “how do you know this isn’t just in her head? She may believe what she’s saying, but that doesn’t make it true.”
Given that his abilities lie in making people see something that’s not actually there, I couldn’t be terribly offended by his questioning.
“My sister is alive,” I murmured hoarsely in response. “Lily is alive. And you have no reason to believe me. I have no proof, no evidence whatsoever, only what I see when I’m sleeping. But I know…” I paused to swallow the lump in my throat. “I know she is alive.”
I didn’t look at them. Any of them. Not Ash. Not Alexandra. Not Blair.
Because if I had to see one more person look at me like I’m crazy after I had completed the bond—I really would snap.
“I believe her,” Blair spoke up. I wasn’t sure if it was in direct correlation to Alec’s questioning, but Blair never sided with anyone without considering the facts. “Just because we can’t explain it doesn’t mean it’s in her head. We are part demon, and yet no one knows how that is possible. Lily was also part demon. We have no idea how her powers could have grown if she was changed.”
No one could deny Blair’s reasoning as much as I could tell they wanted to. Because if that was true, if Lily truly was a Made now—she would be strong enough to make our world tremble in her wake. In her rage.
“Can a Supernatural-part-demon even become a Made?” Ash asked. No one had the answer.
“We possess at least some of the same DNA as a Born Vampire. Who is to say that we don’t become something else entirely? That she hasn’t become something else…” I couldn’t let myself finish that. No matter my nightmares. No matter the evidence before me.
She was Lily. My Lily.
And I would not give up on her. Alive. Dead. Undead.
“Don’t do that to yourself. Even if she did survive, somehow changed, she never possessed any form of telepathy and she’d be communicating over hundreds of miles, if not thousands. Not even demons can do that.”
“No,” Johanna agreed. “Demons cannot, but the Mother can.”
The Mother…
How had I not even considered that? The Crone herself told me that Valda was the Mother. In my ignorance, I hadn’t thought to really ask her what that meant. I hadn’t even considered that being a possibility. Instead, I assumed, like Ash and Blair, that whatever happening was coming from Lily. Not me.
Certainly not Valda.
“The Mother lost to time,” I breathed, recalling a memory from those first moments after I’d woken after Daizlei. Isn’t that what Johanna called me?
“Yes,” Johanna nodded.
“I’m sorry, but are we really considering old Witch tales?” Alexandra asked. Her feet tapped restlessly as she looked at the ceiling. “The Mother? She’s like…as much a legend as the Crone and the Three-faced Goddess.” She pulled away from Tori and began to pace.
“Now, yes,” Johanna said. “But it hasn’t always been that way. And if the legends are true…” Johanna’s golden-eyed gaze swept my way, eyeing me with curiosity and no small amount of certainty. “Then we are on the cusp of a new age. Selena carries the soul of the Mother.”
Alexandra frowned, and she wasn’t the only one.
This was my moment. My chance to come clean all the way.
Tell them about the Crone.
Tell them the story she told me.
Tell them about Valda.
I opened my mouth to speak and—
Silence.
I tried again, but no words would come out. My vocal cords would not work.
Something was wrong—something was—
“I am sorry you must share this burden, my daughter. I’m so sorry,” Violet whispered. I blinked and the world swayed.
“No. No. This can’t be happening. I have to tell them—”
“They do not know; therefore, you cannot tell them. That is our curse.”
Our curse? No. That was her curse. Her and the Crone and Cirian. They were the ones that messed up the world. They were the ones that caused this.
If Ash learned that I knew…if Alexandra found out somehow…if Johanna thought I lied to them…
I swallowed hard and stilled myself. A hand touched my back and I turned to Ash. “Are you alright?” he asked, drawing me back to them. In my mind, Violet hung her head in sadness, and while I was angry with her, this was not her fault. Not really.
“I will be,” I said quietly to him before focusing on the conversation. I had to focus. I had to keep going.
“But that’s not possible—” Blair said.
“We live in an impossibly possible world,” came Oliver’s reply. She ghosted him with a chilly sweeping glance that almost made me want to snicker.
“How do you know?” Amber asked, speaking up louder than the others. I stayed silent.
“Witch blood runs in my veins, and while I’ve never been able to master their magic, the Three-faced Goddess has accepted me as her child. Which means”—she paused, her eyes flashing bright as molten gold—“I, just like any other Witch, can recognize the Goddess’s chosen vessels.”
“But I’m not the Mother,” I said slowly, testing how far this invisible boundary would go. “I just carry the soul of her. What does that mean?” I was dancing a fine line between drawing information out of Johanna and incriminating myself by asking questions I shouldn’t know to ask.
Not that Johanna seemed to notice. She cupped a hand to the side of her neck, making her long sleeve shirt fall an inch short of her wrist, giving the briefest hint of scales curled around it. I tilted my head to get a better look and she dropped her hand, crossing it behind her back almost nonchalantly.
“That depends on whether you believe ‘old Witch tales’ or if you think the ‘other’ you talk to is a hallucination, now doesn’t it?”
I couldn’t say for certain, but there was a dry snark in the way she said it. Almost like she was angry or amused, maybe a bit of both.
I tucked my toes under, rocking my weight back to stand on my own two feet. Moving to stand beside Ash, I became hyper-aware of the eyes that followed my every move.
“I think that when yo
u can control matter itself, nothing is impossible. I know that my sister is alive, but I have no proof to explain how. If you do, then I’m all ears.” I crossed my arms over my chest and nodded for her to continue.
“Every paranormal has a deity they look to in times of need. For the Witches, that is the Three-faced Goddess. Maiden. Mother. Crone. Past. Present. Future. She is balance in all things. A neutral entity, unlike most other ancients.”
I don’t know if she meant to project her voice so that it wove magic into every word, but as she spoke, the air itself seemed to quiver and listen.
“Just as Nyx had her blessed,” Johanna motioned to me, “and the Consort had his heirs,” she looked to Ash, “the Goddess had her vessels. Young women—Witches—born of immense power. This vessel would grow from a child to that of a woman, and when the Crone died, and the Mother took her place, so would the Maiden take the Mother’s, and a new Maiden would be born. This was the way of the Goddess. Birth. Life. And ultimately, death.” As she spoke, pieces of what the current Crone—Livina—told me, began to fall into place.
“To be born as the next Maiden was considered the greatest honor, and the greatest sacrifice. These Witches can harness an immense amount of power, but all magic has a cost. The vessels of the Goddess were born with the magic to save lives or end them, but to do so would cost them their own life.”
A sickly sort of creeping began to make its way up my spine. Almost like déjà vu, but worse. It was the sense of knowing what was coming, knowing it, but not admitting it.
The balance…
“Yes,” Johanna agreed. I must have spoken it out loud. “The balance. This is what separates Witches and the Three-faced Goddess from the other ancients of old. Nyx chose to favor power. The Consort chose might. The dragon chose honor. But the Three-faced Goddess chose balance. She gave her vessels power to protect the Witches should there ever come a time, but with a cost. This was to prevent Witches from growing too bold and forgetting their roots. Forgetting the balance.”
Like Livina did when she brought back Valda and Ciaran.
But I couldn’t say that.
“A thousand years ago, a young Witch walked the earth as the Maiden. Even for a vessel of the Goddess, she was born with exceptional power. Some might say too exceptional, and that the balance was broken when she was born. Others will tell you it was her choices that broke the balance and doomed the Witches—and the world—to a thousand years of darkness.”
That was one hell of an understatement. Bad choices?
She tried to break a signasti bond, then create a replacement, and proceeded not to heed an ancient’s warning—oh, and let’s not forget the bringing back the dead part.
But once again, I couldn’t say anything.
“What did she do that broke the balance?” Alexandra asked with no small amount of sarcasm, but perhaps a little curiosity. She may not believe Johanna just yet, but she wasn’t outright discrediting her.
“She created a monster and the Three-faced Goddess demanded that she slay the beast and take her own life as payment. She didn’t listen, but that itself wasn’t what broke the balance. It was when the Supernatural families of the time killed the beast, and she not only brought it back from the dead, but its child as well.”
Wait a fucking minute—a monster? That’s what they thought?
She didn’t just create a monster—she created a demon. That’s skipping over all the fun bits about how she fucked Valda and Cirian over, meanwhile saving herself.
But the baby? That part was new. Livina told me that it was bringing back Valda and Cirian’s soul that caused the punishment. She never said the baby died.
Did that mean she brought three people back? Or two? Is this just the version that has been passed to Jo, but the Crone told me the truth?
“This young Witch had taken the steps to save herself and bring back two from the dead, not accounting for the balance, but all magic has a cost. When someone kills a vessel of the Goddess, she exacts her revenge sevenfold, but what do you think happens when the Maiden—a vessel of the Goddess—uses magic that takes the lives of both the then Mother and Crone?” Johanna paused to let that sink in. “The Three-faced Goddess was so infuriated that she punished not just this girl, but the Witches as well. The legends say that she sentenced the Maiden—now the Crone—to walk until the end of days, allowing only the Maiden to be reborn as a reminder to her children that they still have a future that is bright, should the Mother ever return to set the present right.”
I wasn’t sure if the story Johanna told was kinder or not. Both of them made the Three-faced Goddess out to be a bit of a…well, Witch.
“You say set the present right,” Blair said slowly. “What does that mean?” Her stormy grey gaze flicked to me. I couldn’t tell whether she believed all of this or not.
“For her to restore that balance, she would have to push the darkness back. Not destroy it entirely, but right the scales. To do that, the Three-faced Goddess said it would be this descendant that would slay the children of the monster her vessel created and return what was lost.”
My heart stopped beating.
My head spun.
I staggered back a step, wanting to run, to hide. To unhear what I just heard, because she had to be wrong. Johanna had to have her story mixed up.
If what she said was true, and I had to kill the descendants of Valda’s…
I was going to be sick.
My feet moved on their own accord, lurching forward towards the bathroom. My arms batted at the hands that tried to stop me. My shoulders pushed them aside as my bare feet ran. I hit my knees hard on the tile floor, hunching over the toilet.
Warm hands pulled my hair away and secured it behind my head. As it was, shudders racked my body. My palms sweat. My head pounded. My stomach heaved, but nothing came up.
Fear, real and sharp as I was strong, ate at me.
If what Johanna said was true, if I was destined to kill Valda’s descendants, then…
I was destined to kill my sisters and myself.
And I couldn’t speak a word of it.
Strong hands kneaded my shoulders. Ash was sweet. Kind. He gave me the benefit of the doubt when I didn’t deserve it, and never asked why. Even now he didn’t ask. He simply sat with me without demanding a single goddamn answer.
Voices drifted from outside the door. “—clearly it’s not just some story if Selena’s in the bathroom throwing up—” That was Blair. Always the observant one.
“Maybe not, but what does this have to do with her knowing Lily is alive?” Alexandra asked. I rested my cheek against the edge of the bathtub. Wanting to scream and shout but knowing it would do no good. Now was not the time to get angry about ancient prophecies that may or may not be true.
“The Mother was the seer of all things present. The guardian of time as it was happening. It is not unreasonable to assume Selena is seeing what your sister is going through while she is sleeping. When Milla was younger, she used to dream things before they happened. I think Selena is experiencing the same.” That was Johanna again. I curled my fingers around the bathroom tub, bracing myself as I sat up, pushing against the smooth surface to haul myself to my feet.
Lily needed me. Ancient prophecy or not.
I could handle the processing of this later, after I’ve spoken with the Crone again.
If my gut was right, and it always was, last night would not be the last I saw of her.
“—what now?”
“How do we go about finding her?”
“If she was bitten and turned, she will be with her sire—”
“What was his name again?”
All eyes turned to me, as I stood in the doorway between the bathroom and disastrous bedroom. The tile floor felt like ice against my bare feet. I crossed my arms, barely containing a shiver from the cold that threatened to hold tight and not let go.
But I couldn’t let that happen.
They would just think I was losing it aga
in and Lily would die in that hellhole.
“She was never told who her master was. Victor wanted her to prove herself first.”
Johanna nodded grimly. “That’s not uncommon for Made that are brought over by Born who are higher up in the pecking order. She’d have to have a sire that’s powerful enough to control her, maybe even someone on the High Council…” She did that thing again where she cupped her neck, her brows furrowing.
“How on earth would we go about finding her—” Amber started.
“Maybe we don’t have to,” I said abruptly. All eyes turned to me. “Maybe we just need to lure one person out.”
“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like who this person is?” Amber groaned.
“If it’s who I think she’s thinking—you won’t,” Blair sighed.
“You want to lure out Anastasia,” Alexandra said. Not quite accusing, but she certainly wasn’t happy.
“I do.” She shook her head, looking away. Blair looked at the floor, weariness tugging at her. We were in an impossible situation, but to a matter manipulator, anything was possible with enough motivation.
My sister was out there somewhere. That was all the motivation I needed. This prophecy shit could wait for another day.
“And how do you plan on going about that?” Oliver asked, clearly not understanding mind games the way I did.
Anastasia took everything from me. My freedom. My life. My sister.
She impersonated me and let the world blame me for something she did.
She wore my face as a mask and a shield.
And now, I was going to return some of that.
I was going to take the only thing she had left. The only thing I knew would lure her out from whatever hole she crawled into these past few months. Because I needed her for answers and as a trade. It would be my pleasure to watch all of her carefully crafted lies come apart around her as I took away her greatest prize and let it become her downfall.
Her reputation.
“How fast can you get me a box of blue contacts?”
Chapter 36
Standing in the center of the pit was a strange and familiar experience.
Queen of Lies Page 24
