by Celia Crown
His Sapphire Witch
Celia Crown
Copyright © 2019 by Celia Crown
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are from the author's imagination or folklore, legends, and general myths.
The book or any portion of the book may not be reproduced or used under any circumstances, except with the written permission from the author. Public names, movies, televisions, and locales, or any references are used for atmospheric purposes. Any similarities and resemblances to alive or dead people, events, brands, and locales are all complete coincidences.
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Editor: Syeda Erum Fatima Naqvi
Contents
Copyright
His Sapphire Witch
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilouge
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His Sapphire Witch
by Celia Crown
Charlotte
In a society where magic is frowned upon and those who practice black magic are punishable by death, in a world where women are already an oppressed species, we are at a disadvantage because the gene with magic is only present in females. From the beginning, women are doomed, and witches are born to die with fire.
I am a woman, and I am a witch.
I kept my magic to myself for years. I made a promise to my brother, and I will keep it until I die.
It’s just my brother and me now. I don’t need a stranger in our home even if he’s a Special Forces brother.
I don’t want him, but I fell in love.
Alexander
After the gruesome war between the Normal and the Wicked that went on for decades, witches are suppressed with the threats of fire and eternal damning of hell. Some say it’s a good thing that magic is semi-illegal or else the world would be dominated by women. Others believe that tyrannizing one race is the first step of history’s repetition.
I am a man, and I am a soldier.
I have sworn to protect and serve, create chaos for peace, and accept hate to love.
Taken into the home of my war brother, I meet a girl too young to carry a burden so tragic and too scared to let me in to save her.
I want her, but fate is cruel.
Chapter One
Charlotte
“Witches have an abnormally-low tolerance for loneliness. It isn’t fair for you to be a monster by yourself.” I remember reading it from a book “Come to the Witch’s Coven.”
I dislike social interactions, but I don’t necessarily dislike people.
I’m not one of those people who simply go out because I am bored or want to explore so I can meet new people; I have no interest in something that potentially annoys me to death.
There are a lot of reasons why I don’t go out much; skin cancer from the sun is the obvious one, the discrimination of people in the world and the obnoxious, undesirable experience being thrust upon me to force a good impression on people who I will never see again are some others.
The main reason is the people, especially those who have any kind of racism or sexism towards witches. I know dogs that have the most to lose bark the loudest. They can yell their slurs all they want, and I have accepted that ignorant people will continue to breed stupidity with the next generation.
Some witches take it and some don’t. People who come across a witch that won’t take bullshit from others will face retaliation, through verbal confrontation or magic.
A law passed years ago; it was part of the treaty between what people call Normal and us who are Wicked Witches. The law states that witches can defend themselves through reasonable force if they are threatened. That part is fuzzy in the treaty because anyone can describe the feeling of threatened into a great degree of exaggeration.
That’s why the elders of the witch community and the president at the time had it rectified to explain the force. It’s similar to the force for police and self-defense, and many witches were delighted to be able to fight back against those who got away with spewing slurs and throwing things to deliberately hurt women.
Normal people have been burnt once the law had been amended. Cosmetic surgery went up to the roof, and witches had laughed when they felt the gratification of self-defense against bigots who tried to burn them.
What goes around comes around.
I stay away from them, more in the line of staying away from everyone and becoming a hermit by choice.
The house that my parents passed down to my brother and me was the last thing they gifted us after they had fought for the equality of witches.
They died in a protest twelve years ago when I was six. I was too young to understand why they were never coming home again. That phase turned into self-hatred for my identity and for my powers, but I never really got over it as my brother believed I had.
If I wasn’t so unlucky as to have that gene, then they would still be here with us.
I know in some part of my heart that my brother resents me for the silence in the house. That’s why he had joined the military the moment he turned eighteen. I was eight at the time and alone in a house sealed off to the world.
The house was my world, and I survived just fine. I could create anything I wanted in my room; the space was all mine, and there was no concept of time or hunger.
I survived.
Jesse would come back once in a while to check up on me, but he would be gone by the end of the week for another tour to who knows where. He doesn’t talk about what he sees in the other side of the world, but I can see the pain and sadness in his eyes.
I don’t ask him to stay. There is always an itch under his skin when he stays in the house, either from the happy memories when we were little or because of my presence. I don’t say anything when he leaves for weeks, months, or even years until I see him again.
He sends letters with basic questions to ask how I am and check up on me to see if I slipped and hit my head on the sink.
I answer back with generic questions, nothing too deep as he rarely asks what goes on in my room. It’s where I spend all my time. I think he’s too afraid to ask, or he doesn’t care enough to wonder if I might be endangering myself too much by staying in the room.
Jesse loves me, and I love him; that’s all that matters.
We may not be the family that we used to be, but it’s something that I can work with.
This is the new beginning that I have been looking for. Jesse is coming back from being discharged from the military, and he’s going to be home.
I’m going to be the sister that he deserves. I can do this. I can do it for him. We could make up for the lost time over the years.
A clean slate—
“Charlotte, this is Alexander, and he will be staying here with us.”
Abort, abort, abort!
Who is this guy, and what is he doing in our home? He needs to get out of here with his big, camouflage bag and mean glare.
I don’t care how chiseled his jaw is or how massive his body is, and I certainly don’t care about the dominance that radiates off of him when he looks at me. His eyes are dark, peering into my soul and digging up old fears that I still have around.
I hate it.
I hate being watched, being under someone’s scrutiny, and I hate this tiny spark of fear simmering in my belly. It scares me, and on some level, my natural instinct wants to wipe the man’s
life away.
It’s better for him to be gone and away from my brother. I’m utterly terrified of this mysterious man.
“No, no! Get him away!” I scream, clenching the cup of water in my hand as I shake in fright and madness.
A wisp of a chuckle reaches my ear; it’s a voice I’m familiar with, and I try to keep it at bay. The voice is always there, making me question everything that I am confident about.
“Kill him”, it whispers, “kill him”.
I mentally shake away the voice, slamming the glass of water on the kitchen counter and flee. I run away from them, away from my brother’s voice calling after me as I stumble back into the safety of my room.
Strangers make me nervous. It’s been years since I have seen anyone other than my brother, and I don’t remember the last time I stepped foot outside this house.
Instant relief comes to me as I slide down on the floor. The carpet is soft as I curl my toes into it. My throat burns as heavy panting forces my lungs to expand to intake air. A wave of dizziness washes over my vision when I stare at my bed.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I blink away the blurriness.
I was not always like this. I didn’t mind going outside and interacting with other children when I was a child, but things have changed too much over the years, and I don’t know where this irrational fear came from.
I can't seem to find a reason for being scared, frightened of everything and anything that can harm me in the slightest.
Alexander looked at me as if I was prey. He was analyzing me, stalking my breathing with his dark eyes, and studying me to find the best way to hurt me.
Yes, it whispers again, he’s going to hurt you.
“Shut up.” I knock my head into my fist and twist my hand on my hair to yank it.
Any pain will get the voice to stop, but it’s getting stronger and more persistent over the last two years.
Alexander is a man of power, a man who had seen war with his steely eyes and a man my brother trusts to be in our home.
Conflicted and unease with this upsetting imbalance of my life, I want to retreat into a world that I know will be safe for me to let my guard down, a world I create in my room when I have nightmares, and it calms me down because anything is possible with a mind full of power.
Alexander put a damper into my plan to celebrate my brother’s return from his military service.
I’m in the middle of planning to sneak around my own house when a knock comes above me.
“Charlotte?”
My voice croaks, “Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
No, I’m not fine. There is a stranger in my comfort zone, and I will never be fine with that. Why did Jesse think it’s okay for him to bring someone I have never even heard about into our home and invade my peace with his stench of intensity.
I hum back, “Fine.”
“I’m sorry, I should have told you.” There’s a tone of regret, and I hate myself for making Jesse feel that way.
“It’s fine. I just need time. He’s your friend. You can have anyone you want over.” I try to make him toss away the sadness.
I might have accidentally made it sound like this Alexander guy is over for a talk or dinner, maybe a sleepover, but I think he’s staying for a while.
Bad news for me.
“I promise, he’s not a bad man. I served with him, and he’s saved my life many times. Alex is my brother.”
I don’t know why that hurts me more than the man staying. I don’t want my brother belonging to someone else when he barely has time for me. This is our chance to start over; Alexander is ruining everything.
We can get rid of him, the voice crackles in my head, skin him and burn him alive, then we can crumble his ashes over Jesse’s body.
I grimace, pressing the heels of my palms to my temples. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”
“Charlotte?”
“Don’t talk about my brother,” I hiss back to the giggling in my head.
Jesse has been a constant topic for the voice in my mind, and I hate the negativity that surrounds my brother with it. I’m tried meditating, playing music, and even talking back to the voice to bargain with it.
Anyone would have sent me to an asylum if they saw that I was arguing with myself.
“Charlotte, I’m coming in,” Jesse twists the doorknob, and I realize that I didn’t lock it.
I scramble up from the floor to avoid being hit, and Jesse walks in with his military uniform. His shoulders had filled out the top. Everything about him screams adult and moving on. He’s the son that mom and dad would be so proud of if they are here to see it. They would see the accomplishments and peace he gets from fighting for the country.
I’m still the little daughter stuck in the past.
“Hey,” he starts awkwardly.
“Hi,” I murmur back.
I never had a full-on conversation with Jesse before. He stopped being just a big brother when our parents died; he became my guardian, a stranger under the skin of Jesse, and I put up with it for a while. I was too scared to lose him too, but I knew the moment he left for the military, I had lost him long ago.
I lost him to the grief and the blame he must have felt for me. He had to have been thinking about leaving the house and me for a while before he made the decision to go.
“Do you still get headaches?” He steps forward, smiling briefly.
I swallow, “Sometimes, I’m getting better.”
The last time he came back, he had seen me take a painkiller. He had asked, and I had told him about the headaches, but I hadn’t told him when they started. I barely remember going a day with the ugly voice talking to me in my head, and my headaches usually start after the voice stops.
We stand still in my room, silence laying heavily between us as we don’t know what to do after these small talks.
I don’t know the life he has well enough to make a conversation, and he doesn’t know much about mine. I guess this all boils down to me being a witch. Mom wasn’t one, and I’m glad she wasn’t. I wouldn’t dare to wish this upon her, this burden of proof that I’m a wicked and a cursed one.
“Can I hug you?” Jesse asks, and it feels wrong for him to even have to ask permission to hug his little sister.
I nod, and his arms come around me too quickly, throwing me off balance as he clenches me to his chest. My nose itches. The aching at the rims of my eyes bothers me as I blink into his uniform. I could smell the faint dust and sand on it. The texture under my fingers on his back is rough as I hesitatively hug him back.
Wow, I think, first human contact.
“I’m back,” he mutters into my hair, and for the first time in years, the voice doesn’t say anything.
“I missed you,” Jesse rubs the back of my head and chuckles when my puny arms squeeze his waist as he tries to move back.
“I missed you too,” I tell him, soaking the front of his uniform with my tears.
He doesn’t need to see them. I better dry them before he thinks this is his fault.
“I’m not leaving again,” he said, shifting his body to hug me tighter. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here, but I’m staying for good this time. I won’t be leaving you alone. I never should have.”
I don’t blame him. He had to find himself again after our parents passed away. He was young, and he needed to breathe. Staying in the house thinking about the cause of their deaths would surely have caused him to go insane.
I would have left too.
The opinionated voice comes back, what a liar.
Alexander’s going to take him away; there won’t be Jesse and little Letty. It’s going to be Jesse and Alex, the voice crackles.
“That’s not true,” I whisper quietly.
Why did the voice have to call Alexander so intimately?
“Charlotte, what’s going on?” Jesse pushes me back, holding my shoulders to stare me in the eyes.
My lips twitch, “Nothing.”
“Charlotte,�
� his voice turns stern, “I know you’re not okay. You were acting weird the last time I came home.”
I’m happy that he picked up on the changes in me, and I’m happy that he called this house his home too. For so long, it’s been home to me and a temporary home for Jesse. Maybe the old me has been overthinking this abandonment issue that I had in my head.
Jesse didn’t abandon me; he always came home.
“I’m just under the weather today,” I smile at him.
He puts his hand on my forehead, getting a sense of my body temperature. “I heard you talking once.”
Cocking my head confusion, I wait for him to continue.
“It was in the middle of the night, and there wasn’t anyone there.”
My body tenses up, fingers clawing at the skin of my palms as I push my teeth together, so my jaw is trembling at the force.
“Hey, hey,” Jesse hooks his hand under my chin and puts pressure down on my jaw to release the tension. “It’s okay. I’m just worried.”
This isn’t something I want Jesse to know. I want everything to remind him that I’m his sister rather than a witch.
“Probably, I was still half dreaming,” I laugh it off.
He doesn’t buy it as shown by the curl of his brows, but he doesn’t push me to tell him more. I wouldn’t have told him anyway; this guarded secret is not his burden to carry. He’s already got enough on his plate as it is.
I change the subject, “Um, does he have to be here?”
Saying his name would solidify the inevitable and the truth that Alexander is physically in the house somewhere, most likely lurking if he’s a brother of arms with Jesse. Special Forces is a scary title, and there are certain skills that come with it, skills that I do not want to witness.
“Who, Alex?” Jesse asks.
I wince at the name.
Yes, I hate the attachment in his voice.
“His home is force-closed by the bank. He has no place to go. I offered up the spare room we have. He said he’s going to look for a new place. Alex’s good. He’s a standup guy. I want you to meet him.”
