Chapter 9: The Witch's Wrath
The water in the scrying pool, usually a placid sheet of obsidian-hued liquid, began to churn. Aine watched from her high-backed chair of carved bone, her fingers steepled. At first, it was just a ripple, a distortion in the magic. Then the images came, sharp and unforgiving.
Ca. Not on a mission. Not hunting a rival. He was in a flour-dusted cottage kitchen, a place of mundane chaos that was an offense to Aine’s senses. And he was not alone. The hellspawn witch, Kadri, stood close to him. Too close. The vision had no sound, but it had feeling, and the feeling radiating from Ca was not the cold obedience Aine commanded. It was a warmth, a looseness in his shoulders, a tilt of his head as he listened to the witch speak. He reached out, not to strike or to compel, but to brush a stray lock of hair from her ashen cheek.
Aine’s breath hitched.
The scene shifted, melting into another. Later. The cottage was dark, lit only by embers in the hearth. They were on a ragged rug, limbs entangled, the demon’s midnight hair a stark contrast against the witch’s dark skin. His head was resting in her lap, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw. His eyes, those piercing green eyes Aine had spent centuries trying to harden, were closed in something that looked like peace.
Betrayal.
The word was a silent scream in the tower’s stagnant air. It curdled the magic around her.
Aine was on her feet in a single, fluid motion of contained fury. Her hand snapped to the belt at her waist, and the first ritual dagger was in her grasp before the thought had fully formed. She hurled it, not at the pool, but at the wall where the images were projected. The steel blade, etched with binding runes, sank into the black stone with a sickening crunch.
“You faithless creature,” she hissed.
Another dagger followed. Then another. She screamed, a raw, guttural sound that was less a word and more a physical force. It was a curse of unraveling, of spite, a spell designed to flay the soul. The ancient stones of the tower, saturated with millennia of dark magic, groaned in response. From the cracks between them, a thick, dark fluid began to weep, tracing glistening paths down the walls like bloody tears. The air filled with the scent of hot copper and ozone.
The scrying pool erupted, water boiling over the silver rim to sizzle on the floor. The images of Ca and his witch dissolved into a chaotic swirl.
Her chest heaved. The silence that fell was heavier than the screams. She stood amidst the evidence of her rage, the bleeding stones, the quivering daggers, the hissing pool. Her cold, calculating eyes narrowed, all the heat of her anger freezing into a single, sharp point of purpose.
She walked to the center of the room, to the circle of inlaid onyx that never saw light. She didn’t need to speak a long, drawn-out invocation. Her will was the summons. She poured her intent into the circle, a hook of pure command she had sunk into Ca’s essence centuries ago.
“Ca,” she said, his name a crack of thunder in the quiet room. “To me. Now.”
The shadows in the corner of the room deepened, coalescing, taking shape.
He stepped from the darkness as if merely parting a curtain, the shadows clinging to his shoulders like loyal hounds before melting away. His form was solid, real, and he offered a slight, familiar nod. “Aine.”
She didn’t look at him, instead picking up a fallen ritual dagger and wiping its blade clean on her sleeve. The coolness in her voice could have frozen fire. “Ca.”
“The Kadri curse,” she began, her tone deceptively light as she examined the dagger’s edge. “How does it progress?”
“I am closely monitoring the matter,” he said, his voice even, a practiced calm that had soothed her tempers for centuries. “Kadri will not interfere with your plans.”
She erupted.
The calm shattered. “You lie to me in my own tower?” she snarled, the words whipping across the room. She advanced, the dagger in her hand forgotten, her focus a laser on his green eyes. “I saw you. I saw you with her in that… that hovel.”
Her voice dropped to a venomous whisper. “Your head in her lap. Her touch on your skin.” The tower groaned, the bloody tears on the walls beginning to flow faster, dripping onto the floor with soft, percussive taps. “You’ve not been monitoring a curse. You’ve been rolling in the flour-dusted sheets of a hellspawn whore.”
“Do you think my sight is so blind?”
“Far from it,” Ca said, his voice a low rumble that seemed to absorb the room’s violent energy. He didn’t flinch from her gaze. “The question is, are you enjoying the show? Watching me thoroughly thwart your most irritating rival?”
“Thwart?” Aine laughed, a sharp, brittle sound. “Is that what you call it? It looked like you were failing spectacularly at a simple assassination.”
“You wanted Kadri neutralized.” He took a single, deliberate step forward. “Her ‘exquisite death’ curse is now a knot of conflicting intent around her own heart. She trusts me. She’s distracted. She’s weak.” He tilted his head, a flicker of genuine curiosity in his green eyes. “Or did you just want a clean corpse to gloat over? That seems… small for you.”
“Don’t you dare critique my methods,” she spat, her knuckles white around the dagger’s hilt.
“Your methods have gotten soft,” he stated, his tone shifting from calm to cutting. “Predictable. You sit in this tower and send blades in the night. It’s efficient. It’s also profoundly boring.”
The insult landed with the force of a physical blow. Aine’s breath caught.
“I, however,” he continued, a slow, dangerous smile touching his lips, “am rather enjoying the return of your fire. Even if it’s aimed at me.”
The space where he stood was suddenly empty. The air where he’d been snapped inward.
He was just there, behind her. His chest pressed against her back, his presence an intimate shock. One hand closed over her wrist, his grip like iron, forcing her fingers to uncurl from the ritual dagger. It clattered to the floor, the sound unnaturally loud.
His other arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her flush against him. She was trapped, completely enveloped by his strength.
A tremor ran through her, a violent, unwilling shiver that started in her spine and radiated outwards. Rage and something else, something she hadn’t felt directed at him in a long time, warred within her. Her body went rigid, then pliant, then rigid again, held captive by the warring passions coursing through her. She hated him. She wanted to break his hold. She also never wanted him to let go.
His breath was warm against her ear, a stark contrast to the cold fury that had gripped her moments before. "You're shaking," he murmured, his voice a low vibration through her body.
She hated the observation, hated the proof of her own weakness. "Let go of me."
"Or what?" His arm tightened, a fraction of an inch, pulling her deeper into the solid heat of him. "You'll throw another tantrum? Make the stones bleed a little more?" He chuckled, a dark, intimate sound. "It's a mess, Aine. Even for you."
The casual dismissal of her power was the final insult. She drove her elbow back, a sharp, vicious movement aimed at his ribs. He grunted, his grip loosening just enough for her to spin in his arms, her hand coming up to strike his face.
He caught her wrist an inch from his cheek, his fingers closing like a manacle. His green eyes held hers, no longer amused, but flat and serious. "Enough."
"You don't command me," she spat, her chest heaving, her free hand clenched into a fist at her side.
"I'm not commanding. I'm advising." His gaze didn't waver. "Find your entertainment elsewhere."
The words landed, cold and final. The blood on the walls slowed to a sluggish trickle. The silence in the tower became absolute, a void where her rage had been.
"Kadri," he said, the name a statement of fact, "is my responsibility now."
Aine went utterly still. The words weren't a request or a suggestion. They were a declaration of a new, unchangeable reality. He was not asking for permission. He was telling her how things would be.
She stared at him, at the ancient being she had thought she owned, and saw a stranger. The loyalty she had taken for granted was gone, replaced by a resolve that was entirely his own. He released her wrist, and her arm fell to her side, numb.
He took a step back, the shadows in the room beginning to curl eagerly around his legs. "Find another witch to torment. A different rival to break." He offered her a faint, almost pitying smile. "This one is taken."
Then he was gone, dissolving into the darkness from which he came, leaving her alone in the tower that now felt emptier than it ever had before.