Page 103 of The Rose in the Shadows

While in the castle, I’d met some rather religious Descendants. I’d met the High Priests who held weekly vigils in the palace temples. I knew that many in the castle prayed to their ancestors regularly. I’d just never personally taken the time to connect with Hyrax or pray to him. While I’d become determined to restore my family’s good name, I often felt conflicted about my relationship with the God. Was he as evil as the stories said, or had he been misrepresented all along?

One day, perhaps when my trials were done, and my attacker had been caught, I always intended to learn more about him. It had always seemed like there would eventually be time to cometo terms with who he was. And on that day, when I’dfullyaccepted my birthright, I would have prayed to him.

And now it was too late. I felt his absence in every fiber of my being.

I had grown so accustomed to the tingling sensation of power in my blood that without it, everything felt wrong. Too still. My body felt weighed down, my thoughts slower. Without the connection to Hyrax burnt into my chest, the loneliness was overwhelming. The hands on my arms released me, and I fell, unable to stop the scream of pure anguish. It was a sob of physical and emotional pain—the vicious cry of a woman who had just lost everything.

Power stripping was truly a fate worse than death.

Camilla and the others only laughed.

“You know,” she mused, twirling one of my blades between her fingers. “This isn’t exactly how I saw all this playing out. But then again, who could have imagined you’d be able to break compulsions and reveal me to everyone?”

I struggled to focus, half listening to her and half trying to process what had just happened. Consciously, I knew that my magic was gone, but I still searched for it haphazardly, scanning my body for any remaining shreds. It couldn’t all be gone. I couldn’t be powerless, not after all of this.

“You probably thought you were so smart by doing that,” Camilla continued. “You probably thought you’d ended this by identifying me and forcing me on the run. But you never suspected little Geia! Why would you? You expect everyone to worship the ground you walk on, so much so that you never would have thought such a bright-eyed little girl could have been working against you.”

Pull yourself together,I screamed at myself, forcing myself to breathe through the burning pain in my veins.

My magic may be… gone, but the threat wasn’t. Camilla was making that very clear. And without the assistance of my powers, I was more in danger than I’d ever been in before. I needed to focus if I had any hope of making it out of this alive. I was at a disadvantage, but I wasn’t dead yet. After all, I had spent months training with Rankor to fight without my powers, to not rely on them in moments of crisis.

It was time to put all that training to use.

I scanned over the scene around me. Camilla paced before me, and a group of twelve, maybe thirteen, was behind her. I didn’t recognize any of them. Most were older men and women, though some teenagers stood scattered amongst them. Not a single man or woman looked at me with any sympathy. I’d find no compassion here.

I was a powerless mortal against fourteen Witches. It wasn’t necessarily my favorite odds.

“How did I get here?” I croaked, throat raw from my screams. I needed to keep her talking long enough to come up with a solid plan.

Camilla raised an eyebrow at me as if she suspected my thoughts and doubted their feasibility. “I brought you here.”

Her grin was positively demented.

She raised her hands before her, and the ground shook. Clouds pushed through the sky, and rain fell upon us in heavy, unnatural sheets. The air chilled, and goosebumps rose on my flesh. And then… the darkness came upon us.

The trees rustled under the force of hundreds of shadows, moving like living creatures, made their way to encase her in a dark embrace. They danced through her fingers, and her eyes transformed into black shells.

By the Gods, she looked like a creature straight from the mythology books Hansel forced me to memorize.

The attack, I realized. She had used all the deaths from Clay’s birthnight celebration as sacrifices, and now she was high with the power of all that blood. How many times would I underestimate her? She’d proven to be smarter than I initially thought and far more cruel. Now, she stood before me more powerful than any other Descendant I’d ever met. Had she become as powerful as the Gods themselves?

I didn’t stand a chance.

“Why are you doing this?” I questioned, hating myself for crying.

She threw her arms down and was in front of me instantly, ripping at my face until my eyes locked with hers. Hatred burned in her gaze and her eyes were completely black. The dark magic had taken her over entirely. In hindsight, I realized that I probably had never met thetrueCamilla, the one my friends had grown up with. Whoever she was then, she wasn't now.

“Are you going to sit here and pretend you don’t know?”

Ripping my face from her grasp, I scrambled away on my hands and knees. “I don’t know Camilla!”

I instantly felt the whip of her shadow power cracking against my cheek. The pain was shocking, worse than any blow I’d been dealt before. When I touched my cheek and felt my fingers covered in blood, it came as no surprise that the skin was torn apart.

“You don’t need to do this,” I tried to reason with her. “The black magic clouds your judgment, but we can help you. You have friends, Camilla. Iris, Rankor, Kent, even Clay. They’re all worried about you.”

With a scream of rage, she thrust a hand towards me. The shadows shot out of her fingertips, bursting through the sky in my direction with such ferocious speed that I had only seconds to throw up my arms and block my face as they hit me. Each was like a tiny beast, nipping at my skin until they coveredme in a million tiny cuts. They held me for a moment in their gut-wrenching embrace before they dropped me, and I slumped forward, gasping in pain.

“Get up.” She sneered, her voice devoid of any feeling. “You’re not the victim here.”

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