Page 72 of Premonition of Peace

“What’s the saying? There’s no rest for the wicked?”

I scoffed. “Lame. Getting slower in your old age, Morgan. You can do better than that.”

“Why are you taunting her?”Peace whispered from the loci, her body shaking.

“It keeps her talking,”The Warden said, shushing everyone by gesturing her hands.

The Morrigan sneered. If there was one thing I knew about her, it was that she was as vain as she was power-hungry. “My, my. Filled with unearned confidence, aren’t you, Nathalie?”

I shrugged, but the entire time I feigned nonchalance, my mind raced. “Oh, no. I think I’ve earned my confidence,” I said, placing my hand behind my back.

The Morrigan laughed, the sound eerie and wrong coming from my sister’s mouth. “Do you think Marcel will know it’s not you?”

My attempts to focus halted the moment she said his name. I tried to school my features, but I knew she’d seen me slip.

“Or Lucifer, even,” she said with a salacious smile. “Oh, that will be a fun victory.”

“I doubt it,” I said, clenching my teeth.

“That’s your flaw, Nathalie,” she began, giving me a look of pity. “You doubt too much. You neverseethe possibilities for what they are. Did you doubt it would ever come to this? I bet you did.”

In the time it took me to understand what was happening, she swiftly dragged the knife across Sasha’s throat. A curtain of crimson poured out, and Sasha’s blank green eyes rolled into the back of her head. The Morrigan shoved the lifeless body forward, letting it fall with an unceremonious thud.A scream tore from my lips as Sasha’s head smacked against the concrete with a sickening crack. Her soul was lost, forever disconnected from her body. My breaths came in ragged gasps as my brain spiraled. My memory loci was a mess of chaos.

“What’s the plan here, Morgan?” I asked, my voice trembling with barely contained fury. “Take over my body and rule the world? You’ve been making babies and killing your own family for centuries now, and you’re still at it. Really playing the long game here, huh?”

The Morrigan scoffed. “Witchcraft and magic are about power, Nathalie. We’re better than every supernatural out there, yet the gods didn’t give us immortality. Fuck the gods. I found my own. I can control life and death. I can create my immortality.”

“Guess that’s the constant wrench in your plan, isn’t it? Witches have an expiration date. Must be exhausting jumping from body to body.”

It was incredibly hard to use the Eye to search through threads while seemingly keeping my focus on the enemy in front of me. One wrong move and she would suspect something else was happening. Thousands of threads. Millions. I just had to find one.

The Morrigan tilted Katherine’s head, a mockingly thoughtful expression on her face. “Just as I said. You just don’t see the possibilities.” She smiled, baring her teeth. “When I take over your body, I’m going to fuck that delicious incubus of yours. Complete that aurae bond you’ve been denying yourself, annoyingly I might add.”

My stomach roiled. There it was. Her key to immortality. My body. My chaos magic. My aurae bond with August.

A humorless laugh bubbled up. “He’d never fuck you, Morgan. He’d know it wasn’t me. Surely you aren’t that stupid.”

She glared at me, something sparking in her eyes. “He doesn’t have to be willing, Nathalie. Surely you aren’t that stupidly innocent. He can barely hold the aurae bond back. His desire to feed will override everything. He’s putty in my hands. Or your hands, really.”

Bile rose. Anger flared. The Nats of the loci tried to calm me down, reminding me to focus. I had to get her to stop talking about him. It made me vulnerable. “Honestly, I have to admit, I thought you were going to have Sasha kill Kat so you could just skip over her entirely and come to me.”

She walked around, light on her feet, not a care in the world. She didn’t suspect danger. She thought she was in control. “Again, without seeing the possibilities, Nathalie. It’s a wonder you’re a Le Fay. Of course I could do that. But where's the fun? This way, you get to watch poor Sasha here die.” She kicked myfriend’s lifeless body with her boot and Sasha’s head lolled to the side. A flood of anger washed through me. The Morrigan knew her taunting had worked. She met my eyes, relishing her small victory. “She saw me in the veil, you know. Remember when I came out and told you something was hunting in there? It was me, naturally, but she knew. Oh, and she was so close to your lure. So close to getting back to her body.” She looked down at Sasha and pouted, flicking her boot against Sasha’s feline ears. “Alas. I got there first. A for effort, though, eh, kitty cat?”

“Fair enough,” I said, playing along and trying to swallow the emotions. “You fooled me. Still. We both know you aren’t going to kill Kat,” I said, tilting my head and raising a brow. “You can’t.”

She shrugged, flicking the blade to the side and spattering droplets of blood on the floor. “I don't need to. Your friends will do that for me.”

I barked a laugh. “Okay, you’re crazy, we can both agree on that, but this one takes the cake.”

“You don't have the power to fight me.” Anger flashed in her eyes. “All it's gonna take is one of your friends, one of yourloversto see Kat hurting you. Standing over your unconscious body. They won’t think twice to save their precious Nat.” She chuckled, skipping around Sasha’s body while I kept myself angled away from her. “You don't think that my power, my magic, is stronger than yours? Please. I've spent lifetimes perfecting chaos magic. You're just a baby. You have no idea how much power you hold, or how to use it. And you never will.”

“My friends aren't going to kill my sister.”

The thread came into view. An eerie, sickly-looking strand warped, but strong. It pulsed with a sinister energy, intwining itself between Kat and The Morrigan.

She gave me a sardonic smile. “Why not? If you thought I would take Sasha's body to kill Kat and then take you, I'mguessing you shared that same little tidbit with all of your friends. They’ll kill her without a second thought. And you know why? Because she’s always been a villain. No one trusted her. But they’ll trust their eyes the moment they see you in harm’s way.”

My lips parted as my breath stuttered. She was absolutely right that would happen.

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