Page 32 of The Fated and the Damned
“The spell worked,” I said to the witches. “Once we leave this place, Sylvie will be none the wiser. It should buy us enough time to get away safely to Mistvellen, but we need to leave right now. I want all children and elderly near the front of the convoy. Those of you willing to fight can take your orders from Erika or Lukasz. The rest of you, move out.”
Dante looked at me in surprise as the crowd dispersed, taking my hand gently. “That’s the plan? You’re leaving the village?”
I hung my head. “If there was any other way, I’d take it. I know this is their home, but villages can be rebuilt. If leaving means they get to keep their lives, then I’m willing to make that sacrifice. They might hate me for it, but if we can get them to Mistvellen, at least they’ll be safe.”
He pulled my head back gently, staring deep into my eyes. “No one hates you Kitarni. The witches respect your judgement. You’re their High Witch now, and you’re doing what you must. It’s a wise decision and my father will happily accommodate the witches. It’s likely many have family in Mistvellen. Daughters whose fathers or brothers remain there, and witches who can be reunited with old flames.
“The old ways are done, Kitarni. This is the future we wanted. A chance for families to remain together, for witches to have the right to choose how and where they want to live their lives.”
My heart leapt at his words, hope rekindling deep in my stomach. Everything he said was true. It was exactly what I’d dreamed being the lady of Mistvellen might accomplish one day. Under other circumstances, it would be a joyous occasion indeed. But for now, our task was to get them there safely.
One step at a time, Kitarni.
I lifted my hand, curling my fingers around the back of Dante’s neck and into his hair. “I’d like to see that future. But first we need to get these people to safety. And then?” I smiled devilishly. “I recall a certain lord telling me about his fondness for jewels on the fairer sex.”
The ring in Dante’s eyes flashed. “Not the fairer sex.You.I want to see them on you, and you might also recall that I mentioned I want you naked while you wore them. But I have a feeling you’re talking about a different kind of jewellery.”
I elbowed him gently. “Why not have both?”
FOURTEEN
Dante
TheDarkQueen’sfollowersapproached, seeming to glide along the ground with their dark robes like a wall of smoke gathering from a wildfire. Their mutilated faces were twisted into grimaces or stitched lips, their mark of faith to Sylvie. To us, they were simply the masks of the damned. Fools hellbent on destroying all in their path, all because of their belief.
Christians, pagans, dark worshippers; our beliefs were so different, and it was that fact that made faith so dangerous. That fact that had humans burning witches at the stake and cultists cutting out hearts and draining bodies of blood.
Were they so different in the end? I had to think so. Humankind had many flaws, but despite their ruthlessness towards witches—or those unfortunate human girls who were labelled as such—their savagery was born from fear, not a need for power.
Yet power was always what it came down to, and Sylvie had it in droves. I cocked my head as I studied the approaching cultists, waiting for the moment the Dark Queen arrived.
I wanted to see her face the moment she realised what Kitarni had done. Wanted to see how she’d retaliate, knowing she’d been duped. It didn’t hurt that Baba Yaga would likely be with her, ever the loyal servant to kiss and cower at her feet.
My anticipation piqued as the woman who’d once been my mother did indeed arrive, her lips painted red, her eyes lined with dark kohl. She was so thin she looked like a wraith, buried beneath a black tunic and a fur shawl too hot for the warmer weather.
Hatred boiled inside me ever hotter, but it was the woman beside her who stole my attention. Sylvie was breathtaking. The kind of beauty that men wove ballads about or sung sonnets for. Her tawny skin was golden, flushed with health and a youth belying her true age. Long brown hair hung braided down her back, and the leathers clad to her curves left little to the imagination.
Gone was the woman risen from the ashes, half-dead and bearing the pallor of death. The Dark Queen was restored and, though at first glance she was pleasant to look at, I knew the ugliness inside her. The hollow where her heart should be and the emptiness in her soul. It shone through to the outside if one only looked beyond the veil of beauty.
I wondered how much blood it had taken to renew this form. How many witches had died to get her here. My stomach twisted. Too many. The answer would always be too many.
Sylvie’s lips curled with triumph as she spotted the witches, and she lifted a single finger into the air, pointing it towards the coven she hated so. “No mercy.”
This morning, those words would have made even my stomach twist, but instead I smiled as I heard the soft whispers of Kitarni’s own lips moving from where she stood beside me, her hands clasped with those of Eszter and her mother. The Bárány women, standing together as they chanted a spell, strengthening their existing enchantment. United like they always would be in all things. Kitarni trembled beside me and I placed my hand on her shoulder, lending her my strength should she need it.
Sylvie’s forces rushed forwards, their eyes glimmering with the madness of bloodmorphia, their weapons raised. An eerie cry sounded from the dark wave as they crashed down upon the witches and táltosok alike, and I braced myself for the moment we’d all been waiting for.
The witches stood fast, their faces determined and weapons of their own raised high, but as the enemy attacked, their blows went straight through them. Again, they struck, met with thin air as they attacked. Confused, the cultists looked at each other, then back at Sylvie, whose red lips twisted in a slash of anger, her brown eyes flashing.
“What is the meaning of this?” she hissed as she approached, waving her arm through a nearby witch. Her arm passed straight through her, and the witch in question smiled wickedly before her body disappeared before my very eyes.
Sylvie’s brows creased, and then her face morphed into something ugly and sinister as she bared her teeth, her eyes turning pitch black as she screamed. The sound was so chilling it skittered down my spine, settling into the crooks of my bones and the pit of my stomach.
The Bárány women ceased their chanting and the illusion fell away. Like a shockwave, all the witches and táltosok in the village disappeared, leaving the town quiet as a graveyard. There was nothing but the odd tinkle of metal or shuffling feet from the cultists as they looked on with gaping mouths—mostly. Many had sewn them shut.
I glanced at Kitarni, who grinned at me like a child on Szent-este morning. “An illusion spell,” I said, smiling as the witches continued to wink out of existence through the water’s reflection we peered into. “Kitarni, you never cease to surprise me.”
“It was the only way I could think of to get everyone out safely,” she said simply. “I managed to harness the spell to make the copies act as realistically as you or I. There’s a magical signature to every spell, but I took a gamble that Sylvie would be too distracted by her need for revenge to notice it.”
