Page 45 of Dawn to Dusk
“Perhaps.” I whispered my admission.
Balthazar twisted his face. “I can’t tell you where she is; that would break her trust.”
I sighed.
Balthazar rolled his eyes further back than a teenage girl. “But today is the summer solstice, if you bothered to look at the calendar.”
Ziam scoffed at himself, shaking his head. That information meant more to Ziam than it did to me. I waited for him to explain.
“It’s one of two huge ceremonies required for a sol witch to complete.” Ziam explained to me. “The summer solstice is for thanking Goddess Mirneax and praying for another year of light. In return, Mirneax expects her witches to attempt to breed a new generation of followers. It is why sol magic runs in families a lot more than any other type of magic. Mirneax claims the children conceived during the summer solstice.”
“Okay?”
“Usually, they get together and have orgies. The need to breed becomes so overwhelming, there is no way to resist it. It’s basically their fertility ceremony.”
I attended a few of the forest god’s fertility ceremonies in my life. It was a free for all. Even mates mingled in those ceremonies.
The information didn’t help with anything, other than to explain Esmerey’s culture. So why did Ziam look so damn giddy? “Okay? Should we pull our cock outs and stand in the woods? How is this helpful?”
Esmerey was a prideful woman, and she wouldn’t run into our arms. She hid it well, but she was hurt. She got on stable ground, and we ripped it right out from under her. That mask of hers was not so perfect anymore. I could peek between the cracks now.
“This used to be my favorite event of the year before the war. If we take the high ground, we’ll catch her scent once Mirneax reaches her apex. There is no amount of magic to cover that scent up, trust me.”
Balthazar frowned at Ziam’s assessment. “There are a couple problems with the plan. One, if you can smell her, so can someone else. She is going to pick them over you morons. Two, this is Esmerey Petriv we are talking about. The best of the best. If you think plans A through Z aren’t already plotted out, you have forgotten who she is as an adversary.”
Not so long ago, she was a force that we could barely keep up with. A thorn in my side that I could not kill. She rarely made mistakes.
Except this was probably the first time she would need to hide her scent after this ceremony. She wouldn’t trust that any potion she concocted would be potent enough.
She relied on wards; her bread and butter. She probably prepared a warded hidey hole close enough to the ceremony site to retreat to.
“Where does she have to complete this ceremony?”
Ziam grinned like a wendigo during dinnertime “Now you are asking the right question. Why are the Horizon Isles so important to sol witches?”
The highest peak. So she can be close to Mirneax. “Several of the tallest mountains on the continent are here in the Jefferson Territories.”
That was when Balthazar’s head whipped up, and he snarled at some invisible threat. He barely maintained a human form as his hair stood on end. The second he crouched down to touch the earth, I knew what the issue was. “Pylo?”
“Bastard.” Balthazar hissed. “What’s he doing?” A frown twisted on Balthazar’s face as he stood up. “He’s testing the wards, poking at them.”
Ziam looked over at me, his hair turning yellow. “He’s going to figure out Esmerey is not here.”
“Why would he care? I assume they aren’t on talking terms right now.”
“Because he knows that today he can get what he wants from her.”
My heart leaped down into my stomach and made me nauseous. “What?”
“A powerful Petriv son.”
Balthazar snapped his teeth together. His fangs grew and claws replaced his hands. He needed to protect his flock. “I’ll tell you where she is. Work your issues out amongst yourselves, but if Pylo touches her, I’ll personally rip both of your tracheas out. Am I understood?”
Chapter 18:
Ziam
I poured my magic into the ground below me. Edur stood beside me for protection while my guard was down. “How does this help?”
