Page 59 of Blood Magic (Ariel Kimber 3)

I had no idea how much time I had lost while off in my head. I looked out the window seeing that it was full on dark now. It was late. I had missed the entirety of the last movie.

“Night,” I mumbled as Dash walked out of the living room. I wasn’t even sure if he heard me.

I sunk down further into the couch. I was a jerk. Who offered to spend time with you then promptly ignored both you and what you were doing, and for hours no less? Me, I guess.

“Hey,” Addison said quietly as he leaned into my right side.

“Hey,” I whispered back shyly.

From his place on the floor, Abel laid his head on my knee. “Hey,” he said as quietly as his brother had. Even though he faced away from me, I had heard him just fine.

I rolled my eyes as the corner of my lips tipped up. They were letting me know that they didn’t care I had spaced out during the movies.

Sometimes, I think all they really needed was to be in your presence for a while to be good. They needed to know you were there. They needed to see you. They did not like being left alone at all. I didn’t think they’d always been like this until after their parents had died.

They had abandonment issues. I didn’t mind. I had spent all of my life lonely and that meant I had a whole lot of time to make up for.

Abel wrapped his arm around the backs of my legs and pulled them close to his side. He’d been on the floor for both movies and while we’d eaten. I think he’d done it so that Dash and I both would be able to sit on the couch. But he’d stayed close to my legs the entire time.

I was on one end of the couch with Addison to the right of me. Dash had been seated to the right of Addison. Neither of the twins had touched me while Dash had been in here. Not a minute after Dash had gone to bed and now they were touching me.

Were they like me? Were they not into PDA? I didn’t think so. I didn’t think they would care as much as I did. So why had they not touched me until Dash left the room?

Addison wrapped his arm around the back of the couch. His fingers trailed over my shoulder and down my arm. Very gently, he trailed them back up again. Then back down.

“What’s going on with you?” Addison asked. “Everything okay?”

I shrugged, hating it when people asked me if everything was okay. Normally, no one ever really wanted you to answer that question honestly. You were expected to say everything was fine and then go your separate ways. It was like asking how someone was doing. If you answered that question truthfully, the person who’d asked would likely never make that mistake again.

Addison expected me to answer the question truthfully and that was the problem. Rarely, were things A-Okay in my world and everything was never alright. I also didn’t enjoy listing off my problems for others to hear. If I said it out loud it seemed to take on a life of its own, to get bigger, harder to handle. If I said it out loud, then it became real.

Abel’s head twisted to the side and his green eyes squinted back at me.

“Ariel?” He asked hesitantly. “You know you can tell us anything, right? We’re family now. No matter what you say to us it’s never going to be so bad that we will want to leave you.”

I sighed. This sucked. Either I told them about my concerns or they would be worried they were doing something wrong. Or, worse, that I didn’t trust them enough to tell them.

“It’s this thing with the Council,” I told them honestly. “They make me extremely uncomfortable.”

Addison’s fingers stopped trailing up my arm and his hand pressed in to my bicep. He curled his fingers in and gave a gentle squeeze.

“If I were you, they would make me uncomfortable as well,” Addison said in his gravelly voice.

My lips parted in surprise at his answer. Everyone had been trying to sugar coat these elder people. Even Quinton sometimes.

“You’re a girl,” Abel said, and the way he said it made me feel like he thought that explained it all. “You know how rare that makes you.”

I did know. Because they had told me five thousand eight hundred and forty two times. I was beginning to wish I had been born a boy instead of a girl and this was something I never, ever thought in a million years I would feel for even a second. I liked being a girl.

“Let’s say,” Addison said, “that you burned down Quint and Ty’s house on purpose and one of us were in there and we died.”

I flinched at this, not even wanting to pretend such a thing would ever happen.

He ignored my flinch and continued. “Now, you might not have killed one of us on purpose, but you did burn down the house on purpose. You’d still be at fault for the death, right? If you were a man, the Council would come down hard on you because you killed another witch and that’s a big no-no for us. Punishments vary for the crime. But they are all harsh. They could take away your eyesight and lock you up for the rest of your life. They could castrate you, making you into a eunuch. Eunuch’s are usually forced into the rolls of servants for the Council. They can get really creative with their punishments. So much so, you’d more than likely wish you were dead. But death is never a punishment. Like everything else, it’s different for girls. They don’t hurt girls ever. They’ll keep you in confinement for a while and hope you’ve come to your senses and want to be a part of a coven. Their ultimate goal with females is children. We’re a dying breed, Ariel. They want our females to breed and they always wish and pray to whatever they believe in, sometimes they will even use fertility spells on the females. They see females as a hope for a brighter future. So, like I said, you could accidently kill one of us after purposefully destroying our property and the worst you would get is a year of confinement. And that confinement likely wouldn’t be a dungeon or a cell but a really nice room with servants who waited on you every day. But you wouldn’t be allowed out until they were ready to let you out.”

I shivered in unease. Yeah, none of that sounded creepy in the slightest.

“The younger generations care less and less about their females being witches and have been breeding with normal women without magic. And, I can’t say that I blame them. You have your coven and the family you were born into, but no one wants to live their life without a partner to share it with.”

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