Page 25 of Beasts of Shadows #1

Macha’s Curse

While Macha remained faithful throughout her marriage to Dagda, it was not a trait he shared.

The god of men bore many illegitimate children.

Macha, a creature of kindness, offered each of his progeny a place in her home.

A comforting hand when needed. Though a goddess of war, Macha saw strategy in this soft approach.

Still, of all the Morrigan, Macha was the only one to dream of having a child of her own.

#

Two days later, it’s my first Bonfire Moon.

I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Ravi or Nikolai, and I’m grateful for the reprieve.

Still, as the evening looms, I think of Nikolai’s challenge when I first got here—a duel to decide who would bow to who.

I wonder if he even remembers it. Or if he’s just been waiting.

The daily lessons are superficial. Most of the kids aren’t even there.

“You’ll know when the hunting begins,” Reema says, tapping her pen nervously against a table.

“It’s not officially sanctioned until twilight.

But sometimes the underclassmen get… playful.

There are penalties for hunting on campus, or before the free-for-all, but some of the weak-willed risk it.

Last year, a witch got trapped in a corridor with a group of dybbuks just after classes ended. ” She swallows. “What was left of her…”

My head spins. The anxiety is infectious.

By late afternoon, Reema and I are trailing across campus, avoiding the high-trafficked paths and skirting building corners like fugitives.

Geneir said we could crash in his room for the night—he and Cody share one of the corner doubles in the Sophomore dormitory tower.

He even left the ward cracked, just enough for Reema to undo it without tipping off anyone else.

Inside, it’s dim and warm. The curtains are drawn, and there’s a faint scent of incense and damp laundry.

One side of the room is aggressively tidy.

The other—Cody’s—is chaos contained by muscle memory.

His bed is unmade, a leather journal splayed across the floor.

A pair of gloves dangle from the drawer pull of his desk.

Geneir’s side has a little shrine nestled between stacks of academic books and pens. A worn photo of Reema is tucked between candleholders. She pretends not to see it, but I catch the way her eyes soften.

The guys are out—hockey practice, probably. Won’t be back until nightfall. It gives us the space we need.

Reema locks the door, then turns to seal it. She twists her fingers in practiced patterns, murmuring an incantation under her breath. The sigils flare softly white before fading from sight.

“It’ll hold,” she says.

I nod, toeing off my boots and curling onto Geneir’s bed. Reema crosses the room and settles near the window. After a moment, she digs through her pack and tosses something at me.

Dried flowers.

“It’s a low-grade entheogen that only grows in the Shadow Realm,” she says. “Takes the edge off. Chew up. It’ll help your nerves once the screaming begins.”

Comforting.

Still, I chew. It tastes like ash and incense. Burns the back of my throat before slipping down smooth—sweet, even. Like honey.

I wait for something—visions, nausea, peace. I’m not sure what.

“Do you ever wonder who you could have been without being sent…here?” she asks.

I sink deeper into the mattress, letting the question hover.

I always figured I’d work as an agent or publicist. I have the connections. It seemed like a fit.

But here, none of it feels real anymore. Every day at Van Ritten is a new trial. A new game of survival.

“I don’t know,” I admit.

Reema hugs herself, watching something I can’t see outside.

“What about you? What would you do if you didn’t have to come here?” I ask, quieter.

“I applied to Cornell. Got into the vet program. I always wanted to be a vet.”

She turns to me, smiling—like it physically hurts.

“How did you get mixed up in all this?” I wonder, rolling onto my belly. “You’re a witch, right?”

“Barely,” Reema retorts. “Covenants are mostly made with mortals, although they can be made with blood witches. In those cases, they usually amplify magical abilities. While it’s true that my grandmother could not do any spell work without a coven, and my mother’s abilities were nonexistent, that’s not why they made the deal.

My mom had my older brother when she was fifteen.

Ehsaan and I are Irish twins, so when she got pregnant a second time, mom scrambled to provide for our family.

The arrangement boosted our abilities, sure, but more importantly, it provided her with sustainable finances. An apartment complex.”

“So, what did it cost you?” At Reema’s wary expression, I add, “Don’t you have to do anything in return for all that?”

Reema traces her fingers along the wall, her features drawn.

“He gets to choose who I’ll marry. When I turn nineteen.”

I sit back, startled. I knew deities used to make deals like that. Marriage as payment. Bloodlines as currency.

I just didn’t think it still happened. Not to people like Reema.

If my parents tried to pull something like that on me, I’d probably leave them.

Then again, they fought tooth and nail to keep me from coming here, and still lost.

So maybe parents aren’t the problem. Maybe the system is.

I scoot over so she can sit beside me.

“I didn’t know about it until I turned twelve. My mom always warned me off boys. I thought it was just leftover trauma from her thing with my dad. But she had other reasons, clearly.”

Reema’s voice is steady, but there’s something brittle in the spaces between her words.

“I had my life mapped out. Goals by year. No dating until grad school. Marriage, maybe, in my thirties. Kids never. But a dog? Sure. I had breeds narrowed down.”

Her laugh is dry. Unfunny.

“Eventually, I accepted it and started fantasizing. About who he might be. I made him a professor. Or a fellow vet. Someone kind. Helpful. Smart.”

She looks over at me.

“That was before I got here. Before I met people like Kilronan and Ta?sse and Nikolai.”

Functioning psychopaths with powers and raging hormones.

Not exactly husband material.

“That was before you fell in love,” I probe.

She’s quiet for a long time.

“Geneir’s great,” I continue. “It must be scary to think you might not get to keep that.”

“You can see the future, can’t you?”

“I can’t control what I see,” I say flatly.

She flinches. Looks away. And suddenly, I feel like the asshole.

Of course she wants to know. Of course she’s desperate.

I sigh. “But I can try.”

I hold out my hands.

She hesitates—then gives in.

The second I touch her, the world tips sideways. The air shimmers, smells change, light folds in on itself.

I’m not in Geneir’s dorm anymore.

Instead of seeing Reema’s future, though, all I see is a girl close to our age standing beside a cast circle.

She watches a handsome middle eastern man with ram horns in a mix of awe and fear.

He paces the chalk-formed circle, eyes drinking in her long, caramel legs barely hidden beneath a thin Def Leppard tee.

Her feathered hair frames a lovely heart-shaped face.

There’s something familiar about her, but I can’t quite place it.

“Well?” He asks at last.

The girl startles, as though she thought she was imagining the stranger.

“I-I’d like to make a deal. A-a covenant.”

She’s nervous. Her voice trembles. It makes the man give a devouring grin. It’s the same look I saw earlier today in the mead hall. A hunter and its quarry.

Before the man can speak, the wail of an infant brings the girl’s attention to the couch. The baby is probably too young to be there on his own. She’s used a blanket as a barrier to keep it from rolling over. I wonder if that’s her child, or she’s just watching it for someone.

The girl swallows, glancing back at the deity with fear.

“What would you offer?” The man asks, now staring hungrily at the infant.

“W-what do you want?” The girl stammers, inching toward the couch and lifting the now screaming infant into her arms. She clutches it protectively to her chest.

“There are many things I haven’t known in a long time. The cloying taste of a child’s blood.”

The girl’s grip on the baby gets tighter, despite the way his screams must fill her ear.

“Nor the feast of a fine woman. Such a banquet you offer.”

At first I think he means to eat her, but the salacious hint in his eyes makes me think he means something sexual.

She hardens her jaw.

“We need a future,” she tells him. “Money. Something that’ll last.”

“So, it’s not power you seek, little witch?” He wonders, pacing again.

She’s steadier now. Determined.

“Magic is hardly power. Only money will get you anything in this world. And I have my son to think about.”

The man contemplates, his features become sorrowful.

“I suppose you will not let me have the child, then?”

She gives a sharp jerk of her head.

“Feed it. Put it to bed. Then we’ll bargain.”

I drop my head into my hands, trying to breathe through the queasiness. It wasn’t just a vision. It felt like a memory that didn’t belong to me.

Worse—like a warning.

Reema waits patiently as I gasp through the images.

“Umm,” I say at last, working through my theories. “I didn’t see your future. At least, not directly.”

I recount what I saw. Her eyes stay unreadable. She’s curious about the woman in the vision, insistent on what she looked like.

Two lines appear between her brows.

“You think it was your mom?”

“Couldn’t say,” Reema muses. But it looks like she’s trying to piece something together.

“Want me to try again?” I offer.

“No. thanks for trying, though.”

I bite my lip, deliberating what to do now. But all I can think about is the latest drama.

I fling myself down onto the bed.

“I kissed Nikolai.”

“Oh.”

Reema lifts one brow, then flops down beside me, playing with the buttons on her blouse.

“Well…”

She trails off, apparently just as bewildered by it as I am.

I press on, gaining steam.

“And now he’s mad at me because Ravi got involved, and—.”

“Who’s Ravi?”

Right. I haven’t really had a reason to mention my ex-boyfriend in the past. At least, not by name. And I certainly haven’t bothered telling anyone the truth about Sumner. I’m not even sure if I can tell.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. How do I handle this one? I blink at the Pamela Anderson poster on the wall.

“Professor Sumner is Ravi. My ex-boyfriend. The one I thought I killed.”

“Ah.”

That’s all she says. No gasp, no lecture. Just a soft, neutral, “Ah.”

It bugs me.

I want her to say something—anything—to help me make sense of this wreck.

Instead, I’m just left sitting here like a disaster in search of a headline.

Why did I even bring up Nikolai, first? That’s clearly the least important part of my problem.

Finally…

“How do you feel about it?”

I groan, covering my face.

“I don’t know. Like an idiot? I mean…I only kissed Niko back because I thought I was going to die, and Ravi would be the only other boy I kissed, and that just seemed completely pathetic—what?”

“Niko?” Reema wonders, her lips curving.

I plop my pillow over her smug face.

“I didn’t realize you were doing pet names!” She giggles from under the pillow.

I let go and groan into my hands. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“That’s the whole point of being here,” she says, voice dry. “Van Ritten: where every emotional disaster is also a field exercise.”

I open my mouth to respond, but the sound of footsteps in the hallway cuts me off. Heavy. Fast. Someone’s running.

Then…

Thud. Click.

The ward hisses at the door. Reema and I both sit up as the faint white sigils pulse once—twice—before dimming again. Someone’s trying to override it.

Then the override code triggers. A sharp hiss of released magic.

The door bursts open.

Cody stumbles in first, eyes wide, shirt half-buttoned and damp with sweat. His hair is a mess. Behind him, Geneir’s panting, gripping the doorframe like he’s run a marathon.

Both of them freeze when they see us on the bed.

Cody’s brows lift. He glances at me, then Reema, then back at me. Her presence clearly makes him tense, but whatever he’s thinking, he keeps it to himself.

“Let’s get this party started.”

#

We’re sprawled on our backs on the warped dorm floor, limbs tangled in borrowed blankets and the soft static of a silence that’s stretched long enough to feel like comfort.

After downing popcorn and watching action flicks to keep busy, we split into our sleeping arrangements—two to a bed, makeshift pillows, and territorial truce lines drawn in kernal crumbs.

Outside, the sky bruises purple. The last traces of sun vanish behind the jagged cut of Vancouver’s skyline. The Bonfire Moon is about to rise—Van Ritten’s most sacred, savage night.

I roll onto my side, watching the last dregs of daylight fade behind the mountains. The air thins, stretched like a veil over the island. That sick anticipation tightens in my ribs—the kind that warns something is about to die, and it might be me.

Somewhere between the static and the mountain dusk, my thoughts drift.

Ravi’s not a ghost. He’s not a memory. He’s flesh and blood and Sriracha and secrets. He teaches here— teaches —and still looks at me like I’m the center of something I don’t understand.

And maybe I am.

But I can’t tell Reema and the others that. Not about Calea. Not tonight. Not when the walls are already trembling with the first low growls of something hungry.

So I keep my thoughts to myself.

The sun dips fully behind the peaks.

The first shriek splits the dark.

Then another.

Closer.

Reema doesn’t flinch. Neither do I. But I can feel her spine stiffen through the thin space between us. We’re curled back-to-back on Geneir’s bed—Cody and Geneir in the other; blankets tangled, breath shallow.

Someone tests the ward.

A slow scratch against the doorframe.

Then a snarl, muffled by the protective charm Reema cast earlier. It pulses once—silver and silent—and whatever’s out there lets out a frustrated, wet-sounding growl. Something brushes the door again, then moves on, disappointed.

The silence returns, heavier than before.

We don’t sleep.

We don’t speak.

But knowing they’re there—mostly human, mortal, terrified just like me—it’s enough.

I might be alone in a lot of things—visions, memories, Ravi. But not this.