Page 12 of Broken Souls

I shake my head. I’ve heard stories though; every witch has. The amount of power you can gain with it is legendary. Witches use it to extend their lives, to sink entire cities into the ground. To create plagues that can wipe out a third of the population, to change into great beasts much bigger than themselves.

With regular magic, you need physical access to the extra mass or the ingredients needed for the spell, but with dark magic, you can take it from anywhere. There are cases of large groups of people going missing – the crew of the Mary Celeste, the settlers of the Roanoke Colony, the fifty-thousand soldiers of the Army of Cambyses. These mass disappearances can normally all be linked back to a witch playing around with something they shouldn’t.

Such cases draw the attention of the archangels though, and no amount of magic will save you from their wrath.

“When we cast a spell,” Sau says as we descend into the basement, “we control it. We shape it how we want it to act. We limit it in its entirety so it can’t run free. But with dark magic, it controlsyou. You can give it an idea of what you want, but the outcome is never guaranteed. There’s also a good chance it kills you instead of doing whatever it is you want.”

“You must have acted quickly then, to stop it from going wild.”

She smiles tightly as we reach the door to the spellroom. “I guess so.”

“You guess?”

Opening the door, she steps inside. “Honestly, I do not remember much. One moment I was focused on Caden as he screamed in his nightmare. The next…” She trails off. Her lips draw tight, a haunted memory beating inside her skull. “Caden was a strong telekinetic,” she says softly. “He ripped Varius into so many pieces, I’m not sure how I found them all to even cast the spell.”

I shudder, my stomach knotting at the idea of him being in so much pain. Or perhaps there was no pain then, death having taken him quickly.

“Did you have to bring him back from Purgatory?” I ask as I follow her to the cabinets where we keep the potions and their ingredients. Necromancy is a hard-learned skill, taking two to three decades to master. As far as I know, Sau doesn’t know the first thing about it – just like most people don’t. It’s one of the rarest skills out there.

“I guess so.”

I frown. I know Sau loves her children, and I can’t think of a single reason for her to lie about what happened to Varius’ magic, but you don’t just get lucky at necromancy. You bring back a twisted mess –ifyou manage not to die in the process in the first place.

“Or maybe I kept him alive long enough with my healing magic,” she says. “His head and torso was still together – at least, it was above the heart.”

My stomach churns at the thought of a baby looking like that, but it’s the only thing that could be possible. Sau is a damn strong healer. If she reacted within seconds, she could have made sure he didn’t bleed out or die of shock while she reattached his other parts with dark magic.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t panic then,” I say. “Seeing that, I don’t know many who wouldn’t have.”

She looks at me sadly. “I panicked the previous times.”

The words are a sucker punch to my chest. Varius might be her firstborn, but that is a moving title in the Shadow Domain, passing down to the oldest survivor. There were fourteen other kids before him. I do not know the details of their deaths, but I can see the pain in her eyes. They did not go gently into the night.

Feeling like shit for bringing all this up for no reason other than my own curiosity, I turn to the shelf of unused vials. “So how many healing potions do you think we should make?” I ask.

“As much as we can,” she says as she picks up a box of them. “Before the treaty, Antonio targeted our healers first, the rest of the women second. You kill a man, you kill one soldier. You kill a healer –”

“You kill everyone they can fix.”

She nods. “And if you kill a breedmare –”

“You kill the next generation.”

“Exactly. So we shall make enough not just for my boys but for as many women as are in our Family.” She picks up an entire box of empty vials, then pauses. “I killed Antonio’s pups and his mate all in one day. Even when he signed the treaty, I knew his desire for revenge had not been sated. He will not stop until all my sons are dead.” She swallows, then looks into my eyes. “I half hope you don’t get pregnant until this war is over.”

My blood chills as my fingers itch to press over my belly. My period is normally irregular, but I just had it a couple weeks ago, although it was lighter and shorter than usual, so I know I’m not carrying, but I feel an instinctive need to protect my womb.

“Though with the way Varius is going…” Sau says with a sudden smirk, “we better kill the Death Hunt quickly.”

My cheeks on fire, all I can do is nod.

In the last three hours, I have made more potions than I have in my entire life. Before I was purchased by Varius, I was an assassin who went out on missions with my best friend. He was my spotter, the plan maker, and healer, so I only carried healing potions for the jobs where we had to split up. Mine aren’t great for fixing major damage, but they held me over until I could get back to him. Dayne isn’t as advanced in his healing magic as Sau (no one is), but he knows his shit way better than I know how to make healing potions. He’s done well over the years, patching me up whenever I got stabbed, shot, or hit with a particularly nasty spell.

“Don’t be stingy with the sideritis,” Sau says as I very, very carefully add pinches of the ground perennial to the pot of glacier blue liquid. Fog rises off it, smelling strongly of mint and ice.

“You literally just said it could blow up in my face if I get it wrong.” Which really makes me think this healing potion recipe is a farce. Dying while making one shouldnotbe a possibility in my book unless you really fucked it up. But then, this recipe is Sau’s own. Not only is she the best healer in all of North America, but she also survived a bloody war and has crafted her technique over decades.

“I can heal you,” she says simply.