Page 20 of Potion of Deception (Potion of Deception #1)

Dante raised his brows and a faint smile took shape on his face, just a subtle lift of the corners of his lips, as his eyes went to the ground.

The witch they met was talking with some of the other women whose faces they couldn't see clearly.

They were nodding their heads, listening to her very carefully but something suggested to Violette she wasn't quite telling them the truth.

Or maybe not all of it. Maybe the girl didn't mention vampires because if she reacted that badly to their story – other witches didn't look terrified or even surprised.

One of them glanced in their direction, warily narrowing her eyes at Dante, their gazes locked for a brief moment.

And then emerald capes flashed in the moonlight, disappearing behind the trees.

Approaching Violette and Dante, the witch smiled at them as if they were already her close friends.

It made Violette feel a pang of guilt, it seemed like this girl was truly sweet and kind, and they were just using her and it was so…

so unfair. She shrunk again and that time because of how ashamed she felt.

Though it seemed Dante wasn't bothered at all, his face lacked emotion, even a glimpse of understanding he was doing something bad.

Maybe vampires weren't able to feel some types of feelings, like guilt, or maybe they didn't understand what is bad and what is good, or Dante was just a mongrel without a heart.

Perhaps not because he was a son of the night but because he was just a bad person.

She really was curious if he was even a little sorry for this poor girl who had mistaken two souls in need of help with them.

And she was afraid she'd known the answer to it already – Dante didn't care about this girl, he didn't know her, well, to be honest, he didn't care even about Violette and she couldn't imagine him caring even about people he'd known.

Humans were just toys in his immortal life.

He'd use them for his needs and then throw them away as an old tattered trinket.

He probably was thinking that the trust in her heart is her own mistake and she's too naive, which makes her easy prey, so it doesn't make him guilty.

Assumptions were all that Violette had, she didn't know him at all and she wasn't sure she wanted to know how his twisted mind works but she knew curiosity will not leave her that easily.

The girl in the velvet emerald cape eyed Violette with a smile, the dark blonde pieces of her hair fell on her forehead between her brows.

“I'm Eve,” she beamed, her kind eyes glimmered at Violette. Strangely, she looked naive but wise at the same time. Maybe she was just too trusting and believed there's good in people. Her mistake.

“I'm Violette.” Her lips curled into a faint smile. “And he's Dante.”

He nodded tightly. Eve tilted her head to the side and smiled nicely at him, and Violette wondered if someone looked at him with such warmth as this girl before.

As they were walking, the girls moved a little forward.

Eve leaned closer, almost whispering, “What is the scarf on his face?”

“Oh…um,” Violette stammered, “he gets cold very easily. He grew up in the south and all this winter weather just makes him feel sick.”

The made-up story came into her head as she nervously tried to remind herself why she was doing this.

“Oh, well, then North Forest is definitely a trial for him,” Eve shortly giggled.

Violette pretended to laugh. She wanted to tell her to run so bad but she was selfish enough to keep masquerading.

After some time they stopped on the spot in the forest, amid its frozen kingdom.

“Can you hold the book, please?” the witch asked nicely, and Violette quickly opened the book to the right page.

Eve put her fingers on the pages, her eyes closed. The symbols and the letters began to glow with gold light under the witch's fingers – a pure sign of breathtaking magic. It was hard to believe these symbols belonged to the ancient evil sorcerers who were tied up with dark magic and lethal spells.

Nobody actually knew what Heggas were doing and what type of magic they possessed, as well as their purpose.

It wasn't clear if it was pure dark magic or if it was completely new spells, not bad but not good either.

Everyone had believed they were daughters of night, and this night lacked stars and any light, existing in the presence of the moon in a red eclipse.

But even Dante was wary of these creatures, which led Violette to think that Heggas were an absolute evil that you can't hide from once you met it.

She knew about them from the books, they were witches as old as time, who were depicted in pictures as scary and crooked old crones.

The picture vividly lived in Violette's mind: a wrinkled old woman in a black cloak with fingers curved in the shape of tree branches, ready to grab and drag you into the depths of a dark forest.

It was believed that most of them had disappeared, while others were hiding in such wilds that they couldn't be found.

And it's been said these witches were not even sorceresses of some kind.

Sorcerers were considered wizards and wizardlings whose parents or ancestors turned to black magic, and thereby the magic cursed their children for their misdeeds.

Sorcerers were prone to dark magic much more than ordinary wizards like Violette; they could be kind, but the darkness always had called to them in the most difficult times and not all of them were able to fight it.

But the heritage of Heggas remained unknown.

What exactly these magical beings were doing, besides cursing people and casting terrible curses, remained a mystery.

They and their actions became a kind of legend, what was true and what was a lie was difficult to say.

Everything written in books could be compared to fairytales – exaggeration and fiction, just as Dante said.

The pages of the old book continued to emit a soft light and every word that Eve ran over with her thin finger turned golden.

It looked as if she wasn't just reading them, but was absorbing the words into herself, or, on the contrary, giving her own piece of magic to read this one.

This is probably why she kept her eyes closed and never once had lowered her gaze to the pages: she did not read the words, she was feeling them.

The creaked line formed between Eve’s brows and then she opened her eyes, her fingers numbed above the pages. She looked at Violette, and suddenly her voice no longer seemed as sweet and friendly as it'd been.

“Why do you need this spell?” she asked timidly.

“Is something wrong?” Violette’s pulse began to pound faster.

“It doesn't say anything about vampires. This spell removes curses, break them. ”

Violette answered immediately without hesitation like a cup overflowing with a lie, poisoning her mouth. “Well, that's right, you yourself said vampires are a curse. We'd thought this spell would help us get rid of him.”

Eve bit her lip, as if something inside her was tugging an unseen string, telling her that something was off.

“I don't know…” She dropped her eyes to the pages. “Heggas don't write about spells to help people, unless…it's a spell that will release something terrible…” Her consciousness seemed to wake up from a dream. “What kind of a spell are you going to remove? What are you going to release?”

For a split second, it seemed as if she wanted to say, Or who?

“We…” Violette balked, feeling caged.

Dante was staying silent. He stood steadfast and it didn't seem as if he was worried about the girl's sudden suspicion.

Eve raised her gaze to him. “This thing on his face, not because of the cold, right?”

“I would not say the cold is something that bothers me,” finally Dante spoke and his voice turned weirdly sweet and derisive, feeling she was very close to the truth and it almost faced her.

Oddly enough, he wasn't sad about this fact, and the strangest of it all – he looked like he felt himself a winner.

Eve's eyes darkened, her face didn't seem as soft as it was a minute ago .

“Who is your friend?” she roughly asked Violette, keeping her eyes at Dante.

“Eve, I…You shouldn't be scared, it's just–” Violette tried to explain but the witch quickly interrupted her.

“You lied to me…” She finally turned her gaze to Violette, looking like a kid whose dreams were crushed by the cruelty of this world.

A pinch creased between Violette’s brows. “I'm sorry, Eve, I promise it's not as it seems–”

“You're a vampire,” she trembled, frightened by Dante’s presence.

His eyes gleamed in the dark. Eve could feel something in the air was warning her but she was too blinded by her naive soul and intention to help a sweet couple. Her innocence led her to a trap.

She took an uncertain step back, shrinking into herself.

“You tricked me, I believed you!” She raised her voice, though it was noticeably shaking.

Fear and disappointment was snaking under her skin.

“I believed you, I thought we were similar!” Her eyes radiated such misery and chagrin.

For a moment she thought Violette was such a kind of dreamer like her.

“I'm truly sorry, Eve. I didn't lie to you. It's true, I was unfortunate to meet a vampire and sealed a deal with him. And in order to fulfill my part, I must help him,” Violette tried to explain herself .

Eve shook her head, thinking how stupid she was to believe two strangers.

It was only her fault. It was only her gullibility that brought her here; she shouldn't have trusted them.

She hadn't thought that someone like Violette could set her up like that, she was a witch, just like her…

Sisters don't do that. But she forgot one small detail – they weren't sisters, she was not one of the Witches of Emerald Capes, she was just a stranger.