Page 22 of Potion of Deception (Potion of Deception #1)

FOLLOWING THE MOON

T hey were wading through the forest, the soft, niveous blanket under their feet was covering the frozen ground everywhere.

It was quiet around; sometimes the spruce trees let the sounds of forest animals pass through their branches.

And despite how the surroundings resembled a snow-swathed kingdom, the air didn't seem cold and wintry; it seemed that soon all of it would melt away like a fairytale dream, slipping through the fingers a few minutes before the sunrise.

The loose snow crunched quietly under their boots as they were making their way deeper and deeper into the woods.

Violette was looking at her feet when suddenly a small sprout of a blue flower surfaced before her eyes. Raising her head, it turned out that they'd reached a small glade spangled with flowers, pulsing with vibrant blue and purple.

Dante lowered on his haunches and rubbed his chin.

“What's next?” Violette wondered, her eyes roving over the flowers among the snow, bathing in the moonlight.

There was nothing around except tall ancient trees. She'd remembered the witch's words and something about the place where ‘the great love’ lies but there was nothing that could remind her of something like a grave or whatever it’s meant to be.

Dante didn't say a word. Sitting near the flowers, he ran his hand over the petals. Then his eyes narrowed, following the line of the blue light paving the way somewhere between the trees.

“We'll find out now,” he said mysteriously, standing up.

Despite Violette's love for the atmosphere of mystery and the idea of secrets and magic surrounding it, she didn't like how Dante was an epitome of this word.

The suspense of something was torture for someone as curious as her.

And she wouldn't be surprised if Dante was just playing with her to get on her nerves.

The moonlit line led them deeper into the woods, through the snowy needles of the pine trees.

The snow was sparkling under their feet and the air around them was getting colder, or Violette's cloak wasn't as warm as she thought in the beginning.

Dante removed one of the large branches, clearing a path for himself.

He didn't bother to hold it for Violette and it whipped right over her head, showering snow on her.

She grimaced, but Dante didn't bat an eye.

They appeared on another small snowy glade. In the middle of it, among the trees, a stone statue of an angel was powdered with a thin layer of snow, his eyes frozen on the small stone tab below.

Dante approached the statue, removing the hood from his head. His gaze moved downwards, following the streak of the moonlight over the statue.

The stone angel bore an indubitably tragic look, almost heart wrenched.

His head, bowed to the ground, was covered with lace, long wavy hair cascaded down to his hands, which held a marble chalice.

Violette walked closer, examining the frozen statue, gaze fixated on his face, his half-closed sad eyes that seemed to be mourning someone… or something.

The place where the great love rests.

“It's a grave, isn't it?” Violette breathed, not taking her eyes off the huge beautifully engraved wings of the sculpture.

“I suppose,” Dante said, working his jaw as he squatted by the statue’s feet. He began to inspect the pedestal the angel stood on and stroked his fingers along one of its edges, removing snow from the inscription carved on the stone:

There rests a great love, worthy of the ballads and legends.

Violette lowered her gaze, her attention lingered on the curving letters.

“Do you know what it means?” She leaned over him, pressing her palms to her knees.

Dante brushed his fingers over the words again as if absorbing them would make him grasp their true purpose.

“There is a legend about two lovers who died together due to tragic circumstances. Their grave rests in a dark forest, and an angel sheds tears on them every night…” Dante quoted the legend thoughtfully as if trying to put together a puzzle.

“What happened to them?” Violette asked, her gaze not leaving him .

“I don't know,” he said carelessly. “Nobody remembers. Everyone only knows that it was a heartbreaking story but what exactly happened and who it was…is forgotten.”

“That's strange…”

He turned his head towards her. “The legend is as old as time, they are all forgotten. This world is full of thousands of different stories like this. The peak of some disappears and they fade into the background, replaced by others.”

“But if it's a story about Great Love, shouldn't everyone remember it?”

“I'm not particularly interested in what happened to them,” he said blankly. “I'm more concerned about how it relates to my curse.”

Violette drew a step back and raised her head. The statue's gaze was directed downward but despite his grieving, he wasn't shedding tears.

Dante meanwhile followed her example, standing up.

“Any ideas?” she asked.

A shadow of puzzlement crossed his face as he knitted his black brows, examining the angel in search of some kind of a trick or a sign.

Then he took a couple of steps forward, trying to get around it, while Violette leaned towards the chalice in the angel's hands, attracted by the strange symbols on its upper walls.

Only when she approached him, she realized that these were not symbols, but images of the moon in different phases.

And there was something else, some kind of a sign between them.

“The glow of the moon changes its position,” Dante stated after some time, drawing Violette's attention back.

“What?” She rounded the statue.

“When viewed from this angle, the moonlight is split into two stripes by the wings and appears to be pouring from the eyes,” he explained.

“The angel's tears…There's phases of the moon inside the cup,” she remarked and Dante caught her sight.

He swayed to the side and a little more forward, bowing his head – the moonlight tears had flowed straight from the angel's eyes, streaming down into the snow.

Dante rubbed the spot where the light fell; His fingers groped a cold marble tile with an eccentric symbol depicted on it, the same as on the angel's cup.

He pressed it and the symbol fell down into a small hole, then he turned the bulge to the side and a loud creaking sound of a working mechanism shuttered the peace of this place.

A secret passage with a staircase, leading into darkness, opened at their feet.

“Light your wand, Little Witch.” Dante suddenly appeared behind her, making her flinch .

“Afraid of the darkness?” He bent over her.

“I'm afraid of unknown deep chambers that no one has gone down to for years,” she pressed.

Dante glanced at her again and walked forward.

“Don't worry, if I see a spider, I'll warn you,” he derided and started down the steps.

Violette bit her lip before taking out her magic wand and lighting it up. She followed Dante, carefully moving her feet step by step. And she couldn't say if the stairs were too steep, or there was less air as they descended deeper and deeper into a full nothingness.