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ELEVEN YEARS OLD

T hat year following my first foray into dark magic I learned everything I could from Cirilla and the man I came to know as Emil. Cirilla and Emil had once been lovers, and her close friend Persephone had vowed to help her bring him back one day.

And she had.

Persephone had preserved the body with dark magic from her own grimoire, which I was anxious to get my hands on. I hadn’t seen Persephone since that day in Prins, and I hadn’t been back to that city, either.

We studied the spells in the Grishina grimoire on top of my normal studies, and I continued to grow more powerful each day. My eyes hadn’t darkened any further yet, they had stayed that cerulean blue since that first night I had performed a dark magic spell.

Cirilla told me a Stormshade had killed Emil, and one day when she came back to the cottage covered in blood, her hands shaking, I knew she had sought out that Stormshade and slain them.

Good riddance.

I would much rather have Emil around, anyway. I had grown close with him, and he had taught me all kinds of spells I had never tried before.

Cirilla told me he was something called Noctani.

The first of his kind. Or that is what the Grishina grimoire called them, at least. Part vampire part witch.

The family had noted in the margins of the grimoire that the spell had never been used before.

But that didn’t stop Cirilla and Persephone from putting it to use.

Emil required blood to live, but the drinking of blood sometimes also stole power from the victim.

It was up to the control of the Noctani who did the taking.

Due to this, Cirilla only let him drink from her.

The days passed and slowly I could see the magic leaving Cirilla. Emil didn’t take it all at once…it slowly left her body and seeped into his in a slow but steady trickle. She was aware of what was happening, but she didn’t care.

She loved him.

But he hadn’t asked. Hadn’t gained her permission. He had simply taken it.

Her love for him had made her weak. And if there was one thing I detested, it was weakness. All those years of studying, all her work poring over the Grishina grimoire, and she was going to allow Emil to simply take it from her?

I caught him drinking from her one night, her limp body splayed across his lap. When he picked his head up, blood dripping from his fangs, he only smiled at me.

He could feel Cirilla slipping away each time he drank from her, but he didn’t care. I was convinced he was doing it on purpose. If it was up to the Noctani to control the amount of magic that was taken, he could have chosen to steal none .

But he hadn’t.

I told myself if Cirilla needed to be brought back to life, I could simply use the same spell we had used to make Emil Noctani. But as the days slipped by and Cirilla grew weaker and weaker, I became resentful of Emil.

Who was he to take Cirilla from me? Who was he to steal her magic? If it should belong to anyone, it should belong to me . He was just as bad as the Stormshade bitch who had killed him in my eyes.

When he had fallen asleep one night I had gone to the kitchen and taken one of the blades Cirilla used for our blood spells. They were sleeping together in the bed, side by side, Cirilla curled on her side.

When I approached the bed, the floorboards creaked and Cirilla peeled her eyes open.

She saw me there, standing before the bed with a blade in my hand, but she said nothing.

I moved to the other side of the bed, and before Emil could open his eyes, I took the blade and slit his throat while he slept.

I couldn’t give him the opportunity to fight back, or I would lose.

I took my second life that day.

As it turns out, Noctani were equally as susceptible to being killed as any other Shade. I helped Cirilla bury the body in the narrow backyard of her home in Siraleth. Everyone thought he was already dead, no one was going to come looking for him.

Despite Emil no longer drinking her blood and therefore siphoning the dark magic out of her little by little, Cirilla did not recover. She had grown weaker and weaker each day, until one summer night she passed away in the narrow bed in her home.

She had been a mother to me, in a sense. More of a mother to me than my own mother had been, anyway.

I wasn’t able to bury the body myself, but that was the least of my worries. I had the Grishina grimoire all to myself now.

Cirilla had taught me well, and I was skilled enough in my studies and in Latin to study the spells on my own now. I knew Zion would want me to continue my schooling, but I didn’t mind. The more I learned the more powerful I became. And that was the end goal, after all.

I wanted to be more powerful than anyone. I wanted to taste that dark energy surging through me every day until my last.

That night I returned home to the cottage in Siraleth, the Grishina grimoire in tow.

It had never left Cirilla’s home before now, to my knowledge.

I had told Zion what happened, leaving out the nefarious details.

That Cirilla was gone. He had returned with me to her home to give her a proper burial.

He was surprised by what he found when we entered. He had known Cirilla a long time and had entrusted her with my care. He never imagined she had lost her soul to dark magic.

It had been years since he had seen her in person, and he had never seen the evidence of dark magic in her eyes.

The proof strewn about the house as opened spell books dotted every surface.

Beakers filled with pink and green liquids.

Stones of every color. Candles burning in clusters on the dining table, the counters, the coffee table.

There was evidence of dark magic everywhere you looked.

But Zion never knew about the Noctani. That secret was for Cirilla and me.

And Persephone, of course.

“Donika, why didn’t you tell me what was going on here?” he had asked, trying his best to clean the house up before anyone else could see. He didn’t want the evidence to linger, tainting her reputation. Cirilla was a well-known Nightshade among the community.

“I didn’t know,” I replied simply. The lie spilled from my tongue effortlessly.

He turned to me, his brows drawn together. “You didn’t know?” He swept his arm about to indicate the filthy house. “How could you not have known?”

I was old enough now to know better. That might not have been the case when I had first begun studying with Cirilla.

But it was now.

I had been young, weak, and na?ve. I was none of those things now.

I shrugged absently. “She told me not to worry about these things and to mind my own business.” I nodded toward the table tucked into the dining nook. “We studied there—I wasn’t allowed to look through any of her other spell books.”

That was a lie, too.

Zion had too much on his mind. He simply waved away any concern and continued to clean up, and I helped him. I pocketed the bloodstones and gemstones I found scattered about. They could be of use to me later.

“This is my fault,” he muttered. He was kneeling by the coffee table, his head in his hands.

“What is, father?” I continued to flit from room to room, filling the trash bags with things I no longer needed.

“I sent you here. I should have pushed back at the school harder. You need to be around your peers. You need to be with children your own age.”

Under Cirilla’s tutelage I didn’t feel like a child at all anymore.

I was as grown as the rest of them. But I did want to go back to school, if for no other reason than to rub my power in their faces.

There was no way the other students were as powerful and intelligent as I was.

I had a personal tutor in dark magic. I was far past the spells my peers would be studying at this age.

I nodded. “Perhaps you are right, father. Perhaps I should be around children my own age.”

His gaze lingered on me for a long moment before he nodded, his mind made up.

The next day he went back to the school and insisted they take me back. That I had learned to control my power, and I was no longer a threat to the other students.

One of those things was true.

Each day on my way to school I would turn into my wolf form and run there, the wind ruffling my thick white coat.

I knew the wolf and I were becoming one, I could sense a change deep within me.

What other reason could there be for my callousness?

My lack of emotion and my thirst for power at any cost?

With my use of dark magic, I was becoming more animal than human.

I relished in the thought of becoming one with my wolf form, I simply needed to hide it from those around me. They wouldn’t understand.

At school, the other children no longer terrorized me.

They feared me.

I was more powerful than any of them. I knew spells they could only dream of.

They were busy unlocking locks and opening doors with their minds while I was mastering shadow wielding.

Creating debilitating potions that would turn my worst enemy into a creature of their own vilest nightmares.

I laughed at what they were teaching in school.

But I sat, and I learned. I didn’t draw attention to myself.

I was falling into a rhythm with my studies.

I spent good portions of my time in my wolf form, studying with my peers, then engrossing myself in the Grishina grimoire each night.

Zion had realized he hadn’t kept as watchful of an eye on me as he perhaps he should have, and he became somewhat of a smothering parent from that point onward.

But he still had no clue I had the Grishina grimoire in my possession. He simply thought I was reading books I enjoyed on those nights he couldn’t peel me away from the pages long enough to eat dinner with him.

I was comfortable. And I was happy.

As happy as I could be, anyway.

Until it all came to a screeching halt.

One night Zion and I were sitting around the fire reading. I had the Grishina grimoire stuffed into a fantasy book about unicorns to hide the cover, my legs propped up on the arm of the settee. The front door to the cottage burst open and Zion was on his feet in a heartbeat.

In the open doorway stood Annelise.

My mother.

And she wasn’t alone.

A baby was held within her grasp.