Page 24 of Traitor Witch (The Deadwood #1)

Chapter Twenty-Four

NILSA

T he door slamming is no surprise, but it shocks the two Solars into action.

“Wait here,” the older one commands, dragging Elsie behind her and out of the room.

I stand slowly, still trying to understand how any temple could fall into disrepair so badly.

Coveton is a small town, barely a port. Yet our temples are meticulously kept and well guarded at all times.

Ilyani is the second largest city in the kingdom. Its temples should be gleaming gems, bustling with witches and supplicants.

Not falling to pieces.

The statue of the Sun Mother has a crack in it for Goddess's sake.

It takes a while, eventually yet another Solar appears, this one with a pair of heavy cuffs, engraved with sigils. She holds them as far out from her body as physically possible, as if afraid to let me get too close .

“Return during the day and wear these. Only then will the Mother Solar speak with you.”

I grimace but take them from her with a nod.

I suppose I’m an exile now. I should get used to this kind of suspicion from all witches.

The rationalisation doesn’t alleviate the sting.

I can see why Alletta chose a quiet port to set up shop alone if this is how she was treated by her own kind.

Then again, maybe it’s just because I’m the ‘witch killer.’

“I’ll return at dawn,” I announce, placing the cuffs at the base of the Sun Goddess's statue before turning on my heel and leaving.

Cas and Kier aren’t there, but I don’t let that bother me.

I have a different mission now.

A little borrowed power from the Goddess transforms my white Solar robes into those of a moderately-wealthy human.

It takes several wrong turns and I get more than a few, strange looks when I ask for directions, but eventually I find my way to the Lunar Temple.

When I get there, I wish I’d never come.

It's so similar to the Lunar temple of Coveton that my heart throbs a little. It's even lit up, the sounds of revelry filling the streets around it with noise that makes me instantly homesick.

My clothes let me pass through the crowds relatively unhindered. I get a few odd looks, but no one remarks on my presence. Most of them are too inebriated to care.

I can't see any other Lunars. Not a hint of black or silver.

Everything is colourful. Bright jewel tones that don't belong.

The central courtyard is filled with people. A bar takes up one wall, bartenders pouring drinks laced with tiny transmutation circles. Liquors which smoke, fizz, or stay on fire as they're drunk .

Mage drinks.

More transmutation circles line the floor, giving off colourful smoke which layers the scene. The stickiness of liquor makes my shoes cling to the mosaic tiles, and the scent of too many bodies adds its own awful incense to the burnt smell of mage magic.

The sacred pool is steaming with warmth, filled to the brim with naked men. Barely-of-age human women in brightly coloured scarves splash around, offering drinks to their middle-aged patrons and sometimes receiving unwanted taps to the ass for their troubles. They flinch from the touches but don’t protest.

It’s the opposite of what revelry in a Lunar temple should be. This isn’t celebrating female sensuality, it’s twisting it to cater to the desires of sick men.

I shift into the shadows and grab one of the girls who walks past.

“Where are the witches?” I demand. “The Mother Lunar. Where are they?”

She meets my eyes with her own startled ones.

“They left. They couldn’t afford the rent, and Councilman Rossi, the owner of this district, decided to make it his entertaining place.”

A mage councilman forcing out the Mother Lunar from a sacred temple over rent?

Rage boils in my blood.

What happened to the Solars was heartbreaking, but the Lunars wouldn’t have left without a fight.

I can't imagine it was a bloodless relocation.

“Where are they now?”

The girl shrugs. “They left. Got on a ship and sailed away.”

“And the councilman?”

She raises a single pointing finger .

There, in the middle of the sacred pool, wine in one hand and ass in another, is a man I despise on sight. The girl he’s feeling up looks like she’d rather be anywhere else, and the men in his inner circle are laughing at her distress.

“Get out of here,” I warn my informant, letting my magic transform my clothes once more, into a black version of the tiny scarves the other girls are wearing. Opal leaps away and starts ushering out the innocent, knowing whatever I'm about to do, it's going to be bad.

I can feel the icy burn in my blood, practically taste the Goddess’s displeasure on the back of my tongue, egging me on.

The moon is barely a crescent in the sky, but it’s enough.

Dark power flashes through me as I stride through the party-goers towards the pool.

The moment my foot hits the water it begins to glow, silencing everyone. The power renders the yellow glow of the torches useless, bathing everyone in silver light.

The girl at Rossi's side uses the distraction and scampers away, leaving me alone, in the pool, surrounded by mages.

“Councilman,” I smile. “I think you have the wrong address.”

“Your kind aren’t welcome here.” Green transmutation circles start to form in the air around him. “Leave, or else—”

I draw my knife from my boot and slash it against my wrist.

The motion is so sudden, and so unexpected that he, and everyone else, freezes in place.

The blood drips into the water, each red droplet spearing through the silvery water of the pool. On contact, my blood turns black. Three droplets later, the entire pool is a perfect mirror of the dark night sky.

On my back, the Goddess's mark burns like a brand. Power runs through me with a savagery that consumes but feels so good that I don't even care. The next droplet of my blood sends wisps of black and silver flame across the water.

That's when the people on the edge of the scene start to run. Their legs unfreezing as self-preservation takes over.

But the men in the pool, and several of their compatriots around the edge, remain. Transfixed by the power of the Goddess.

"I curse this place," I whisper, wondering absently if I'm crossing some invisible line.

I've never cursed anyone before. I've never needed to.

It's rare for me to use blood magic at all.

But this dark magic feels... right. It feels like the Goddess's will.

"I curse this sacred land to ruin until a Lunar witch comes to reclaim it for the Goddess. Anyone who enters without the blessing of the Dark Mother will suffer terrible misfortune for the rest of their life. And those who dare tread in her sacred waters—" I glare at the councilman through eyes watering with the amount of power I'm channelling— "shall wither and die, never to share the space among the stars with their ancestors. By the will of the Moon Mother, it is done."

The effect is instant. A bomb-blast of power surges through my body.

The transmutation circles, still hovering in the air around me are blown away like dust on the wind, replaced with dark fires that eat away at the mages surrounding me. They shrivel into husks before my eyes. Their last horrified expressions disintegrating as they wither right to the bone.

Those who aren't in the water try to run, but the magic chases them. Settling into their skin in red and silver sigils that proclaim their curse to all witches.

When it's done, I fall back into the water, exhausted.

Being a conduit for that kind of power was like nothing I've ever experienced before, and it takes all of my energy to crawl out of the cooling water and flop on the ground.

The stones around me are already crumbling, the silver curse sigils enacting the Goddess's will on the temple.

Opal comes up beside me and sits against my side, starting to clean her paws as if nothing just happened.

"Well, that was dramatic."

"It wasn't exactly planned," I mutter. "I'm just going to rest here for a second..."

"And what are you going to do when your men come looking for you and accidentally set off your little curse...?"

Oh fuck. I really didn't think this through.

I glance back at the pool, and the ring of red curse sigils now branded into the tiles of the floor.

Yeah, no way am I letting Cas, Rysen, and Kier get stuck with lifelong misfortune.

With a drawn-out sigh, I pull myself to my feet and stagger through the crumbling doorway.

I'm burned out and I know I must look drunk. I end up sitting on the street, just beyond the silvery boundary of my curse. The barely-there scarf that had been my disguise is riding up, probably flashing everything I have to the world, but I just don't have the energy to care.

Opal sits beside me, still cleaning herself, occasionally. But mostly standing guard as I try to pull myself together.

The mark on my back burns a little less as each hour passes and I drift in and out of consciousness. The pain has faded to a dull throb and the moon is almost invisible in the light of the dawn before I manage to push myself back to my feet again.

I'm surprised that the pirates haven't tracked me down once again, but I'm grateful for the solitude as I stagger through the streets. The last thing I need now is to be forced to go back to the ship and rest when I'm so close to the answers I need.

The Solar temple is unchanged, still as ruined as it was when I left. I almost sigh in relief as I scan it for any signs of trouble.

I didn't consider that the mages might try to take revenge for my actions out on the only remaining witches of Ilyani. I should have.

My own selfishness shames me, and I waste precious moments using the still-bleeding wound at my wrist to daub warding sigils at the boundaries.

With that done, I make my way inside, clipping the heavy cuffs on as I pass the Sun Goddess's statue.

The instant, dampening effect it has on my magic is uncomfortable. Even my link to Opal is muted.

It makes the trudge up the stairs to the top of the tower feel even longer.

By the time I reach the top, I couldn't hurt a fly even if I wanted to.

The High Priestess is still doing morning prayers, a circle of other Solars on their knees surrounding her as sunlight bathes the group so brightly I can barely make her out in the centre of it all.

I wait on the edge, respecting their space and using the time to catch my breath.

"Nilsa Dunn av Coveton, step forward."

The voice snaps my attention back to the figure on the dais.

I have to blink to make sure the sunlight isn't making me see things.

"Felicity?" I whisper.

But it's not her. Her hair, eyes, and face may be nearly identical, but I can tell the difference the instant a frown appears on the High Priestess's face. Felicity frowned with her brows, but the anger of this matriarch is etched into her whole face.

"I am High Priestess Elodie, mother of Felicity and Mother Solar of Ilyani," she says, her voice harsh and unforgiving.

Shit. Felicity's mother.

I sink to my knees, as I should have the moment I was addressed. My eyes stay glued to the floor as I wait for the deathblow.

"You saved one of my coven." Her tone manages to seem disapproving. "Yet killed my daughter."

I raise my head, because if I'm going to die, I might as well do it defending myself. "I didn't kill her. My only fault is that I couldn't save her. I swear that's the truth."

Her dark eyes, so similar to her daughter's, pierce through me like daggers.

The next minute is the longest of my life.

"Tell me how she died."

I swallow, but don't look away.

"We were flying together on the last day of my fostering. Felicity offered me the chance to join her coven. I'd just turned her down when her broom malfunctioned. She flew straight over the salt wall and crashed, but my broom wasn't fast enough to save her before the wraiths reached her."

Another long pause, my story being considered carefully.

"I believe you," Elodie whispers. "But that does not mean you are welcome here. We've already heard what you did to the Lunar temple. You are trouble, Shadow, and we have had enough suffering already. Ask your questions, then leave Ilyani."

I nod once and drag the ring out from around my neck.

"I need to find the owner of this."

Elodie doesn't blink .

"That is the crest of Mother Lunar Petra, who left this city almost a decade ago."

A stone sinks in my gut. "A Mother Lunar?"

"She took her coven across the sea to Idos after suffering many losses." Elodie finally breaks our eye contact, and I resist the urge to sigh in relief as she paces away from me. "She planned on building a sanctuary there for all witches, though I don't know if she ever succeeded."

"The Goddess sent me on a mission to avenge the murderer of my High Priestess, Glenna. If this ring belongs to Petra..."

Elodie snorts. "I sincerely doubt that the Moon Goddess wishes you to harm Petra. Glenna's corruption is well known to us. It is more than likely that the Lady of the Moon has simply set you on the same path which has already taken Petra's best Shadows."

"Glenna's corruption?" I echo, dumbly.

"Come girl, you can't truly believe that a Shadow of the Moon is sent to kill businessmen and town officials in one small, backwater city? A true Shadow travels across the world to take lives at the Goddess’s whim. All Glenna did was play goddess, and her hubris and love for you doomed her."

There is a tense silence, but Elodie doesn't give me time to try to work through what she's telling me.

"That is all I will say. Lunar affairs are not the business of Solar witches, and I have said too much already. Leave this city, Nilsa av Coveton." She takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and delivers another blow. "Take Elsie with you."

The girl looks up like she's been stung. "Mother Solar?"

Elodie's face is calm, but resolute.

"You are not meant for this place, sister. The Lady of the Sun has told me many times to send you to Idos, but I have selfishly resisted on account of your youth. Yesterday, you put yourself in harm's way once again, and you would have been killed if not for Nilsa."

"But I'm getting stronger!" I can see the tears brimming at the corners of Elsie's eyes.

"And you will grow stronger still," Elodie agrees. "You are destined for greater things than a dying temple in a corrupt city. Lady willing, you may one day return, stronger than you could ever become here."

Elodie finally turns to me. "You will protect her, as you failed to protect my daughter. Vow it."

I don't want to do this. Elsie is weeping now, shaking her head back and forth as the Solar next to her rubs at her shoulder in comfort.

I open my mouth to object, but the look in Elodie's eyes stops me.

"I vow before the Lady of the Moon, she will reach Idos safely."

Elodie nods once, then sweeps past both of us towards the stairs. "Pack your things and say your goodbyes, Elsie. Nilsa, you may wait outside."