Page 33 of Traitor Witch (The Deadwood #1)

Chapter Thirty-Three

NILSA

" R ise," the Mother Solar orders, her voice scratchy. "I am Mother Solar Sophie and this Mother Lunar Petra."

"Lovely to meet you," Elsie chimes, like the polite little Solar she is.

I stay silent. I still don't know if these people are friends or enemies, and no matter what I do, my eyes keep snapping back to the Mother Lunar.

Petra just smirks. "I may look like a wrinkled ball sack but I can still take you out with my hands behind my back. Now, get your ass over here, witchling. We have shit to get done."

Instead, I tug the ring from around my neck and chuck it at her feet. The accusation is silent but unmistakable.

"You want to do this now?" she asks.

I nod once.

She raises her brows, sighs and crouches, picking up the ring and rolling it between her finger and thumb for a moment before stepping closer to me. "Yes. I killed her. I suppose you want to know why?"

She doesn't wait for my reply, just keeps moving forward, right into my personal space.

"Because the Goddess ordered me, her Shadow, to do it."

It takes a second for the words to penetrate.

"That's a lie," I hiss. "Glenna was the Goddess's faithful servant. She taught me—"

"Absolutely nothing. Because only a Shadow can teach another Shadow," she snaps. "Glenna taught you what you needed to know to be her pet assassin. Tell me, girl, do you honestly believe that the Goddess sends her Shadows after businessmen and greedy town officials who just happen to openly oppose the monarchy?"

She keeps moving forward, forcing me to step back or risk our bodies crashing into one another.

"Did you truly think that the Goddess would ask a Shadow to start her duties while she was still young enough to be mortal?"

She's made her point, and she knows it.

I just glare at her.

"Glenna loved me. She was the closest—"

"The closest thing you had to a mother, yes, yes. Spare us."

The Mother Solar, taking pity on me, or perhaps just eager to have the scene we're making over with, steps in.

"The purge of Coveton was a regrettable necessity. Glenna's fall from grace is a dark chapter in the Northern covens' history. All we can do now is pray that High Priestess Danika continues to lead our sisters back onto the right path." She looks between us. "Lady Petra, perhaps it would be best to let our new arrivals rest. I'm sure Nilsa will join us in a few hours for the evening meal?"

"We don't have time for that." Petra turns her back on me. "Come, Shadow ," she sneers the word as she starts climbing the steps set into the mountainside. "Or don't you want to know why you were brought here?"

I don't want to follow her.

My gut churns as I watch her move away and it feels as though I'm on a precipice. As if all the answers I've been chasing are suddenly within my grasp but I've realised too late how terrifying the knowledge will be.

My feet move before I've even registered that I'm obeying her. The water still drips from my hair onto the stone steps as we wind our way around the statue of the Goddesses, Opal keeping close to me. For such an old woman, Petra moves fast.

I still don't understand how she's aged like she has. Is it some penalty of magic? Some problem with her immortality? A curse?

Petra promises answers, but by the time we reach the pool atop the Moon Goddess's crown, all I have are more questions.

Petra takes her time, wandering around the edge of the room, lighting candles in white votives around the space even though it's still light outside.

It takes everything in me not to interrupt.

"Sit down." The earlier confrontation is gone from her voice, and in its place is a weariness that wasn't there earlier. This close to the sea, her hair is blowing around her face in a halo of silvery white, making it hard to determine her expression.

Only when I've taken a seat kneeling on the floor, and Opal is sitting next to me, does she speak again.

"The Goddess chose you when you were born, did you know that?"

I shook my head. "Glenna announced it to the coven when I was nine. She said the Goddess granted her a vision of my future."

"True, in a manner of speaking. But the vision was one given to all high priestesses on the day of your birth. There are only ever two Shadows. One student and one mentor. Every time a future Shadow is born, all high priestesses are told. It's supposed to prevent what Glenna did from happening and ensure the future Shadow is given the guidance she needs."

"I still don't know if I can believe you," I whisper. "Glenna was..."

"Let me tell you a story," Petra cuts me off, finishing with the candles and stepping towards the pool in the centre of the room. She starts lighting the floating candles one by one. "Twenty-five years ago, a baby girl was born to the Meliad coven. The Goddess marked her at birth as a Shadow and—knowing that the child would need another Shadow to train her—her mother and her harem waited until she was six, then took their precious child on a ship headed for Sulivad. From there, they planned to fly to Ilyani where I was High Priestess."

I don't like where this is going, but I can't tell her to stop.

"But they never arrived at Sulivad. A storm smashed the ship into the rocks by Fort Sole. The whole family was assumed dead, and I believed that the Goddess had judged me unfit to train another Shadow, and called the child home to the stars before giving me the chance."

"Glenna found me."

"Yes. But only after a certain sirenae prince, sent by his seer sister, rescued you from the depths and swam you to the nearest witch coven."

I'm frozen. I literally can't breathe.

"Niklaus Sirenae Regis, beloved younger brother of the Seer Cassandra Sirenae Regis. He had no idea that you were his mate at the time—the bond doesn't kick in for immortals until all parties have reached the age of maturity—but he did as his sister asked and saved you." Petra turns her silver eyes on me. "You owe him your life."

"So it's true?" I ask. "I have a mate?"

Petra snorts. "One? I thought you'd have figured it out by now. You have a harem, just like all Lunar witches."

"But witches have human consorts."

"Most witches do." Petra nods, lighting the last candle. "But the Goddess gifts her Shadows immortal consorts. Makes them a little more durable. Glenna knew this, but I assume she never told you. Having a harem would give you other priorities and she probably couldn't risk an outside influence who might not approve of her."

"She was always so careful to specify that the Moon Mother hadn't chosen any humans for you." Opal grumbles. "I knew. I bloody knew something felt wrong about it."

"How many?" My voice is shredded by the emotion clogging up my throat. "How many are supposed to be in my harem?"

Petra frowns at me, but still answers me, anyway, "I thought you'd have realised by now. You have six consorts. No matter what Glenna did, the Goddess would have brought them to you as you turned immortal."

Six.

Oh my Goddess.

The pirates are mine. I even met them on my twenty-fifth winter solstice. Five of them, plus Klaus.

Six immortal males, meant for me all along.

This explains so much.

Why I couldn't keep my mind out of the gutter around them. How they could keep me calm enough that I survived being on a ship for so long without a full breakdown.

Petra lets me have my moment, slowly lowering herself to sit on the edge of the pool while I process. From the tensing of her jaw and the awkwardness of the motion, it must be painful for her, but she doesn't stop until her feet are tracing circles in the water.

When she speaks again, she continues her story as though she hasn't just turned my world upside down.

"Glenna found you wandering on a beach, that much is true. And Glenna, who had always wanted a child, decided to take you in. Perhaps then, she didn't know what you were. Maybe she just thought you were an ordinary witchling. I don't know. But I suspect she had an idea, because she announced the Goddess had chosen you as her Shadow not three years later." Petra's eyes harden. "Shadow children are never told who they'll become until they're old enough to handle it. To announce you so young was cruel. It exposed you to ridicule and fear from your peers and isolated you from them in ways a child would not possibly be expected to deal with. Then, to start your training before you were even fully capable of wielding the gifts shadows are given?"

Her outrage is palpable. Magic fills the air with a cold burn that puts me on edge.

I don't want to believe what she's saying. But it all fits.

Opal stands, twining her body around me in a display of comfort. I stroke her on autopilot, glad that I have something to keep my hands busy while my mind tries to wrap itself around all the information being thrown my way.

"Glenna loved me."

I feel like my world is crumbling, but I know Glenna loved me. She raised me. Cared for me. Spoiled me. Treated me like a daughter.

"Yes," Petra admits. "She did. In the end, that love for you became twisted like everything else in her life."

"She was a good high priestess," I argue. "The Coveton covens remained at peace while she was their leader. We had no troubles with the mages, unlike Ilyani—"

"And why do you think that was?"

I think about it for a second. "Because the fosterings made witches a stronger united front?" I hate that it comes out like a question.

"Because Glenna made a deal with the Eagle of Galmere to stay out of the affairs of witches in Coveton in exchange for sending you after her enemies. You've been doing the bidding of the Queen, not the Goddess."

"No." Just no. The rest, I can believe... but this... "They were sent in visions from the Goddess. The Moon Mother heard the prayers of her people and passed them on to me through Glenna."

"They were delivered by raven from the palace in Galmere," she retorts. "The only target that the Goddess has given to any of her shadows in the last five hundred years is the Eagle of Galmere herself."

"You have no proof."

I know it's the wrong thing to say the moment the words leave my mouth. Petra arches a single brow, reaches into the pouch at her waist and pulls out a stack of papers.

"Official letters, bearing the seal of the Queen and addressed to Glenna, some of them even mention you by name. Is that enough proof?" Her raised eyebrows tell me she knows she's bringing my world crashing down around me.

I've never felt so numb.

The handwriting is so ornate that it's hard to read, or maybe that's just my hands shaking.

But it's all there, the Queen's seal. Glenna's name.

My name.

The names of my targets.

I drop the bundle of papers in a daze.

I took innocent lives .

Not for my Goddess. Not through divine will or to protect others.

I killed them for nothing. To satisfy the whims of a human monarch.

"It wasn't our fault," Opal whispers. "How could we have known?"

"Nothing to say?" Petra doesn't seem happy about this, but there's a satisfaction in her gaze that makes me angry.

"Fuck you."

"Eloquent."

"If you knew all this time, why didn't you stop me?"

"Because I didn't know," she admits. "The first time the Goddess alerted me to any of this was a month before the winter solstice when the Moon Mother called me out of retirement to give me the task of killing Glenna and Felicity."

That part didn't make sense.

"Why Felicity?"

"Because she also knew. But instead of doing something about it, she chose to turn a blind eye rather than risk a bloody confrontation with Glenna. It went against the edicts of her Goddess and ours."

"She offered me a place in her coven. Maybe she was trying to stop me in her own way."

Petra scoffs. "Too little, too late. Even the Goddess of Life agreed. High Priestess Sophie gave me her blessing before I left for my task. The Goddesses decided a purge of Coveton was the only way to redeem the temples there." She pushed to her feet, groaning. "We will eat, then begin your training."

I gape at her. "But I still have questions..."

Petra rolls her eyes. "We all have questions, girl. Doesn't mean we deserve the answers. The only question that matters right now is this: will you answer the Goddess's call and kill the Eagle of Galmere? "

She phrases it like a question, but there's never really been any other option. How could I say no when the Queen is blackmailing my harem and trafficking siren body parts? How can I refuse when I saw what happened to the Lunar Temple in Ilyani?

I take a deep breath and nod.

"Good. Then I will train you. Learning to become a true Shadow takes years, but hopefully Glenna taught you something worthwhile because we don't have that much time." She sighs and points towards the archway. "Follow the steps back down, one of the others will lead you to where you'll be staying. I have to perform the dusk prayers, but I'll join you afterwards."

She dismisses me easily, sliding the rest of the way into the pool, which starts to glow with the light of the rising moon.