Page 73 of WitchCurse
“But why? I don’t understand that. He is all you had, and you are all he has, why not find comfort in that?”
Nick could have sought out any, but settled for me, why? Because we were stuck together. My fault, like so many other things in my existence, it would eventually shatter. Better to give him space to sort the truth and realize how much misfortune really followed him due to his tie to me. “Did he share…” the truth of my failures?
“I saw. It’s new, this bond thing, but, yeah,” Toby said, “I saw.”
I closed my eyes and sank deeper into the blankets. There had been perks to being bound in ice for a long time. Thinking slowed, magic stolen, lingering in a sort of stasis rather than wallowing in the pain of remembrance. A kindness? I’d never really thought of my mother as kind. Ruthless, manipulative, and cold, had I missed something?
Toby’s fingers found my face, touch light over my skin, not seeking really, but comforting. “I’m not horrified,” he said. “Well, not in the way you think. It honestly doesn’t surprise me. Legends of the kitsune come from somewhere. Demons who drink down magic, and yet there’s always a lot left unspoken.” He pressed his forehead to mine for a minute, but I didn’t open my eyes to look at him. “It’s a bit like the madness that comes from being a wolf. The wolves will tell you it’s easy to control. Instinct even. They won’t tell you about the hunger, the separation, the internal battle. The wolf is instinct. The human adds a lot of crap to that. Motive? Or sadism? Not that it matters the reason when humans cause each other pain.”
Toby let out a long breath which warmed my face. “I’m sad that you went through that, and wonder if it was necessary? I know everyone says fate and all that bullshit, but I wonder, what if you’d been trained? What if you hadn’t been starved? You spent time in this realm as a kid…”
Only to be dragged back to Underhill by theHunt.
“You didn’t get hungry for the fae when you were here?” he asked.
“I ate the shadows and some bits of real food from this world.” The memory of feeling starved really came from the years locked in Underhill.
“If you ate the shadows now, would it be enough to keep you from fading?”
“There will always be a danger of the darkness getting free if I am too strong. It’s better to keep me weak. You saw what happened when I gorged on fae power.”
“But that was fae power…after you’d been starved for how long? Decades? Centuries? It’s hard to gauge time from your memories.”
I shrugged, unsure either how much time had passed in those early years. Battles, I could name those. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of battles I’d been thrown into to wage war for my mother and the others of court. A time or two I’d spent beneath Zephyr’s boots as he served as a general, issuing commands, but never dirtying his hands. My reward had been to be chained to his bed until I was required to fight the next battle. That alone had happened a dozen times before I’d even realized he’d been feeding on my power more than my sex.
A growl escaped Toby’s lips. I opened my eyes, worried I’d find him changing, but his eyes were human, his jaw clenched, and I realized I’d let those shields slip again, giving him too much of a glimpse into my head. I assembled another layer of shields, wondering if it would ever get easier to keep them out, or simpler to give them all my dark past and let them keep themselves out.
“Are any of the ties that remain, curses he carved into you?” Toby asked after a long moment of silence.
“I don’t know.” And I didn’t. Too many years and faded memories kept a lot of the original bonds a secret. They bound me in the dark to keep me weak as they knew what would come if I grew in strength.
“But if you’re weak, how will you contain the darkness?”
“I have held it back for centuries,” I said absently, thinking of the stores of magic I funneled constantly into the shield around that monstrous thing inside me. Eventually there would not be enough of me left to hold it back.
“Why did it never try to free itself in this world? You mention encountering the darkness as a child, funneling away the strength, but never that it raged or demanded freedom.” Toby examined the end of my braid, fingers playing with the strands of mixed hair as though fascinated by the shifting color.
“Perhaps it wasn’t strong enough when I was young?” I couldn’t recall feeling it was some demon demanding to be freed in my youth, but that was so long ago, another world and many lifetimes passed since, those memories long faded.
“Or maybe you were being fed properly,” Toby said. “Then the fae dragged you back to Underhill, starved you until the demon had no recourse but to feed and survive on what was the only food source available, which much like Sebastian, the mix was wrong. You don’t need the magic of the fae, find it harder to use. You are technically a creature that is part of this world.”
I sighed, thinking it didn’t really matter the whys or the hows, since it had happened. I’d begun the end of an entire dimension of power. Sebastian might have been its final destruction, but it would never have gotten there without my initial fall into the abyss of insanity. I really didn’t want that to happen here too. Was there another world to escape into?
“The wolf is always hungry,” Toby said quietly. “It craves blood, meat, and dominance. Not stuff regular wolves really care about. I think that’s why it’s a blood curse, sort of like vampires need blood, werewolves need meat and battle. Sounds stupid, and I hate it. I wish I were more like Sebastian, born rather than made. I don’t mind changing. Running in the woods, feeling the wind in my fur, and dirt beneath my feet, that’s all fine, but the constant need for a fight is exhausting.” His gaze found my face, his fingers rising to trace my nose and jaw like he was memorizing my features, but I’d let my glamour fade the moment I entered the room, and had no idea what he actually saw. “Do you crave battle when you change into the kitsune?”
“No,” I said honestly. At the moment, with hunger beginning to rise due to the constant drain, I knew I could eat, but a need for dominance, battle, and blood, those had never been my calling. “The kitsune is instinct. It will fight for food, safety, and mate, the rest will always be me.” And I’d been more curious than anything else, always seeking new experiences, adventuring further to meet new people, see exciting places and encounter animals never seen before.
Finding Nick had been a magical thing as he’d had the same affection for learning. Even when it was dangerous, we would venture in those early days of freedom to abandoned cities to dig for books, fleeing the monsters, and only fighting when absolutely necessary. He’d taken to the sword easily. I’d been surprised to find it left behind in my mother’s castle, stuck in stone like stories of old, but it came to my hand with ease. A lot of the palace seemed to have been abandoned in haste, as though they were willing to give it all up to cage me.
I sighed, hating the flood of memories that came when one thread wriggled free.
Toby gently touched a spot on my shoulder, it ached, pain sharp but fleeting, as if his fingers found one of the final curses. I flinched, thinking he’d try to dig it out, but he didn’t.
“I don’t know what they mean,” he said quietly. “We got pictures of the drawings. Korissa’s vision is amazing. It’s bound deep, not something I can reach, or really see clearly. I’d like to ask Wesley about it, but can’t find him. Sebastian is worried that the ice queen has him, since he should be able to track Wesley.”
“Seers are tricky,” I said, thinking back to the handful of encounters I’d had in my life. Of those I could remember, when my sanity was intact, they were a slippery lot, escaping into the shadows whenever possible and avoiding fights they saw coming, but the rest of us had to endure. “Though him at the mercy of my mother is not ideal.”
“Answers would be nice.”