Page 72 of Witch's Fate

“But the people of the village were your family. Your friends!”

“As long as I paid the tributes, no one I knew personally needed to die.” Oriva’s eyes were cold. “It’s been over two thousand years and they are only now coming to collect. The current citizens of Bruxa’s Eye might be descendants of some of my friends, but they aren’t my actual friends. And some of the people who live here aren’t even descendants. Their fate is no concern of mine.”

“There’s has to be something we can do!” Sofia said.

“Fight them and hope to win.” Oriva shrugged. “Though that will be nearly impossible.”

Sofia’s shoulders sagged.

The five other souls who stood next to Oriva erupted into shouts. They converged on her.

Sofia waved her wand and the souls and portal disappeared. She turned to the others, her eyes dark. “I’m so sorry.”

“Fates, your ancestor was a piece of work,” Inara said.

“That’s the truth of it,” the big Were said. “But we wanted to fight the High Witches, and we will fight them.”

Sofia tried to force her body to stop trembling. “More than half of the village are descendants of the original cursed villagers. Perhaps even more. The others could flee, but…”

“Then everyone would die,” Amira, the vampire, said. “I will stay, though my family has only been here for eight hundred years. Our strength is in our numbers. Our combined powers. I won’t turn my back on my friends.”

Gratitude welled in Sofia. Should she encourage them to leave? To save themselves? But if she did, she’d be consigning the rest of her village to death.

Kitty pressed against her leg and she focused on her warmth, drawing strength and comfort from her familiar.

“We’ll need as much help as we can get,” Sofia met the gazes of the council members, who’d all come to stand before her. “Talk to your factions. Let those who are not of the original descendants make their own choice about whether or not to fight. But if they will stay, ask them to get what help they can. Friends and family who live in other places. The High Witches will converge upon the village with magic the likes of which we cannot imagine. We’ll need numbers to fight them.”

“I can talk to the transients,” Aleia said.

“Good.” Sofia nodded. Bruxa’s Eye drew dozens of visitors every day, many of them repeats. Often, the population of the village was at least doubled by theirnumbers. “I will do what I can to find help from elsewhere. We still have two days before the High Witches expect us to return with the Grimoire. When we don’t appear with it, they’ll attack. Do what you can to add to our numbers and we will meet again tomorrow morning.”

The council members nodded and said their goodbyes, then left the circle. When it was just her, Inara, Aleia, and Malcolm, Sofia almost collapsed. Despair stole her strength.

Unable to help herself, she glanced at Malcolm. He stood so tall, a pillar of strength in the middle of the stone circle. Early morning sun gleamed on his dark hair. Pain stabbed her, a blade to the heart. Gods, she almost loved him. Yet his actions had led her here.

How the hell was she supposed to reconcile that?

Did it matter, considering what they were facing?

They couldn’t win this. If, for some insane reason they did, it wouldn’t be without enormous loss of life.

Just the thought of it forced steel back into her spine. She didn’t have time to collapse. She had to keep going. There had to be a way—build their numbers strong enough, attack the High Witches on their home turf, dosomething.

Malcolm came to stand by her side, his gaze fierce. “We can fix this.”

“Can we?” She had no idea how.

“My brother will help. We can go to the university and request more assistance. They have a vested interest in not letting the High Witches destroy an entire village, even if that village isn’t in their territory.”

She nodded. She’d been thinking of going to them. There was no central organization like the university in South America. Her village was the closest thing to a large,organized group of Mytheans in the entire continent. Salem served the same purpose in the north, but they had no friends there. Not after they’d destroyed the Salem Coven’s home.

“We’ll go to your brother,” she said, feeling not a whit bad about using him for his contacts. He owed her. “His wife has contacts with the university, right? And powerful friends.”

“Yes. We can go now.”

Sofia nodded, then turned to Inara. “Will you stay for the battle?”

“Yeah. You helped me get back at the Salem Coven, I’ll help you with this. But if it looks like I’m about to get offed, I’m aetherwalking away.”

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