Page 38 of Torn Ivy
“Thank you,” he says with a rush.
I cup his face and give him a soft smile.
Tate flips through more pages of the book, his brow furrowed in concentration. “There’s something here about balancing the chaos. It says the anchor - that would be me - needs to...oh.”
“What?” I ask, sitting up straighter. “What does it say?”
Tate’s cheeks flush slightly. “It says we need to, uh, merge our energies. Frequently and deeply.”
Torin snorts. “So, you need to fuck. A lot. How convenient.”
I roll my eyes at Torin’s barb. “Is that all it says? Just ‘merge energies’?”
“Yeah. It’s sharing magick. Letting mine touch yours. Just like you did with Bram a minute ago.”
“Okay, well, that doesn’t sound terrible—” But I stop when I see the look on his face. “What?”
“I’m supposed to take the burden from you. Absorb some of that power and filter it.”
“Is that dangerous?”
He shrugs.
“Okay, maybe we don’t do that then until we know.”
We sit in silence, each lost in our own thoughts. This is getting way more complicated than I could’ve imagined. I didn’t want any of this. I was happy being a shifter, and now I’m all sorts of other things that I don’t understand or even know where they came from.
“Maybe we need to start with my own family tree,” I murmur. “Try to find out where the witch came from.”
Before the guys can answer, reality bends. I feel nauseous as Death materialises in the room with an ominous rumble. “That would come from me.”
17
IVY
The nausea fadesas Death’s presence settles in my bedroom. His eye sockets seem to hold galaxies as he studies me.
“What do you mean, it comes from you?” I demand, pulling my oversized t-shirt down self-consciously. “And before you even try it, lay one gross finger on them and I will end you even if it means ending myself in the process.”
Death’s laugh echoes like bones rattling in a tomb. “My dear girl, do you think I care about killing them? No, this is all for your benefit. With regard to your power, did you think your remarkable abilities came from nowhere? The chaos magick that flows through your veins is no accident. It’s evolution.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Evolution of what?”
“Of the most powerful witch bloodline to ever exist.” He waves a skeletal hand, and reality ripples. Suddenly, we’re no longer in my bedroom but in an ancient library, having left the guys back in my bedroom. Books line the walls from floor to ceiling, their spines crackling with ancient power. “You come from my line.” Death moves to one of the shelves, pulling out a massive tome that looks older than time itself. “Many, manygenerations ago, before I became Death, I was the patriarch of the most powerful witch family in existence.”
The book floats between us, its pages turning on their own until they stop at a family tree. Names and dates spread across the parchment, some so old they’re barely legible.
“Your chaos magick is old power evolved. When you rejected becoming Death while still in the womb, you didn’t just create a cosmic glitch, you transformed our family’s inherent witch magick into something entirely new.”
I stare at the family tree, watching as lines of power pulse through it like veins. My name sits at the bottom, glowing with that familiar pink energy. Above it, through countless generations, the line traces back to… “David Beech.”
“Indeed,” Death says, sounding almost proud. “Our bloodline has always been different. We don’t just use magick; we are magick. But you, my dear descendant, you’ve taken it further than any of us could have imagined.”
“The Ancient Fae magick? Does that have something to do with this evolution?” Despite my anger and fear of this arsehole, he is actually being forthcoming and telling me shit I need to know to kill him. It’s like everyone is always telling me that I roll with the punches, think on my feet, think outside the box. Well, right now, I’m doing all three plus playing along with him, so he will tell me everything and think I’m being amenable—the old double cross.
“The witch magick in our bloodline has always had an affinity for Fae power. Something about the way we perceive and channel energy. But your transformation has merged them completely.”
My head spins as I try to process this. “So I’m not just some cosmic accident? This was all predetermined? Is that what you’re saying?”
