Page 4 of Hex
“A fated love is destined to survive, as should you.” With more grace than a Disney princess, she walks closer to me so we’re now only a few feet apart. “Your life has been stolen…from us both.” Her bronze eyes have a light glow behind them. I can also sense the pain she’s attempting to mask with her bright smile. “I would ask you to sit, but that would be pointless. As such, I will give you the short version of what happened.”
She must be able to predict the question on the tip of my tongue because she holds up a palm and smiles like she has a secret.
“Time is not on our side. I can only hold off the soulseekers for so long before you get assigned to a higher up for being difficult.” She begins pacing across the large space. “Almost two thousand years ago, I was with child…you. The Society of Soulkeepers was in its early days and the Moirai had requested the presence of all the Dei, which is something none of us could refuse. There, they declared a prophecy, one that would begin under the crimson moon. Which just so happened to be your due date.”
I wish I could sit down and enjoy this, because it’s a hell of a story so far.
“Lost in the twilight of the crimson moon, the blood of the child tainted. The return of three but a memory, defines the journey of the fated. One becomes two, and two become eight, the end of the world is nigh. Centuries old, chronicles told, and not all will survive. Dust the blood, the wing, and the weight of the mind. Destruction will come when all are combined.”The way she recites the rhyme is like it’s engraved into her, the words flowing as freely as each breath she takes. “I refused to believe it involved you, but your father…” She shivers, an uncomfortable chill in the air before she continues her careful pacing. “I asked my best friend to be my midwife, the only other being I could trust with my heart leaving my body, but she betrayed me. Not that I knew this at the time. I was told that you died in my womb. You were motionless in her palms…” She sighs, pausing to look at me in disbelief. “But you’re here. My soul recognizes yours, my blood runs through your veins…well, the ones in your body. To which you must return as soon as possible. Its location is unknown, but it has been preserved, I do know that. As a demi-goddess, you have free reign in Kohrye and Lympana, so make sure you bring that demon of yours and come find me whenyou’re whole. We can talk without restraint and, my dear child…I can hold you in my arms for the first time. That is a joy I have been longing for since the day you first died. Now, I will find out anything I can about why this is the first time I have been able to sense you, and from the way you have been following that demon around, I’m guessing he broke the hex he asked me about.”
If I didn’t know before, then I know now; speaking at a mile a minute must be in my DNA because this woman can talk!
“I have a million questions but I think I’m stuck on the whole demi-goddess thing. Does that mean I’m not a witch? And what is the other part of me if I’m demi?”
She chuckles again with the beautiful light tinkling sound that would light up anyone’s day. So unlike the angry goddess I saw that day with Baba Yaga.
“I can sense the witch in you from Baba. It’s small, but it’s there, highlighted only by the fact that I am your mother. The witches are my domain.” She winks, like we’re old friends, before her features turn cold. “Your life was linked to hers with a strange, magically bound hex that I’m still looking into, but as fate would have it, your chosen was handed a rare stone containing god’s breath…my breath. So when you died with it in your possession, it overrode the hex because goddess trumps witch.” The smile is back by the time she has finished speaking. “May I?” She raises her hand, holding it inches from my cheek, and I’m unsure what she’s asking, but roll with it.
“Um, okay? Can you even touch me, though?”
“You’ll feel a light tickle against your skin before you return to your body. I will infuse some basic witchy knowledge to start you off, like a little teaser to make sure you visit as soon as you can when you’re alive. The demi-goddess side of you will awaken when you’re thirty. The witch side of you, too, and you will have to choose the correct path during your rite. The other side…well…if you’re anything like your father…” She shakes her head and pushes her hand against my face. “Let’s hope not.”
“Wait! Who—”
My words die as a rumble beneath my feet makes me stumble. Then everything goes black as I take my first real breath in longer than I care to think about, but it catches in my throat, along with a thick stench of rot. Sounds of water droplets falling echo around the space, making me realize I’m not in Lympana anymore with the goddess I have prayed to for as long as I can remember. With my mother.
If that’s even true.
It’s been an information overload and I’m blindly believing each new supernatural being I encounter because…well, I have an overwhelming feeling that they’re not lying. As dumb as that may seem. I’ve always been able to trust my gut when it comes to people, which is probably why I always refused Professor Dickwad’s advances. Turns out I was right there.
I think that’s why my body is refusing to let me open my eyes, because I absolutely do not feel safe. Movement to my left gives me the urge to give into my curiosity and see where I am, but all the revelations Hekate just landed on me are helping to occupy my mind elsewhere.
“Aggie, look! She’s breathing!” The voice is high-pitched, nasal, and it sounds like the speaker smokes fifty a day.
“Of course she’s breathing, you cockalorum. Master said the vampyre’s predictions were never wrong. The white candles have waned, the red are soaring, and breath is once again hers.” The second voice is harsher than the first, with a deeper tone and anger spat from her words.
“How exciting. I wonder what she is.”
“That isn’t for us to know. Tie up her hands before she wakes so we can take her to her cell.”
Okay, I’m done with lying here and listening in on their conversation. I don’t like the sound of that.
My limbs are heavy, like I’m underwater, but I push through the pounding in my skull and open my eyes so that my clumsy streak doesn’t kick in and make me fall off a cliff. It’s dark except for the candles circling the giant lump of stone I’m on, making it difficult to see anything around me, but there’s movement in the shadows where the voices came from.
I have no idea if they’re looking in my direction, and it doesn’t matter anyway because I’m not waiting around here to be imprisoned. Sitting up as quickly as I can without causing my head to spin, I twist my bottom half until my legs are hanging to the ground and jump off, realizing too late that I have no shoes on. Jagged rocks dig into the soles of my feet, the pain sharp, and I’m positive I’m bleeding. Because of course I am.
“Mera! Grab her!”
Ah shit.
I barely make it two painful steps before a bird-faced woman with giant wings in place of arms blocks my only escape route.
“Look…” The word comes out scratchy and I have to clear my throat. Understandable, considering I’ve been dead for two weeks. I hold my palms up in the universal gesture of surrender. “I don’t know who or what you are, and I’m sure you’re wonderful…er…”
“We’re harpies, girl. Now make this easy on yourself and don’t fight back.” This is the high-pitched one from before.
“Well, we kinda have a problem because I need to get out of here. Places to go, people to see, you know how it is, right?” The pain I felt in soul form while not within six feet of Hack still remains, only now it’s ten times stronger and I know he can feel me too. The sooner I can get back to him, the sooner I’ll feel like myself again. That, and I don’t want to be imprisonedby harpies. Although, the usual pull that sends me in the right direction toward him isn’t there.
“You’re useless, Mera.”
