Page 25 of The Court of Secrets
Her eyes widened. Surprise arched her eyebrows, her lips parting. “You feel his presence too?”
“It’s ahim?”
She nodded slowly. “A necromancer.”
I gasped. “This is bad. What do we do?”
She inhaled deeply. Silence hung around us, more deafening than ever.
“Morgana!” I snapped my fingers in front of her eyes. “Tell me.”
“I did not suspect he would latch onto you too.”
“How do we get rid of him? You made it happen before when I used sacrificial magic, so do it again. Make the ancestors take him away. He’s hurting me, and I’m afraid,” I admitted, hearing the childish words echo around us.
She grabbed my hands and turned them over to look at my palms. “He is becoming stronger by the day.” Her eyes glossed. “There is nothing we can do.”
I half-laughed in disbelief. “So that’s it then? We do nothing?”
She averted her gaze to the wall. “I distanced myself from you out of fear of hurting you. I’ve tried to remove him, but I cannot. I have written to Licia, but he has not responded yet to my letters. Although, I do not see him being able to help us, especially knowing what he wants.”
My gaze narrowed. “What does Licia want?”
“It is not for me to say, but he will not help us with this. I was going to leave, as to not put anyone at risk.”
I swallowed thickly. “At risk? You mean we can hurt people?” I thought back to the moment I wanted to pick up the rock and hit my mother with it on the back of her head. “I can’t live like this.”
“You must resist,” she replied, her gaze falling back on mine. “We must both. I have kept him at bay with a potion.” She pondered a moment. “But you are the queen. I may be able to suppress his presence for a while.” She placed her finger against her temple, mumbling incoherently for a minute. “I shall fetch the bones and grind them.”
I ran cold. “What?”
“I will prepare you something to give you time until I can speak with the necromancer.”
“You’ve lost it.” I nodded, taking a step back. “You must have gone mad if you think reaching out to him is a good idea.”
“Finding out what he wants and making a deal is the only way to rid ourselves of him. The last time the ancestors helped, you’d only used a couple of basic rituals, and you hadn’t made any sacrifices yourself. He was only faintly attached to you, but you must know, Winter, bringing someone back from the dead takes great sacrifice.”
“What did you sacrifice?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
Her eyes teared. “Myself, Winter. I gave him me. My soul.”
I choked back a sob. Tingling numbed my fingertips, as if he could sense we were talking about him. Giving one’s soul away was the worst thing they could do. “No. Take it back. I don’t want to live then.”
“You were not a part of the agreement. I was hoodwinked.”
I shook my head. “This can’t be happening.” I looked at her again, but she acted more distant than ever. The softness of her features, the depth in her stare, and the kindness on the edges of her smile had vanished, replaced by a lost abyss as if she were in pain and unaware at the same time. “I’ll find a way out of this.”
“You can’t. It must be me. I did this.”
I shook my head. “To cause you more pain? No.”
“I’ll bring you the potion tonight to suppress him, but it will not last for long. A couple of weeks at most. In the meantime, I urge you please, do nothing. For both our sakes.”
***
I ambled back to my room, feeling lost the more I walked through the narrow hallways and past larger-than-life portraits. A girl watched the moon out of an open window, and a part of me wanted to push her simply for existing, for breathing. I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to turn in a different direction. I was struggling to contain him. More than that, I almost didn’t want to.
I reached my room, and a guard’s honey-brown eyes found mine in the darkness. “Call Cedric here,” I said.
