Page 81 of Spellbound
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Iwatched Freya huntfrom the window. It was quite mesmerizing, watching her catch deer and rabbits with her bare hands as she hid among shadows, slipping between them with ease. It was a beautiful place. The house was built high up in the trees, on tall trunks of cut-down trees. It looked like it belonged to the forest.
It had been days since I’d arrived, and no one had come to save me. Freya and Alexander had spent the evenings discussing what they were going to do. I tried to do a magic quill, but nothing sent. My magic didn’t work here. Alexander must have been blocking it. If I were a little colder hearted, I’d have killed him while Freya was out and left the house, but I wasn’t like her. And as much as Alexander was a part of this, there was something about him that stopped me, a madness deep in his eyes, but soft, not dangerous. Like he didn’t understand everything happening. It was as if the lines of reality and fantasy had blurred somewhere between paintings.
“She’s hunting your dinner,” he explained when he entered the room I had been assigned. My window was much smaller than theirs, but at least I could look out to freedom.
I scrunched my nose. “I’m not eating rabbit or deer.”
“There’s no menu,” he explained gently as if I truly believed there were. “It’s that or starve, I am afraid.”
“What’s the plan then?” I asked, changing the subject. “How exactly do you plan on killing Raiden?”
He tilted his head. “Raiden?”
“I assume you’ll be wanting to take his place?”
“No. Freya has chosen Aziel’s body for mine. Lucius will take care of the other two.”
“Lucius.” My eyebrows flicked up in surprise. “Their father, the god of the underworld?”
“God of justice,” he said, correcting. “But yes, he does have domain over the underworld.”
“You’re working with their father to hunt them?”
He shuffled uncomfortably, pushing his blond curls over his shoulder. “We have heard Lucius wants replacements. His children have plagued this world with more sin, and he wants to set things right.”
I scoffed. “Says the man who helped kidnap me, and hit me over the head, and is in love with the woman who eats hearts!” Gods, these people were mad. “I thought gods were meant to help mortals. Hmm?”
His eyebrows furrowed. “I suppose.”
“Do you really think Freya cares about helping mortals, like us?” I pointed at him so he understood he was still a mortal, because he seemed to be under the illusion he was more.
“You don’t understand her. No one does but me. She’s been through more pain than either of us can imagine.”
“I know what she went through, but it’s no excuse. She decided to make the wrong choices time and time again.” I inhaled sharply. “Can you really blame Raiden and the others for hunting her? She killed their sister, Alexander. Do you have siblings? A family?”
“I did.”
“What happened to them?”
“They left me.” He looked down, and guilt stabbed through me. I knew that look all too well.
“So did mine.” Silence fell over us both for a moment. “I’d still kill for them though—for my sister anyway. She’s all I have left.”
“I did not know you had a sister.”
I opened my mouth to speak but thought better of it.
He looked back out the window, turning his back toward me. “Where is she?”
I swallowed thickly. “She’s... away from here.”
“In Istinia?”
I shook my head. “No, uh. She’s not a witch.”
“Ah,” he said slowly. “Interesting.”
