Page 61 of Heart of a Witch
“So kind of you, but you should rest right now,” I said, trying and failing to keep the contempt from my voice. It wasn’t his fault I’d saved him and my sister hated me for putting my life at risk, yet every time I looked at him, I saw my failure.
“I should see a doctor.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but the maid returned, interrupting my thoughts. She placed a tray between us on the low table. “Sir, is there anything else you need?”
He barely looked at her. “No.”
“Hey.” I snapped my fingers. “Recovering from a bite doesn’t excuse you from having manners.” I looked at the maid. “Thank you.”
He chewed the inside of his lips and leaned across the table to grab a piece of fudge. “Thanks, Adeline.”
The maid smiled and opened the door and left. Once she was gone, I grabbed a handful of blackberry bonbons from the white bowl, then poured myself and him a tea. I needed the sugar too. I felt terrible.
“I’m going home,” I said at the last sip. “I have dry clothes there. No need to inconvenience yourself.”
He hunched over, not touching his own tea. “Victoria…”
“Try to rest,” I said and stood. “I won’t be attending the club with you tonight, but then I don’t think you should go either.”
His lips parted when I stepped past him, but he didn’t speak. I walked out and toward the courtyard to get a carriage home. I was drained and worried about my snakes, and my head pounded as if something was trying to force its way in.
***
I awoke unable to breathe. Grasping fingers were at my throat, and my eyelids flung open, my bedroom empty. My heart raced, skipping every other beat as if it knew it was about to beat its last. That’s what this was. Death.
A slither of air passed through my lips, then another, but it wasn’t enough. I pressed back, arching my back against silk sheets. I silently choked, unable to alert my brother or sister. Had I been poisoned?
After a minute, I slowed my shallow, fast breaths. After another, my heart rate slowed, and the waves of numbness subsided.
Sitting upright, my eyes bulged. I inhaled deeply and reached around my bed, but nothing was out of the ordinary. What had I been doing before this happened? Dreaming. Yes, that was it. I had dreamed of Ember. Fond memories surfaced simple day-to-day stuff, stuff I’d discarded then, before I knew they’d become an important part of my collection of her life. Like how she’d always make me tea when I couldn’t sleep, or when we’d laugh about something Cas did… whispers in her bedroom as we played with the snakes, not wanting to wake Mother, and Ember going on about girls at the academy.
A shudder snaked through me, running me cold. She was gone, and nothing could bring her back. The reality hit me like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t save her, and she really was dead. She wasn’t going to come home sometime. She was no more. How could I accept that? She was my sister. We grew up together. We shared secrets, laughs, and so much more. She was so many things, and she couldn’t just not exist anymore.
The truth of her being gone had been in my head since that night, but it was numbed. A wall of blackness covered the stark reality as if my mind were trying to protect itself. Conversations from when we were just kids, staying up all night when we shouldn’t or sneaking out to the woods to look for rabbits, resurfaced. I couldn’t take it.
Suddenly I couldn’t breathe again, but I understood why. It was her. The dark magic had pulled out the grief I’d buried deep inside, forcing it to the surface. In saving Elijah, I’d fractured my mind even more, and this was the consequence.
I made a noise I’d never heard myself make inside my mouth, keeping my lips firmly pressed together. It was bigger than me, the emotion too powerful for my body. I gripped into my pillows until the material ached my palms. I dug in my nails and screamed again, unable to keep it in like before. Each one resonated inside my mouth, chattering my teeth as my tears fell thick and fast. I held onto everything and anything, sheets, pillows, blankets… anything to keep me grounded to this world.
The grief was going to kill me. I only wished it would hurry. I wanted to shout and scream at the crows sitting on my windowsill, for no other reason than just existing. I hated everything and anything. The world wasn’t allowed to continue, but it had.
All I wanted was to go into the kitchen, in my own home, to make myself a tea and stare at the chair where Ember sat. To go to her room and look at her things. It was all gone. Our house was gone, and all our things with it. I was here, enacting out some ridiculous revenge plan, allowing myself to attend a ball and drink as if the worst thing hadn’t happened. I should march into their mansion, take a knife to Damian Shaw’s throat, and spill his blood, delighting in the seconds I had to watch him choke on it until I was likely executed shortly after for murder.
I mean, hadn’t I done that to the woman in the church? I’d somehow murdered her without even meaning to. That was how much my emotions were fucked up. I couldn’t control them, and since that hex, my mind had become a sliver more unhinged than before. Maybe the hunter was right in one regard: witches could be dangerous.
I threw my pillow across the room, at the door, then screamed aloud, until my scream dried out. My door flung open, and I didn’t bother to hide my emotions.
Alex’s eyes were tearful, matching mine, her lips pressing together. “I know.”
Cas appeared behind her. “What’s going on…” He trailed off, his stare fixating on me and hands wringing. “Oh, sister.”
I expected anything but this. They both climbed onto my bed, Cas sitting upright against the headboard. His hand was on my back, and Alex curled up next to me, lying on my hair.
Midnight fell into the morning hours, and I cried more than I knew was possible. Cas had even shed a tear, though I knew he was trying to keep himself together for us.
“She’s still with us,” he said into the darkness of my room, his words meant for himself more than us.
“I remember when we’d make potions in the bathtub, when Mama would bathe us together,” Alex recalled, laughing through her tears. “Not real potions. They were from soap and bathing flowers and herbs.”
