The Luna's Bodyguard [a mature werewolf romance]

Ch 47: The Witted One

AURORA

Something was terribly wrong.

I heard it in the near-silent trickle of calcium-laced water down the slimed walls, as if the cavern itself were quietly weeping, trying to avoid discovery. The lake cringed away from the cold otherness leaching through the hull of the boat, it's ghoulish denizens sinking dangerously close to the afterlife, which was safer than the surface.

A figure emerged from the mist, silhouetted by the faint glow of ether emanating from the waters of my prison. Skin white as death, hair black as night, eyes blue as dreams. Her collar of diamonds absorbed the light and let none escape, allowing her to coast through the cavern with her eyes wide open.

The Witted One.

I felt the crone's presence behind me. "You have a decision to make," she whispered.

She was wrong. I'd made my decision the moment I saw Ophelia's blade plunge into the heart of her beloved.

"I will support you either way," she added, though fear weighed down the words.

Without looking, I reached back, grasping her withered hand. Papery, porous, palsied. It would be mine, by the century's end. "It is time to break the cycle," I murmured, lifting my chin.

It took Twyla embarrassingly long to catch on. Perhaps, if I had warned her, she might have stood a chance against the storm that was Addison Sinclair. But since Twyla had started toying with Elara Winters' future, she'd been utterly absorbed by the other girls' life, linked to this sacred place through the water which connected all living things.

When she finally did tear her eyes away from the lycans pressed together in the small darkness of a storeroom, it was too late. "What the fuck," Twyla hissed under her breath, scrambling towards us — just as the prow of the boat scraped the gravely bank.

Addison Sinclair collected her skirts and stepped off the canoe with all the poise of a dark queen. Her gown was made of raven's wings, which twitched and rustled as if animated by scraps of lingering souls. Beaked skulls adorned the pins her hair, their hollow eyes boring into me.

"Necromancy," the old crone whispered.

Just a touch of it — but enough to make us wary.

"You have no right to wear that necklace," Twyla said, but her voice sounded shaky. It was a gift for Lady Evergreen, our emissary, so that she might visit and carry word of the Path to her brethren. "Take it off this instant."

Addison's lips quirked. "Finder's keepers."

The words of power — borrowed by Ancient Romans thousands of years ago, and misappropriated by the English — seized the air. But it wasn't the word so much as the intent behind them that had devastating effect. Like a pill stuffed in cheese, Addison's spell snuck the oxygen out of the room, creating a deadly vacuum chamber.

If I'd needed that air, I would have found myself keeling over and scrabbling at my throat. But I'd come to terms with the fact I wasn't truly living. Unlike my colleague, who was writhing on the ground even now, veins bulging in her dusky throat as she struggled to draw in breath.

I felt a stab of pity for the girl, who so desperately longed to be human. I'd had the luxury of escape for twenty-one years, but she had been stuck down here from the moment of her remaking; she was addicted to living vicariously through others.