“Oh, but I do. I lack the one thing I need to understand this place.”
“And what is that?”
“A soul.”
These words should send me running. Instead, I draw closer to him, as though I could fill that emptiness.
“I have watched and I have waited,” he says, and raises one hand to stroke my cheek. “I have tasted your power, and it is greater than any witch who has ever walked these shores. You have command of the five, and yet you do not use it. Your gifts are deep, yet you do not chase them to their depths. Why?”
“Fear.”
“Why do you fear it?”
“No.” I shake my head. “Not my fear. Their fear.”
I do not need to explain further. He knows the coven from which I come, the community that I have called my home. We have always trafficked in caution and concealment. Only my own coven knows the extent of my magic, and they demand I keep it hidden.
He can hear my thoughts. “Is that not the reason the witches have come here? So that they do not need to hide anymore? And yet, here you are, hidden away like something shameful among the very people who should celebrate you.”
My cheeks flush with a flood of emotion I do not expect, and am powerless to conceal. Tears swell unbidden in my eyes, and I blink them away, angry with myself. I do not want him to see my pain—only my strength. But?—
“Pain is strength,” he whispers. “Use it. Claim it. Do not let themdeny you. I have seen what you can be—what you will be. Do you wish to see it, too?”
A frisson of fear shudders through me, but I do not bow to it. I steel myself, and look up into his eyes instead; and it is like falling into two deep pools, falling… falling…
The vision hits me like a bolt of lightning. Raw magic coursing through me, as I rise from flame and crashing wave and swirling winds, the earth cracking beneath me, the collected intention of a thousand ancestors gathering in my fingertips. My eyes are stars glittering in an endless sky, my hair a billowing cascade twisting like vines, ensnaring all within my reach, pulling it within my control, as a gown of seafoam and blossoms and fire rises to envelop me, as every living thing in the Cove and beyond kneels at my feet, like to a queen. Their fear sustains me. Like air, it fills my lungs and my heart and my spirit, and I feel infinite. I am infinite.
I blink, and find myself breathless and panting, staring into his unreadable face once more.
“Do you see now? Do you see what you can be? What we will be, together?”
“Yes.”
“The key to that power is here.” He nods his head at the archway behind him. “Together we can unlock it, and all you have just seen will come to pass. All you need to do is take my hand.”
I look down at his outstretched hand, like a promise. I take it.
He is the Darkness. He is terrible. He is beautiful.
And I serve him.
Torn from my host, I am lost.
I had known it could only be temporary. Even our shared bloodline could only protect her for so long. As the days passed within the walls of the prison, I had felt her mind deteriorating, driven mad by the unnaturaljoining of two souls within a single body. Soon she would be useless to me, and I would have to abandon her to find another.
But then the Vespers come. They destroy my best-laid plans. Again.
I can feel it again—the inexorable pull of the Source. I fight against it, as I did all those years ago, but I am weak and tired from the effort of clinging to Bernadette’s mortal form. I do not know how long I can resist it. This is the moment I almost give up.
Like the tide dragging at the grains of sand on the beach, the Source pulls me closer. I plead with the Darkness to find me, to save me, but I am met only with silence. With no body, and no magic, I am nothing to him anymore. I am no longer pentamaleficus. I am only shade and shadow. I am an echo of dust.
At last my will crumbles, and I find myself wandering the beach, drawn to the entrance of the cave. It is over. I have nothing left to fight for, no shred of hope that I can rejoin him. I prepare to give myself up to the Source, to let it swallow me. I do not know or care what awaits me on the other side. If it is not him, it may as well be nothing at all.
But I am not alone. A woman stands between me and the entrance to the cave.
She sees me, of that I am certain, and yet my sudden presence does not surprise her. She stands with hands calmly folded in front of her, her expression impassive. She is waiting for me.
“Hello, Sarah.”
