Her voice is sad. Soft. “Not all of us. We would have done anything, everything, broken through time and space itself to have a single day with you. There has not been a moment I haven’t begged to see you.”
“I know that you’re my mother, but that’s about all I know,” I say carefully. “I did a spell to pull you to me. Did you mess with the spell and bring me here? Where is here?”
“I didn’t mess with the spell, but when you were a baby, I put a hex on you that if you ever did try to make a spell to find me, that it’d bring you to me. It wasn’t done with malicious intent or anything like that. I just, it was a last-ditch attempt, a failsafe, just in case everything went wrong,” she explains. That’s why. The spell mixed with the hex and did this. It dragged me to her instead of the other way around.
“It seems like everything went wrong until this moment. Thank the goddess. Doesn’t she look like the perfect mix of you and Obsidian? Sid would?—”
“She does.” The enchantress actually cries. The villain, who is said to have destroyed the world, made Mindless, and is evil, is crying because I look like her and her dead bonded. I think Obsidian must be my father. It’s good to know his name at least.To be fair, I’m sure I would destroy the world or more if I lost one of my bonded. If I lost my baby too…I’d be a villain too.
The man rubs his face, his own eyes wet. “My name is Zephyros, one of your mother’s bonded and, if you will have me, a father in spirit and bonds to you. Your father was a fierce dragon who had no other heirs or family, and he never once thought he would have a child. He loved you. Always and forever. When you’re ready, there are many stories I wish to tell you of him.”
“And my name is Lyra Daygan. I don’t like being called the enchantress. That was a name that they made up for me,” Lyra finishes. “We both wept with joy when we learned of you. You are so wanted, Juniper. You always have been.” She sits down in the chair opposite me. Her bonded stays still, arms crossed, watching me, protecting her like mine would do. He smiles at me when he sees me staring, and I look away.
“What happened when I was a baby?” I clear my throat, and I tug the blanket around my legs. I’m still filthy with blood and dust, and I know if I tried to get up, I would pass out. “In fact, you need to start telling me everything if you want me to trust you.” I look at the closed window. “I need to get back. My bonded is in trouble at Bloodstone Academy. I can’t stay here. My friends?—”
“Juniper. Time works slightly differently between that world and here. You will have time. It will go slower for them, faster for us.” Zephyros gently cuts my rant off.
“What do you mean?” I sit forward.
Lyra begins to explain it all. “Bloodstone Academy, it’s a pocket world. It’s not real. It’s a world made by witches to be a safe place that we could go whenever we were in danger or we needed a place to train. The realm was the birthplace of the goddess and, because of that, it existed. This is the real world,Juniper. That place, it is not. It was never designed to be like that.”
She gives me a moment to let that sink in before continuing. “I’m over a thousand years old, Juniper, and back when I was born, humans ruled this world. They have always done so for so many years. They always have, and we were happy to let them. There are other supernatural races in this world, so it was easy to stay under the radar and out of the way. But when we are training as young ones, our magic can be volatile, and we needed somewhere that we could hide. That’s when Bloodstone Academy was built, with the help of the small creatures. The strongest of us went there to train and make connections, and to come back and lead the clans and continue our race in peace. A group of older witches, close to the end of their lives, sacrificed their lives every year to expand the realm to mimic our human world, to make it possible for witches to hide there. The human world was at war, as were the supernaturals, and we wanted a safe place. That choice was the downfall of our people.”
“So you’re telling me I’ve been living in a pocket of a world, not the actual world, for my entire life?” I whisper. Holy fucking shit.
“Yes, Juniper, and I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry that all of you are trapped there, but now you’re all that’s left. You’re our hope for our race.” Her voice softens.
“If you wanted to help, is that why you began the war? Is that why you’re fighting us and killing witches and shifters? Is it why you hide here and just let your army of Mindless do it?” I ask, trying to keep my voice neutral.
“I don’t control the Mindless or make them. The Umbral Authority do,” Lyra explains, and I don’t know what to say to her. The Umbral Authority control the Mindless? How is that possible? “The Umbral Authority, they make the Mindless, not me. The Mindless can create others by biting them. They onlyhad to make a few at the beginning, and soon they had an army. They made up the title of enchantress to make me an enemy because I fought back against them. Because I was helping witches get out of the pocket world and into here. I was trying to warn their clans so that we could run.
“The Umbral Authority were all my best friends, but power…it became all they craved. They took over when the witches were at their weakest, when the war in this world was so bad that every witch clan sent all their young children to the pocket realm to keep them safe. The Umbral Authority cut them off from their children and wiped their minds of this world. So many clans actually lived in the pocket world by this point too, and they were made to forget. The Umbral Authority claimed it was the only way to keep our people safe and that the pocket realm could be our world.” She gulps. “They wanted to be kings and queens without any opposition. They stole humans, wiped their minds, and made them slaves. They did the same to shifters. Shifters began to change over time from what they were, the magic of that world messing with them. It alters everything there.”
Zephyros explains more. “Our ancestors used to be able to shift almost like Nexus beings. I’m not sure if you know what they are, but shifters are called Nexus here. They are like us, but different. We are a version of them, changed within that world. We were never bonded to witches in the beginning. Our races rarely agreed on much, and we took over the forests of the pocket realm. I was the first to ever bond to a witch. The Umbral Authority twisted what it was meant to be when they realized that bonded will protect the witches, and then they started building an army of Mindless with shifters protecting them.”
My headache is a drum now. “But why would they build an army of witches to fight the Mindless? Why make witches more powerful at Bloodstone Academy? It makes no sense. They’vegot the Mindless and the control. Why send witches to kill their own monsters they’ve made?”
Lyra’s voice cracks. She looks at me with devastation in her eyes. “They’re not killing Mindless, Juniper. The Umbral Authority makes all witches who finish Bloodstone take vows. When you finish Bloodstone Academy, that vow is mixed with blood, and you become part of their army. Not Mindless…but controlled. The same for the shifter who’s bonded to them. You see what they want you to see. They send the strong witches they make at that academy into this world to slaughter witches who are left here. They want only controlled witches in the pocket realm. Anyone else is a threat, and they made sure all threats were taken care of. The witches are mind-controlled into seeing only Mindless when they find witches here. They slaughter them without knowing they are killing their family, their own kind. They don’t even see this world for what it is. They think it’s still their world. They don’t know any different. And once they’re done—” She pauses. “Once they’re done, they’re killed if there is even a hint of truth in their minds. The ones they like, their memories are wiped, and they’re thrown back into their clan to make children. Whatever the Umbral Authority decides is their fate.”
I shake my head. “It’s madness. They killed all the witches here?”
“All of them, except one who is too strong and old for them. Of course, they look for me too, but we are good at hiding.” Lyra takes Zephyros’s hand.
“Why didn’t you come back for me?” Emotion leaks into my voice. “What happened when I was a baby? The blood creature at the bottom of the academy, it told me that my father died, and that was an attempt to protect me.”
“Blood creature? You mean the Vex?” Lyra questions, her face paling when I nod. “That creature is not to be trusted.”
“I got that impression when it tried to kill me,” I mutter.
“When I found out I was pregnant with you, I was so scared. The world was a mess, the Umbral Authority was mad, and I was trying to stop them. I knew you would be used as a weapon to control me, and I would not have it. I was trying to take you to another world. To our home. Here, with your father, and the Vex taught me spells to make it happen. Vex promised it would help me, but it lied.” She blows out a breath.
“A half-dragon, half-witch child. A powerful child. I could feel your power even when you were in my stomach, and I wanted you safe no matter what. I planned to stay at Bloodstone Academy and fight in secret while you lived here in peace. When you were born, I hid you for a while, and when it was time, I took you to Vex and began the spell. I wasn’t alone; I had the Daygan clan with me and many shifters. I was sending an army to protect you with your father.” Her voice shakes, and Zephyros touches her shoulder. She loved me enough to give me up, and her bonded too. Her clan, her family too.
“That night…it went wrong. Vex did not want you to leave, and it made sure you couldn’t. It took your father’s life, drained him in front of me, and then the fight that followed killed all the shifters and most of the Daygan clan. I used the blood to open a portal. I went to take you through when I was blasted with magic. Vex had told the Umbral Authority, and they took you from me. You were just a few months old, and they ripped you from my arms, throwing me and my bonded through the portal.” She sobs and my heart breaks for her.
“In a breath, they had you. Vex said a prophecy as the portal closed and made sure I heard it. It used to be a small creature, kind, but now it’s not. It wants to be fed, and the Umbral Authority does what it wants. I never figured out what transforms people into Mindless until I saw my bonded change into one when he died. They locked me out of their dimensionwith Vex’s power. With that thing at Bloodstone Academy, I can’t go back. I have tried. All I can do is sometimes send visions through to you. I don’t know if you ever get them, but I try. It takes every bit of power I have just to send through a second of a vision, but it’s still blocking me out of that world. If I had any of my heirlooms?—”
“Heirlooms?” I cut her off. I had one vision just before they wiped my memory.
