The slightest hitch in her breath, the tiniest falter in that facade as her smile twitched. Tears filled my eyes as I stared at her, my horror growing with each passing moment as I worked to connect the pieces.
“Did you know?” I asked, choosing to dive right in rather than play this game where we danced around our truths and hid who we really were.
“Know what, Margot?” she asked, the tiniest roll of her eyes. It was an attempt at the usual disdain she showed for my directness, for my inability to play the game she was so gifted at. The fact that she could pretend she didn’t know what I was talking about was all the confirmation I needed, my fingers beginning to shake in the rising anger I felt toward the woman staring back at me. I pressed on, clenching my fingers into fists to attempt to control outward signs of it, knowing her well enough to know that I could only push too far if I wanted to have this conversation.
And while I already knew the truth, some distant part of me, the tiny girl that existed in my past, still dared to hope that I was wrong.
“Did. You. Know?” I asked again, enunciating every word to convey my seriousness. This was not a conversation that I wouldallow her to derail. This was not something she could distract me from.
“Darling, are you alright? I know yesterday must have been traumatic for you, but to come in here with accusations like that isn’t fair to me,” she said, the gaslighting words making me scoff in disbelief. My skin flushed with heat, bypassing the warmth of irritation immediately. I felt as if I might melt, a thin sheen of sweat clinging to my skin like humidity in the air in spite of the autumn weather and the flames crackling in the fireplace at the corner of the classroom.
“What’s the binding ritual?” I asked, pressing forward as I took more steps toward her. I tilted my head to the side as I studied her, my gut churning and sloshing like a violent sea with every step.
Her smile dropped off her face, that careful veneer abandoned as realization dawned. “It’s impolite to eavesdrop on conversations that do not concern you.”
“If I am the subject of all your secret conversations, then I think I should be privy to them, and if you don’t want me to be, then maybe consider closing the Goddess-damned door!” I snapped, the warmth of magic filling my eyes.
I knew what I would see if I looked into the mirror, had seen it too many times on the faces of others when they tapped into their magic. Even when not touching the lust that drove my magic, I could not ignore the surge of anger that rose up to defend me, making my eyes glow red like molten lava.
That rage didn’t stop the clogging of my throat or the need to cry, to weep for the relationship I’d never really had. For the secrets she’d kept all my life. It was a torrent of emotion within me, the two sides of my grief clashing together like storm clouds over the sea.
“What did you hear?” she asked, making me shake my head as I strode toward her. Anger made my arms tingle with magic, creeping up my skin like bugs crawling over me. Even now, knowingI’d heard her, she couldn’t just own up to the truth of what she’d known, of what she’ddone.
I rounded the corner of her desk, striding up to her in my anger. My fingers wrapped around her throat, shoving her back to the stone wall with a force I shouldn’t have possessed. She clawed at my hands, snarling when I pinned her there and watched her.
“Tell me about the binding ritual,” I said, my words steady in spite of everything that threatened to tear me in two. She looked down at my hands and my forearms, a slow smile spreading as she laughed lightly, the sound filled with glee in spite of her predicament. I followed her gaze, stilling when I saw what she saw.
My nails had grown into long, pointed black talons. The faint glimmer of scales covered the back of my hand with the slightest blue and purple tint to them as the light played along the surface of my skin.
“It worked. It actually worked,” she said, her breath coming in an easy exhale of wonder.
“What did you do to me?” I asked, releasing her suddenly and stepping back. The scales on my arms began to fade as I put distance between us, my anger abating in the face of my fear over something that should have been impossible.
She took the opportunity to step up to me, cradling my face in her hands. Her perfectly manicured fingers ran over what had to be scales on my temples before they faded entirely, the scratching sound unlike anything I’d ever heard before.
Those scales faded, too, her warmth sinking into my too-cold skin when they left me.
“I made you powerful beyond your wildest dreams,” she said, smiling at me as if I would appreciate the monster she’d turned me into. I shook my head as I stepped back, the faintest indentations at my wrists making me wince. It reminded me of being bound the first time he came to my room…
My thoughts trailed off as I drew the conclusions in my mind.
Binding rituals used the act of tying knots to connect twopeople together or to bind something to itself. It was something that few witches knew how to do, the intricacy of the knots needing to be specific to the cause, but they sometimes used them to make a person unable to enjoy a certain bad habit any longer.
“You let Itanbindme?” I asked, but I didn’t need her answer, already connecting the pieces.
But what had he bound me to?
“He bound the piece of the Source within you,” she said, her tone chipper as she returned to her desk, pulling out a notepad and taking down notes of all that she’d seen. “You cannot pull new magic directly from the Source and you cannot return her magic to her, either. It is merely trapped within you, an endless loop of power that twists and turns within you until it becomes something else entirely. It enables you to access the darkest parts of Red magic by starving you from the light. You cannot feed the Source and can only take from those around you endlessly.”
They’d used me to starve the Source, intending for me to sit on the Tribunal and twist the magic of my house from my seat of power. The Tribunal members were meant to serve as representatives, but also the key channelers of the Source on earth. What we had first passed through them before being distributed.
If I could only channel darker magic…
Goddess.
Itan had said they’d fix it after the Vessels were gone. There had to be a way to undo it. I just had to hope that someone else knew how. I took comfort in that knowledge, as I pushed forward to understand the implications on the rest of my childhood.
“Was my rape part of it?” I asked.
