The Abbot was right. I knew my past would have to come out one day, but knowing that he might expose my crimes to the people I had started to care about so deeply made my heart ache fiercely. I was a monster, something to be feared, always one bad decision away from ruining the people around me.
But what broke my heart was to realize that Theo had not been honest with me. He claimed that it was the prophecythat made him keep his distance, but maybe that had all been a ploy to make sure I didn’t get too close to him. Because I was not to be trusted. I was supposed to be used to free him of the prophecy and save the realm and then he’d simply move on. None of this sounded like Theo, the gentle and rational God I had gotten to know over the past months.
And yet, the Abbot had planted a seed of doubt in my mind and the roots had started to infiltrate every memory of every conversation I had had with Auretheos.
Maybe the Abbot was right about me. But if I didn’t confront the shadows of my past, I’d never know if I was truly a monster bound to my heka… or a woman capable of something better.
* * *
10 years ago
I looked to my right.
The cold stone floor touching my skin made me wince, but it was a welcome sensation on my burning skin. Tiny balls of fluff skidded across the floor on my exhale, like snowflakes in the wind.
Coming down from a magical high was seldom glamorous.
But this had to be a low point, even for me.
I tried to sit up, but my bones felt like jelly and my head fell back onto the floor as soon as I tried to lift it.
I didn’t even feel the pain of it.
I heard voices outside the wash chamber and when I turned my head towards the door, I could see two sets of heelsentering the room.
“Where is she?”
Larna’s voice was too shrill for my liking.
“God damn it, that fucker is out of it,” Preeta commented, her voice sounding further away.
The door to the wash chamber opened carefully and hit me against the head.
“Oh fuck no, Mae! Are you all right?” Larna shrieked.
I groaned, but it was a sound born out of annoyance, not pain.
Preeta’s face appeared above my face.
“Can you get up? We need to get you cleaned up before Madame Celestine gets back.”
The girls managed to somehow get me up on my feet and into the shower.
Fully clothed, with vomit in my hair and an ungodly amount of bruises along my body, I had to admit that I had taken it too far last night, even by my own standards.
Lately, it had been more and more difficult to find oblivion in my heka.
When I had left home a few years ago, my heka had been off limits. My parents had always told me to be careful with it, to never use it on myself, but what good was a gift if you didn’t use it?
The first time I intentionally used my heka for myself, I had been out to breakfast with my friends. We had been jokingly fighting about who would get the last apple and something had snapped inside of me. A tingling underneath my skin, a voice inside my head daring me to manipulate them into giving the last apple to me. And so I had taken my pen and written down the spell. When nothing bad happened aftermy first attempt, I got bolder. I manipulated my boss into thinking he had gotten the time for my next shift wrong, when in truth, I was running an hour late.
It wasn’t about the high, not at first. It was about making my life easier, about avoiding consequences and simply living in the moment.
But all magic has a price and the bigger my spells got, the more of a high followed. Until it wasn’t about the benefits of my heka anymore, but about the ecstasy afterwards.
Looking back now, while my friends washed my hair, disinfected the wounds on my arms and made sure that I took my contraceptive powder, I couldn’t remember the last time I had truly felt like anything more than numb.
* * *
