I nodded, my hands clenching under the table.
“Let’s talk after the crowning. I would be willing to make a deal with you.” Her words hung in the air, heavy with possibility and danger.
I looked at her home, wondering how my life would’ve turned out if my mother hadn't been such a bitch. Tears stung my eyes as I felt my father’s presence knowing that he hated me. My mother truly had taken everything from me.
“Your father is very happy.”
She wasn’t saying it to be mean, but the words still stung.
“I know. That is why I leave him alone.”
I had stopped trying to keep the bond we had when I was little because my father had stopped loving me the day my mother died. Part of me wondered if my mother’s magic was why he loved me at all in the first place. Because I was part of her, and he was forced to feel love for that. Gods, my life was pathetic. I didn’t have one person who loved me, or ever had.
“I think maybe if you didn’t look so much like your mother, he might have been able to have a relationship with you.”
“No, he wouldn’t have.” I looked at her. “If he loved me, he would’ve understood that I was a child that had no part in any of this. Just like you should’ve realized that too.”
She sighed heavily.
“I was angry when I made that curse on your bloodline. And I know that it shouldn’t have happened, but I can’t stop it. Especially since it has started.”
“Maybe I should curse your daughter.” I looked at her, letting my power pulse around us.
Her face fell, because if I wanted to, I could. Iknewmy power was stronger than hers, and no ward or spell of hers would keep me from enacting my revenge if I wanted to.
Yes, let's do that.Nyxthra pleaded.
I stood up.
“Don’t worry, Jade. I wouldn’t do that, because I understand that your daughter is innocent in this.”
Her jaw clenched. This woman and my mother had fucked up my life before I was old enough to truly understand what was even happening. My chest ached as my power seeped from me.
“I will see you after the crowning to discuss a deal about my coven.”
I turned around and headed out of the yard.
But I stopped immediately when I saw my father playing with his daughter. She was probably the same age now as I was when my mother died and my father had left me. She looked like me in some ways. The girl stopped and smiled at me. My father glanced at me like I would harm him or her if he looked away.
“Hi,” she called out to me.
I looked at my father and felt my magic bucking, straining, desperate to break free. I turned away before it could betray me.
I ignored his voice. I ignoredher. I walked away from the ruins of a family I’d never truly had—a father already dead to me, a mother who never had time for me, and an aching emptiness that would never be filled because my curse was already taking root.
Tears blurred my vision as my fingers closed around the amulet at my throat, willing myself away, far from here, far from them.
The world ripped sideways, and I collapsed to my knees in the deep heart of the woods. I screamed until my throat was raw. The sound split the air, rattling through the trees. Roots tore free from the earth. Birds burst from their nests in a panicked frenzy. The sky blackened with clouds so heavy they seemed to sag against the earth.
And then I felt it—her. The thing I had locked away. The hunger I had denied for too long. It pushed through my magic, a dark tide coiling around me like a living serpent. My eyes fluttered shut as euphoria poured through me, intoxicating and sweet.
When I opened them, she was there. A shadow given shape. Tall. Elegant. Wrong. Her edges bled into the air, and her eyes, if they could be called that, burned like dying embers. But a sense of belonging filled me as I stared at her. The magical tether between us was stronger than it had ever been.
My lips curved into a smile I hadn’t worn in years.
“Nyxthra.”
The wraith purred, the sound threading through the air like silk dragged over steel. She moved closer, tilting her head as though memorizing my face all over again.
