My skin itched at the use of that title.
“I don’t understand.”
Tomin shivered, pressing the matchbox atop his heart. “Think about it. Really think.”
“Eleanor was the witch who cursed you,” I said aloud, not really to him. I felt like I had to speak the impossible out to the universe to even start unravelling it.
“It was the last blasted thing she ever did.”
I’d watched Eleanor burn at the stake. The Enduring, the second trial of my first time in the Witch Trials, Bahmet had sent us back to the fifteen hundreds. I could still smell the barn Hector and I had hidden inside, still feel the heat of his unconscious body as I waited for him to heal through his wounds. If I closed my eyes I could imagine his skin against mine as we hid from Hunters inside the river, and the kindness in Eleanor Letcombe’s eyes as she welcomed us into her home.
Then she burned for that kindness. Flesh crackling in fire, her pleading scream as she called out to the demon. Bahmet. She had used the last of her precious life and struck a deal with the Lord of Darkness.
All the while, my father had never been there. That would be impossible. I hadn’t seen him during the conjured trial. And yet, he was convincing…
“You,” I said, a fresh and new type of fury boiling through my veins. “You sent the Hunters to Eleanor’s doorstep. You signed the warrant for her arrest and execution.”
“Cleansing,” Tomin spat, teeth bared like a rabid dog. “And no. I didn’t send the Hunters anywhere, Arwyn. I led them to the very door of our little family because I had been lied to by the woman I loved.”
“You executed the woman you loved because she was a witch, do you hear how ridiculous that sounds?”
“Eleanor was not executed,” Tomin snapped. “She was given back to the flames of Our Holy Father, to cleanse her soul and banish the wickedness from her bones. It was my duty as her husband to save her.”
I found myself kneeling down to his height. I wanted my father to see every single glower of disdain in my eyes as I replied. “Now who’s the one trying to convince the other?”
He closed the gap, spit and snot trailing down his nose. “I gave her a chance to rebuke the devil, but instead she threw herself into the arms of another. And with her last breath, as she struck up a deal that would sign away witch-kind for eternity, she also turned that thorny hate back towards me.”
“She spelled you with immortality.”
“Shecursedme. She stretched out my life so that everyone I would care for would die, and I would watch. She dragged out my existence so I could suffer a fate that was unimaginable. But most of all, she severed my chance of ever standing before those big pearly gates. Her last wish, her final act, was to make sure I never was reunited with the one person I loved more than her. Jealousy, that was what she was plagued with. Jealous of my adoration for Our Lord, jealous that I would pick Him over her. And she tookHimfrom me.”
It was clear that Tomin believed every bastard word out of his mouth.
“Good,” I replied calmly.
“Good?”
“That’s what I said.” I smiled. “If only you could see what I can see. The man you’ve hidden behind a façade my entire life. Pathetic. Snivelling in the mud. All these centuries later, and you still are the worthless prick that you must’ve been for Eleanor to willingly give her soul, and the soul of every witch thereafter, to the fucking devil.”
Tomin ceased his sobs. The suddenness of his change unnerved me. “I wouldn’t call what I have done with my… prolonged existence a waste. Would you? Eleanor punished me, and in return I have made it my only purpose to kill as many witches as I can with the time unfairly given to me. For every year of my life that was added, I have killed thrice the number of demonic whores and bastards. Your birth mother being one of them.”
Blinded by the undiluted hate in his voice, I lifted my fist up, knuckles balled. I was ready to drive it into his sorry fucking face. Before I could act, I felt a whisper of a voice in my ear, reminding me that was exactly what my father wanted. His smile confirmed it. As his lips widened, expectance on his face, Tomin waited for me to break one of Bahmet’s rules.
I figured it out a second before breaking.
“Go on, Arwyn.” Father jutted out his chin, offering it to me to shatter. “Hit me. Do it.”
It took every ounce of strength to refuse him. “You’re not worthy of my hand.”
“I suppose not.” Tomin stood up, hands pressed to his muddied knees to help him. “Do you not want to get out of here?”
“I want you to suffer, really suffer,” I replied. “But not like this. Not on your terms.”
Tomin straightened to standing, dusting off his knees and flexing his neck. “I suppose there’s going to be plenty of chance for you to take out all your hate on me. It can wait I suppose for whenyouget out of this trial.”
There was no ignoring that Tomin truly believed he had figured his way out of this. But equally, there was no way I would be leaving without Hector.
Without my coven.
