“They turned themselves into… I dunno. Some kind of cult. And the magic is dark. The magic is… gross.”
“Power is power.”
“I don’t agree.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would. You are, after all, the sacrifice. But when you die, you’ll feel different when you don’t find yourself rotting in Hell. Because you’ll be here.” Again, she pans her hand to the ice castle. “Ready to be recycled.”
It takes a moment for that last bit to internalize. “What?”
“I told you. She is Coyrah. You are Coyrah. You are all Coyrah. Or maybe a better way to explain it is… Coyrah isyou. Every Black witch that has ever lived is…you.”
“That’s not possible.” These words come out loud and strong. “That’s just not possible. It’s not even logical. It doesn’t add up. My grandma was a Black witch. I mean, I know they are few and far between, but?—”
“They are you.”
“But it can’t be! I amme. And no one else.”
Lucia gives me a sad smile. “Didn’t Paul explain the severing of souls?”
“What? No!”
“That’s a lie. Don’t lie to me, Syrsee. It’s counterproductive. I’m only here to help. Are you, or are you not, carrying the Seed of Darkness inside you right at this very moment?”
I just stare at her with my mouth open and my eyes wide.
“Well? Are you?”
“I… might be.”
“You are. And Paul, in order to preserve you to keep Ryet compliant and happy, split you in half and put you in two places. Do you think two is the limit?”
I shake my head. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Doesn’t it? Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree here. Because it makes perfect sense to me. You arethe trade. Your soul is trapped in the Darkness. It claimed you, right out there on that ice, thousands of years ago. The reason there are so few Black witches is because the Obscurati can only split you so many times before the Darkness is too dilute to matter. Paul stole a little bit of you when he, and Josep, and I left the Old World. A tiny drop of blood. Josep took that blood and grew it the way a scientist might grow a mold in a Petri dish. He stole you. Clever, clever Paul. I wish we were friends, because I would really like that story. How he got that little drop of you out of the Old World is something akin to divine intervention.”
“You’re telling me that I am my own grandmother?”
“Your own mother, as well.” She pauses here to smile. It’s a sad one. “You’re the nightmare. Do you see it now? The horseandthe rider. Eating its own tail.”
A perfect image of the logo for the Guild Lounge pops into my mind.
“The ouroboros,” Lucia says. “And the creature in the symbol is a snake eating its own tail. But in your case, it’s a mother eating her child.”
I start shaking my head. “No.No.”
“You’re not really eating your own child, Syrsee. Keep up. It’s you, devouring yourself. Recycling at its best.”
This is when I realize that no one ever told me that it was called the Horse and Rider. I made that up because that’s what it looked like when I first saw it.
But it’s not a horse or a rider. It’s me and the evil I carry inside me.
Not the baby, butthe Darkness.
“Come on now. Let’s put all the pieces together, shall we?” Lucia’s voice is soft now, and she tucks a piece of stray hair behind my ear, trying to soothe me. “Did you think that the Black mother killing the Black daughter at birth was a joke? It’s power, Syrsee. Your power. You’re killing a daughter, you’re snuffing out a future piece of yourself to build up your current incarnation.”
Suddenly, I’m in that cabin again. It’s New Year’s Eve and my grandmother smells like death because she is dying.
Magnificent promises.
