Brock stood at my side and draped an arm around my shoulders. His warmth radiated down my body and made me feel... safe, though as soon as I had the thought, I resisted it. I’d never relied on anyone to take care of me, not even Gran. I certainly wasn’t about to find safety in a man, no matter how strong and powerful the alpha werewolf was.
Cass huffed from behind me, and claimed his place at my other side. Then he huffed again, more loudly this time, and glared at Brock, as if the wolf were responsible for my tiny friend’s height challenge. Cass pulled a chair from the table, sliding it across the wood floor with an annoying screech, parked it next to me, and scrambled onto it.
Standing on the seat, he still wasn’t as tall as I, but when he crossed his pink, furry arms across his chest, and cocked a hip out to the side, he looked plenty fierce—granny apron notwithstanding.
“Go ahead, hon,” he encouraged. “I’m ready now.”
I wasn’t in the mood to deal with the pissing match going on, so I just smiled at both of them, pretending their possessive maneuvers didn’t bother me a bit.
Peeling back the top layers of bubble wrap, I peered at the smooth steel and gasped. “It… it looks like a... sword?”
My gaze shifted to Cass first, whose expression mirrored my own confusion. “Why would Gran leave you a weapon? She told us a hundred times that any witch worth her salt, has no need for one. That magic is far more powerful than any blade when wielded properly.”
“I think you might’ve just figured it out,” I answered, shoving away twenty or so odd years of resentment. I was the only witch in the Black family to be born with dud powers.
But I wasn’t a dud anymore, now was I? I was something far more... freakish and uncommon. Gran must have known, that much was clear now.
“I’m not a proper witch, remember?” I clarified. “Maybe she thought I needed it to protect myself.” But even as I spoke the words I knew that wasn’t right. Gran was aware that I could take care of myself, and she was proud of the fact. She had no patience for wussies, as she liked to say, and she’d told me more than once that she was glad I wasn’t one. Maybe she came across a badass sword, and wanted to leave it for me.
Gingerly, my hands lifted the weapon out of the box—I had a healthy respect for blades of any sort, even when they were apparently sheathed—and studiedit through the last thin layer of bubble wrap.
Brock leaned forward. “I understand that this is emotional for you, and I’m not trying to hurry you, but you do realize this is the slowest unveiling in history, right?”
“You’re exactly trying to hurry her,” Cass snapped. Then he signaled me with his chin. “But yeah, Ev, hurry it up already. Patience has never been my strong suit. You know that. I wanna see what she left you!”
I forced myself to snap out of my melancholic daze, and unwrapped the sword as quickly as I could. I turned the artful sheath around in my hands, noticing the masterful pearl inlay that adorned the black case. “Wow, it’s beautiful. I’ve never seen something like this.” The hilt alone was a work of art, engraved with intricate designs of... foxes?
Interesting.
“From the curve of the blade, it looks like a katana,” Brock deducted.
“Evie knows what it is,” Cass clarified. “My girl’s a weapons expert. Top of our class at Supernatural Bounty Hunter Academy. Shemeansshe’s never seen a katana quite as fine as this one.”
A soft, appreciative whistle slipped through my lips, while I ignored the testosterone flinging around the room. “That’s for damn sure. It’s incredible.” I pulled the sword from its sheath slowly, and whistled again. “Holy moly.”
A faint purple glow began to emanate from the base of the blade until it flashed along the length of the blade. Cass and Brock leaned in, forgetting in their curiosity that they were each trying to assert their dominance over me.
“What the hell, Ev?” Cass asked, perplexed. “What’s going on with the purple stuff?”
“That’s a very good question,” I muttered, turning the razor-sharp blade this way and that. The purple across the blade brightened for a second before fading back to nothing.
Brock sniffed the air. “Magic.”
I’d never done magic before. Well, before the healing last night, anyway.
I held the weapon aloft, to better admire it. “It’s exquisite and it’s old, a few centuries if I had to guess.”
“How can you tell?” Brock asked.
“The katana, swords made for the Samurai in Japan—”
“I know that much,” Brock interrupted.
I ignored him. “The traditional way to make the swords was by hand, of course. The swordsmiths would pound the hot metal over and again, folding it on top of itself as they hammered. They’d do this for a long time, days at least, until the metal was so strong that it was unbreakable.”
“They were swords for true warriors,” Cass added. “Like my Evie.”
My lips curved into a smile at my bestie’s lavish praise, although I was pretty sure I wasn’t nearly as badass as true samurais were. Still, I liked Cass when he was like this, instead of throwing his grump around.
