Within their dreams (Reverse Harem)

Chapter 22

Ivy's POV

I sit there, staring at Willow but not really seeing her.

"That's...no." I shake my head, a ringing in my ears.

"I'm sorry Ivy." Both Scarlette and Willow look at me with pity.

"It's not true."

"We used your blood for the spell Ivy, and I've seen that symbol before. It's not a lie." Willow says gently, placing her arm around me.

I turn to her. "What happened to my parents?"

Willow glances down at the book and I follow her gaze, my breath trapped in my lungs. The book begins to scrawl more writing underneath my parents' names. Deceased. Died at ages 28 and 30.

My eyes water, gasping for breath that seems unable to fill my lungs.

"Oh, Ivy." Scarlette brings her hand to her mouth.

"B-but why?"

"You spent your life in the human realm. They must have used their power to mask you from the elders and smuggled you out of the coven. The human realm would have prevented the elders from being able to sense you, especially without access to your power."

"I thought they abandoned me," I whisper.

"They protected you."

"Yeah, and they died for it." I snap, glaring at Willow. "What's the point in saving me from death when they die instead? I spent my life alone. Thinking they didn't want me."

"They didn't want their baby to die just to give the elders even more power. You didn't grow up here, so you don't understand. I grew up learning about all the surrounding covens. Some are unorthodox, but there have always been rumours that the elders of the Hallowed Coven were forcing its people to partake in more and more aggressive ways of accessing even more power, then hoarding it for themselves. Your parents didn't want an innocent life to be used by the elders as an unlimited supply of magic."

"So why didn't they bother coming with me then? So I didn't have to spend my life wondering what bad thing I must have done to deserve being abandoned." Tears drip down my cheeks and I wipe at them angrily. My hands clench into fists on the table and I glare at the smiling figures looking back at me from the family tree.

"Going with you would've made you easier to find by the coven. It's hard enough to mask someone's power, but to mask it for this long even after they died? They must have used most of their magic to protect you. They wouldn't have had enough for themselves too. So staying with you would keep you in danger."

"So the coven killed them?" I sniffle, my fingers reaching out to trace the black rose. It seems to glow under my touch, burning an ice blue colour, the black curling at the edges. My parents died to protect me from this place, and I not only broke the masking spell they put on me, but stepped right back in the place that wanted me dead. The idea of belonging to a coven that kills innocents just to remain one of the more powerful covens makes me sick. I wanted nothing to do with them.

"We can't be sure. But it's highly likely. As punishment for going against the order of things."

"Isn't murder a crime? The coven can't just go around killing whoever they want."
Scarlette places her hand on mine, over the image of my mother. "The rules are slightly different here. The covens have their own set of rules and punishments for those within it to abide by. If your parents went against those rules, the elders would've been allowed to reprimand them however they saw fit. Plus, I doubt the council would have thought to involve themselves in witch drama."