Taint (Formerly Claimed) Dark Midnight 1

Chapter 34

Confused?  Go back!  I updated twice today!  Happy thanksgiving!  :)  Here is chapter two!  Thanks so much for the support guys, I truly appreciate it!  Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Chapter 34

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“What the hell are you planning?”  Eliot was snarling the words as he barged into the guest house—even before he came face to face with Alazzdria, who stood in the center of her cabin reading an open book.

While balanced on tip-toe.

The fact that her black hair was a tangled mess, there was soot on her pale cheeks, and the tiny detail that she couldn’t see enough to read were three clues that made Eliot suspect that the witch had been doing something else before his unceremonious appearance.

“Eliot!” She exclaimed, snapping the book shut in one pale hand.  “How kind of you to drop in—”

“Don’t play games,” he growled, crossing his arms over his chest as the door slammed shut behind him with a bang. “You sent the twins after me.  Why?”

It was a struggle to keep himself from mentioning Miriam, and just how close she’d come to falling into Sage and Hazel’s grasp. 

Once again, he couldn't help thinking that the mortal was very, very lucky.  While Sage mysteriously didn’t seem affected by her blood, he doubted that Hazel would have resisted the opportunity to taunt him.

His scent had to be all over her by now…

“Why?”  He snapped, forcing herself back to the current situation.  “What did you do, now?”

“Nothing!”  Alazzdria said, a little too quickly.  With a graceful twist of her arm she tossed the book to the floor and twirled on her heel.  “I’ve just been thinking of our dear, lovely Miriam.”

Eliot’s jaw clenched.

He didn’t like leaving her alone.  Especially not with the terror twins on the loose.

While the witch may have pledged her protection to the mortal, he still doubted it. It wouldn’t have been the first time the witch had lied to him—especially when it came to protecting her own skin. 

He wouldn't have put it past her to send the twins after him in some elaborate scheme of betrayal.

Once again, he was reminded of the fact that it should have been him after the witch’s blood, rather than shadowhunters…

“It’s a rather perplexing riddle,” Alazzdria said wistfully, and he realized that she’d been speaking the entire time.  “A mortal who seems…”  She seemed to fish around for the right word, waving a pale finger through the air.  “More than mortal.”

She didn’t even know the half of it.

Miriam’s words from earlier ran through his mind, sinking through him like stones ‘she used to joke that my grandmother was a witch.’

And that name… 

Poor Miriam.  She had no idea the weight of what she had unknowingly admitted to him.  Hell, even he didn’t know the whole truth—he didn’t want to know.

“I’ve gone through all of the old literature,” Alazzdria went on, oblivious.  “All the old myths and tales.  I can think of nothing to explain it!”

With a frown, the witch elegantly raised her arms over her head and shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

“It is a rather perplexing riddle.  In all the old history there is nothing about a mortal with that kind of blood—”