The Queen Of Eternity

Witches and Bitches

There was this thing Jake used to say : Just be Esmeray.

He said it to pretty much anyone who was nervous about something. Apparently, 'Being Esmeray' is being overly-confident, impulsive, reckless and stubborn.

And at the time, I didn't think much of it, but after everything went down with Jake, it just shows how little he knew me. If his idea of me was just all of that, does that mean that's all I am? Just another rebel kid?

    I shake my head as if that would throw these thought to a side and I'd get to focus. 

Lucas last saw Ocean in his room. I trust him completely.

After that, she vanished.

But the thing is - how? She doesn't know anyone here and even if she did, I don't think she'd be stupid enough to go out with someone, without telling us while we're basically fugitives. 

So how did she go? 

"Esmeray?" A voice calls and I look up to see my father standing just outside the open door, his head wrapped in a bandage and his arm in a sling. He looks...different. 

He's in a plain white t-shirt that's clearly not his and in khakis, again, not his. 

"Excuse the appearance, a guard was kind enough to lend me these. Lucas wouldn't even look at me and Azrael is just doing this because it's his duty, as a doctor."

Fuck, he doesn't even sound like him.

"What do you want?" I pull up all my walls, I guard them with electric fences. My voice is cold. Steely. Guarded. I am very well aware of the gun in my pocket and my fingers tightening into a fist under the table. 

"To talk. Explain, rather."

I sigh.

"Come in."

I watch him as he enters the room, carefully, as if he's as alert as I am. He pulls out the chair in front of me and sits down with a soft groan. 

"Shall I start from the beginning, Mi vida​?"

My heart almost hammers out of my chest when he says that.

He used to call me that years ago. I have a faint memory of him, holding me and my sister, telling me, "It's all going to be fine, mi vida. I am right here."

I nod in reply because I am afraid of the things I might say if I open my mouth. 

"I am a brown, peasant wizard in love with a queen at a time where looking at her would've put me in jail. I am not sure how or when it happened but one day, she was walking down the aisle, towards me. Times got better, the world turned less cruel in some ways, more in others. Then I was blessed with two of the most beautiful little girls. But then something happened. You're mother got terribly power-hungry. Ruling the world was no longer enough for her, she wanted, no needed, to be the most powerful being in the universe. Or universes, if those existed. I am not aware of what she did to get there, but one day she announced war. 

"And before I could stop her or do anything, she had already said goodbye to you, wrote your name beneath the crown and left. I did everything I could to shield you in the beginning. But then the grief of losing the love of my life, crept up to me. I... I know the thing I've done to you. To Emerald. But believe me, mi vida, that was not me. I know it's the last thing you want to do right now, but I am your father. A bad one but still your father."

He takes a breath.

I am numb to the core as I say, "You hit me, made me wish I was dead for the tiniest things, you made my life a living hell to the point where cutting myself was the only thing that calmed me down. You let me almost die, millions of time. I was nothing but a weapon to you. Mom's the power-hungry one? What about you? You sent my sister on a mission that killed her."

"That wasn't me," His voice is low.

"Then who was it, Kayan? No, please, enlighten me, is there a clone of yours? An evil twin, maybe, if you're such a saint."

"A spell."

I blink at him.

"A spell that trapped me in my mind and let a different me control my actions while I had to watch. I had to watch as my own hands shot a bullet at my only daughter. I tried reaching out to you, my princess. It was very difficult but I did. But I was wrong to ask you to find you're mother."

I frown and I pretend not to her him say 'only daughter' for the sake of my dead sister.

"I didn't know who or what casted the spell. I thought, maybe, if you're mother could...could be your mother once again, you'd be safe. But I sent you towards the very person you should be running from."

"What do you mean, dad?"

I try to say that word, Quietly. As if, I am trying it out for the very first time.

He looks pleased. I don't. We're switching back to Kayan. He's not deserving of forgiveness just yet. 

"You're mother is the Stygian Witch."