Saoirse swept down the halls of the Berean castle in her mortal body. Such a fragile thing—with skin like the moon and flowing hair drifting behind her as sleek and silent as an ebony night. Fingernails so perfectly shaped, no scars or marks marring her skin. And eyes—smoldering eyes that reflected the power nestled deep within her.
Yes, this mortal body would suffice. Mother would be proud.
Deep in the crevices of this body's mind, she felt the distant screaming of the mortal Witch, like a tiny vibration near the back of her skull. A little buzz. Serilda, they had called her.
They would call her that no longer.
Saoirse shuffled through the Witch's memories as she stepped down the corridors. Forests and people she'd called family. Greed and anger and a driving thirst for knowledge, power—
That had led her on this journey.
This journey to offering up her own body to a goddess. If immortality was what she sought, it was what she got. Forever trapped in her own mind, her own body. Unable to escape.
Saoirse reached wide oak doors, flanked by Witches. They showed no fear in the presence of their empress. They didn't seem to notice to brightening of the girl's eyes.
Saoirse reached out with her endless power, claws of flame tearing apart both of them.
She shredded the Witches into blood and ash, leaving their remains on the stone floor as she pushed past the heavy doors. Serilda's body was weak, though a vessel of power in other ways. Ways Saoirse appreciated more than brute strength others had to offer.
Bright midday sunlight gleamed in the blue sky, showering the city in a golden sheen.
Saoirse soaked in the warmth, the power radiating off the sun giving her pale skin a silvery glow.
The entire city sprawled before her. Awaiting her.
She walked through the courtyard, over the outer bailey. Grass withered beneath her bare feet, leaving gray footprints in her wake. A phantom of silver and fire.
The Witches at the portcullis saw her approaching and began raising it, but they were too slow. The spikes had barely risen off the stone walkway when Saoirse sent a beast of flame roaring through the iron. Melting a wide hole for her to stride through, leaving puddles of hardening gray ore on the cobbles.
She had so much work to do now that she could finally interact with this world Mother had blessed them with.
Now that she'd achieved her lifelong dream before her siblings.
A smirk coiled on Saoirse's mortal lips—the reaction so foreign to her. The emotions tied with carrying herself in a body, hosting a mind. She had prepared herself for the physical movement—walking about, running—but not for little things that came naturally.
Like her fists curling into tight balls as she bestowed the charred apple tree orchard—stumps and blackened trees left behind by that retched Witch.
Kailen.
The bald one.
The idiot one who had accidentally stolen a droplet of the goddess's power when she'd snooped into Saoirse's little pet's shrine. When she'd stared into those powerful, persuasive eyes Saoirse had whispered for Serilda to paint with the blood of a sacrifice.
When she'd taken from a goddess and thrown away Saoirse's immense power on destroying this orchard and the forest. The tall, sloping hill that had once been Euanthe's last forest. Destroyed. Leaving behind a brown and gray slope, freckled with stumps and the skeletal remains of once towering trees.
If Saoirse ever saw that bitch again, she'd make her pay. For stealing even an ounce of the roaring flame Mother had created her from.
By the time she'd climbed her way out of her whirlpool of thoughts—thoughts, thoughts, so many thoughts cluttering her brain—she'd reached the gate leading into the city.
A bustling world beyond. So many unscathed people ready to witness her endless well of flame—to feel the whips of her searing fire against their skin.
She smiled and passed into the crowds like a shadow, headed to that massive wall far ahead, so large it kissed the sky and circled the entire city. A huge crack wending down its western side from Serilda's attack so many months ago.
To Saoirse, it felt like days since then. Since she'd screamed into Serilda's mind for allowing Mother's girl to escape so easily. Her own honed weapon slipped from her fingers like sand in a breeze.
The city washed by in a blur of sweat and pounding heat. But Saoirse wove through the crowds—the hungry and begging and wandering—until she reached that massive wall. A door opened up in the burnt orange stone, only revealing darkness within. The Witch who stood guard stepped aside to allow her Empress to pass.
Saoirse slipped inside, the coolness of the stone giving her a boost of energy.
Energy that would be required to ascend the steep stairs cut into the stone, shooting upward into separate layers of inside the walls. Where guards who kept watch every hour of the day and night slept and small pantries of food and supplies were held. Witches were positioned every few hundred feet on the wall's battlements, walking slowly around the parapet walkway like clockwork.
Towers circled the ring-like wall, eight in total. The closest one was where Saoirse headed as she climbed. Her bare feet were slick on the cool, dusty stone, her hands braced on the wall in case these mortal legs fell out beneath her. She didn't know how much she could trust them—mere skin and muscle wrapped around thin bones.
When she reached the parapet the blue sky greeted her. So high up—almost taller than the palace's highest spires—that there was nothing but the sky and seagulls from this side of the city. If she circled it to the other side, she would stare out over the ocean, the wall shooting straight down to a sharp palestone cliff. City smells of sewage and sweat couldn't reach this high, and gave the sea breeze and the smoky desert a chance to clash.
It was strange, to pause for a second and admire her surroundings. The way her nose and eyes picked up on the smells, the light. How she could feel the smallest breeze run slithering tentacles over her bare arms, her black robes, her bare feet.
The stone beneath her was scorching, searing the bottoms of her feet. But as she walked towards the nearest tower, she felt no pain.
Her own strength overpowered that of the sun's glare on the stone.
The rippling shape of her shadow flew over the orange stone, jumping against the merlons and embrasures that she passed as she made her wide circle around the wall.
The closest tower bathed at least fifty yards of the parapet in shadow, the stone cylinder soaring into the sky, topped with a covered battlement to allow archers to shoot at intruders hundreds of yards below. Would they be talented enough to hit their marks from this high up?
Saoirse didn't have time to contemplate it, for time was slipping away. She only had enough of it to act.
So she dove into the open archway of the tower and circled the wide spiraling staircase made from stone blocks. They hissed under her feet. Maybe from the bare skin on cold rock—or maybe from the fire sizzling within her.
She reached the top floor, her entire body buzzing from the heat of the sun through the tall embrasures.
They were low enough for her to heave herself onto one, and large enough for her to stand to her full height. And there she was.
A goddess in a mortal body. Peering over the city her Witches had conquered—spent hundreds of years in wars with the Warlocks. And now it was theirs.
And that dark voice, the one with oily eyes and an ebony crown, whispered in her head.
Whispered something dark.
And that light voice, the one of song with skin like gold and hair like silver, whispered in her ear.
Whispered something tempting.
Saoirse held out her small hands and stood over the city. Enormous. Below her. Sprawling, thousands of bunched up streets wedged between buildings—a harbor releasing ships into the Afon—the ocean miles to the south.
A beautiful city.
Saoirse's midnight robes rippled in the tearing wind, her hair shattering and splintering around her head. Her hands stable. Unmoving.
The goddess took one roiling breath before she released what she'd been holding inside her entire existence.
And a deluge of fire exploded from her open palms. From her mouth, from her eyes, from every pore in her body—the flame leaked, soared—flew toward that thriving city.
A waterfall. A tsunami of flame.
Orange curls licking the sky, swallowing each other up—white hot.
A blanket of fire smothering the entire city.
Coils of flame licked the tiled rooftops—ran like water down their tilted slopes, throwing smoke into the air. Screams erupted from every street. Every building as people streamed out to see the cause of such horrific sounds. Only to peer up, hand shielding their eyes, to see a wall of flame running toward them. Unstoppable.
Nothing to save them.
From her perch in the embrasure, watching the decimation occur, Saoirse smiled.
The heat from her flames roared against her, pushed her hair and clothes back like flags on the wind.
And the screams of pain—of suffering and death—began.
Saoirse watched and smiled as her power destroyed the people of Berea, turning everything to bone and ash but the land past the orchard. The palace. It remained, standing tall and safe. Filled to the brim now with every Witch Serilda had warned in the previous days. Before Saoirse snatched her body away for her own use.
Even now, gazing upon her destruction, Saoirse could hear a tiny cry in the back of her mind.
Kailen felt a shift in the humid, muggy Berean air—a sinister shadow cast over the entire city.
She unlocked and opened one of the windows—a burst of steaming air billowed into the room. Other Witches stood from their conversations as they felt the hotness wash over them. The curtains fluttered back. Kailen pushed against the current and peered out the window, the sill jabbing into her gut as she tipped her head upward to look at the sky.
A sky red with flame. Orange and white and yellow—shimmering high above and pushing down like an enormous swarm of fire-bred locusts. Ready to feed on the city.
Kailen screamed an order.
Shield.
Witches began piling to the windows to see, to scream, to push their magic outward. Kailen stormed through the ancient whorehouse, stomping from room to room, ordering her Witches to throw their power into that shield—the bubble of pure white flame surrounding their little sanctuary. Almost transparent, barely a ripple to an onlooker. But as Kailen stood at the high window at the end of the main hall—as she flung open the glass doors and threw out her hands—she felt every muscle in her body strain, pumping power into that shield.
This is what she should have used her instant of immortal power toward—defending from an attack she had no way of foreseeing. Maybe she could've predicted it if she had paid attention, looked for hints; if she'd not been so caught up in whatever schemes Serilda was playing at.
Unless this, this was her plan.
It had been Saoirse's hidden room. Saoirse's eyes painted red on the wall.
How close were the empress and the goddess?
Kailen gritted her teeth and pushed, pushed, pushed her magic out. Building onto their thick shield. But would it stand against that wave of fire tumbling toward them? Only hundreds of yards away now. A minute until it hit them.
She reached out with her mind to pray to Saoirse, but stopped herself.
If it truly was the goddess doing these horrors to them, what good would she be to pray to?
So Kailen closed her eyes, lowered her hands, feeling the trenches of her power for more to give. Nothing. The fire racing above did not provide heat for her to pull from—and it blocked the channel she could normally take from the sun.
Hopeless, she locked the windows shut, drew the curtains together, and stepped into one of the back rooms.
Completely drained, her bones and muscles—her skin ached.
She found her Witches—Hadiya and Tamara—still standing at their window, offering the last dregs of their fire to that shield, guilelessly praying to a goddess that they defended themselves from. Kailen put her hands on their shoulders.
"Come on," she said in a low voice. Despite that the building had begun to tremor, the planks and walls groaning, the plaster walls spreading with spiderweb-thin cracks. "You've done what you can, now come with me."
She ran her hands down their arms, clinging to their fingers as she led them away from the wall, to the huddle of Witches piled against the back wall.
Jagged cracks trickled down the plaster, running toward the Witch's heads.
Kailen sighed as she joined the huddle, wrapping her arms around Hadiya and Tamara.
An explosion echoed through the house—Kailen's ears ached, pain striking deep in them, leaving her hearing a faint ringing. Through the cracked window, she could see feet of open air, and then a wall of flame sliding over an invisible shield. Holding. Shuddering.
Endless flame pounding against their shield. Hundreds of Witches' shield.
The glass in the window seemed to tremble for a millisecond before it busted—sending spiraling shards across the room. Kailen covered her face, but felt sharp pains in her back.
Everything was numb. Dull. Faint feelings in the back of her mind. All she could focus on was the horror—and the terrific and terrifying fact that their shield had not buckled. And keeping her head down even though the glass had all fallen.
To block out the world around her. To pretend for just a second that it was all fake. None of it real.
If she could race back to that room in the palace—if she could teleport like she had done when that build up of power surged through her—she could look into those eyes once more and stop this madness.
Because that flame was not ceasing any time soon.
And the shield outside—
Kailen raised her head from the crook of her arm.
That shield was far thinner, the fire having pushed it back to a foot from the open window. It would grow smaller and smaller, the waves of flame wearing it down, until it was nothing. Until they were all burned alive like the rest of Berea.
Kailen squeezed her eyes shut and pushed away the city, the room, the Witches around her.
She thought back to being in that courtyard. That power—it roared in her veins, fighting to be released somehow. It grew and swelled and threatened to burst. She raced across the bailey, her feet leaving behind ash wherever she stepped.
Her mind—it needed somewhere to go—somewhere to flee.
And she had become that fire—that smoke. She had folded inward and become her power.
And she soared.
Kailen opened her eyes. Still in that huddle of Witches—their sweat giving the room a sour stench, their whispers clogging Kailen's thoughts. She looked down.
Not here, not here, not here.
There.
Not here.
There.
I am the flame and the smoke and the sun and the heat in between.
I am.
Kailen opened her eyes that weren't eyes—detached from any sort of body—and somehow knew where she was going. Ripped away from that room, vanished, she felt the searing heat of her own soul and the roaring flames around her. But she dove. She headed for that palace on the hill, surrounded by a dead orchard.
Headed for that office.
For that room beneath.
She didn't have to open her eyes as she jolted back into her body, formed from the smoke itself, and found herself standing in that dark lair.
Kailen smiled, her exhaustion replaced by a powerful buzz that rang through her mind, her dead ears.
There was absolutely no time to waste.
A flame unfurled in her palm, illuminating the room. She turned to face the right wall—to behold those fiery eyes—to drink a drop of the goddess's power—
They weren't there.
Or they were. But the color was gone, only brown almond shapes. Husks of the blood-red that had once filled them.
Kailen's stomach dropped. She'd abandoned her Witches, her friends, and stood in the palace with no way of helping.
But there was another way. There was—
Kailen faced the left wall. Where the maps, the drawings had been connected to shape those eyes, there was once more the tall, slender mirror. Like a vertical pool of silver set against the wall.
She saw herself once more.
Smooth, bald head. Gaunt, red eyes. Cracked lips. Stained tunic and pants.
Even worse off than she had been last time she'd faced the mirror. Only noticing the worst parts of herself, as if it were designed to only reflect those parts. Or maybe there were no good things to see.
Kailen stepped forward on slow legs, foot-by-foot getting closer to that mirror until she was nose-to-nose with herself.
It taunted her. Invited her to play a game.
In reward, would it give her what she wanted? What she needed?
Kailen smiled, looked deep into the mirror, and faced herself.
When she emerged, a determined glare in her eye, Kailen vanished into smoke and flame.
Kailen appeared in Josef Naldwine's house as if she'd emerged from the folded wing of a phoenix. Embers and fire and the groan of breaking wood filled the air, her hearing returning enough for her to hear the worn wails echoing off the staircase. She followed them, stepping through towering flames as if they were curtains.
The stairs creaked beneath her shoes, the small sound barely more than a whisper in Kailen's ear.
She turned at the landing, a hand on the flaming banister, and jumped the last five steps.
The toy shop was burning. Outside, rivers of flame washed by, shattering against the walls, pushing on them. In minutes—maybe less—the place would be ash and a few stray pillars.
He hunched over something wrapped in his hands, quaking with sobs as he rocked himself back and forth—back and forth—back and forth.
Kailen put a gentle hand on his aging shoulder. She prayed to anyone that this would work. That he would be unharmed.
She whispered to him, the same words she'd used for her fellow Witches.
"Come with me."
He looked at her, eyes wide with fear and remembrance and—
"If you want to see him again, then you will not fight me," Kailen said, raising her voice amid the song of the house about to collapse around them and the roaring, crackling fire.
Josef nodded, eyes twinkling, and stood, bracing his age-spotted hand on her shoulder. She held him up, keeping a firm grip on his forearm. With that overwhelming power in her chest—wrapping around her entire body—she took a deep breath and folded them both into smoke.
When they emerged in the abandoned whorehouse full of Witches, Josef was trembling, breathless, but alive. Unharmed, thankfully.
Kailen sighed in relief, a coil of smoke dissipating off her tongue. She saw Josef's gaping mouth, ready to object, saw the invisible shield millimeters from the house wall, fire already searing off chips of wood from the side.
Hadiya and Tamara, looking up from their death vigil, surrounded by their sisters. Standing, to warn, to ask—
Kailen mouthed two words.
I'm sorry.
Then she disappeared once more.
Saoirse screamed as she released her fury, hands like crooked spiders opened up onto the city, letting loose wave upon wave of pure fire. Unrelenting power roared off her mortal bones—a monster thriving in Serilda's body. Saoirse grinned. A monster indeed.
Her midnight robes whipped around her.
Berea was aflame. Every building on every street burning. A chorus of screams rising over the wall, loud enough to hear for miles and miles. Smoke so thick, so wide, it shadowed the entire city. Rising into the sky like an obsidian tower for a god.
And where patches of sky could be seen—it was swirling red and white and orange—
A whirlwind of darkness and suffering.
And the screams continued—Saoirse's own joining them. Though there was a subtle difference in the high-pitched shriek of glee she released into the cataclysm, and the blood-curdling cries that rose from every street as families were torn apart. Burned apart.
Saoirse smile dropped into a firm line when she heard a crack behind her, as if someone had struck two rocks together, as if a bolt of lightning had torn the sky in two.
She turned her head, curtain of sleek hair blowing to the side as she peered at her visitor.
Kailen stood, bald as ever—shoulders back, chin high—in the center of the covered tower, smoke curling off her as if she were a flame.
And Saoirse's power—the goddess's own power reeked on Kailen. As if the Witch had dunked herself in it.
That's when Saoirse noticed. The chunk missing inside her, a sliver of her power cut away savagely. A bit of her spark missing.
And that new light in Kailen's eyes.
She wasn't being foolish this time, at least. No. She now knew they game they played. The pieces Saoirse had moved.
Not foolish, but naive. For the piece Kailen was picking up was a game changer.
The young Witch opened her mouth and spoke coolly. "I have questions."
Saoirse raised an eyebrow, the flaming river pouring from her body stronger than ever.
Kailen blinked at her, and Saoirse realized what she was seeing. Her old friend. Her old empress. Even if she knew the beast beneath the skin, seeing it must've been hard.
Saoirse narrowed her eyes into slits, "Speak."
Kailen straightened herself once more. "Why do you do this to a city of your own people? So long under the Warlock's clutches, and now under ours. Why ruin what we've accomplished?"
Saoirse started, "There is a king and a queen of different lands. Severed by their own disputes. One offers life and one offers death."
The wind rippling off of the surging fire roared through the circular room.
"Which do you choose?"
Despite the roaring flame and the wind and everything, there was a beat of silence.
"I choose life," Saoirse said. "Serilda sought immortal life."
The goddess peered at the mortal Witch, her face young but worn, around her eyes hollow and purple.
"So immortal life is what I gave her."
Yellow flames sparked to life around Kailen's coiled fists. "Is she still alive? Is she still in there?"
Saoirse smirked. "She is."
"How long—how long have you had control over her body?"
"Months on and off. These precious hours have been the longest yet."
Kailen looked baffled. "And she did this...willingly?"
"Serilda did not know the entire truth. She is getting what she bargained for—to have her life reversed. To start anew."
"How?"
"This body is already aging backward. When it becomes too small for me to use, I will find another candidate. If I have not completed my job yet."
"So she's turning back her life? How far?"
"To where she started. As a worry inside her mother's womb." Saoirse tipped her head back and laughed.
"So you are following orders?" Kailen asked.
Saoirse tripped over her laughter, attention snared by the girl's question. "Why?"
"You said you were given a choice. And you chose to destroy Berea, I suppose. So who gave you that choice?"
The goddess's smile feathered. "I..." The Witch was cleverer than she'd originally anticipated.
"I saw Serilda's shrine."
Saoirse heard the threat beneath the Witch's words. I took your power twice. I can take it again. More of it.
"You can't handle a goddess's strength," Saoirse sneered.
Then she tore a chute of her fire from the cascade storming the city, a coil of flame she moved like a snake with her mind, slithering through the air toward the Witch.
Then it snapped out.
Kailen threw a shield up faster than she could flinch as Saoirse's fire unraveled and lunged at her. It sizzled against her shield, her power already buckling beneath that single strand of Saoirse's.
How would she do this?
How, how, how, how—
She pushed forward with the shield, throwing the power she'd ripped from Saoirse into it. It worked. A solid reinforcement. She took two steps forward, her shoes scuffing on the stone.
"I am a goddess!" Saoirse screamed over her deluge of fire.
"I know!" Kailen fired back, taking another step.
Saoirse's fire shot out again, but Kailen didn't bother throwing her shield against it. She lunged forward, rolling and popping back up, completely dodging the attack. When she positioned herself again, they were feet apart.
The face. The body. It was Serilda. But the eyes. Such vibrant, pure red. No whites. Just the brightest, sharpest shade of red.
And Kailen had taken from that source of power. She now owned a piece of it.
And she was done leading the defensive side of the battle.
She stepped once more, readying herself.
And she threw herself onto the goddess, holding onto her and pushing both of them out of the window.
Free falling.
Saoirse slid through the air, arm in arm with the despicable little Witch. Eye to eye.
She squeezed her sharp fingernails into Kailen's soft forearm until bloody marks trickled away into the whirlwind of smoke and flame and sky roaring around them.
As they fell.
Toward the city.
Thirty seconds until they splattered against the crowds burning and gathering in the streets to escape their collapsing houses.
Chaos reigned Berea now. Nothing else.
So she threw Kailen's arm off her, clenched the Witch's forehead in her bloody grasp, and took back what was hers.
Kailen screamed. The twisting and turning of falling to her death, combined with the sharp pain in her arm, and now the pressing weight as Saoirse slid into her mind, her body, her power.
As she began sucking away her stolen power bit by bit. The very strength that flowed in her veins.
And it hurt.
Like hell.
Like someone slid a tiny rope into each of the veins winding through her body, and pulled it back out again—slowly. Like someone took their nails and punctured her brain, dug their fingers into the flesh and puss. Like someone pried her ribs away and scraped out every organ within her.
And while Saoirse worked, while Kailen writhed in agony, plummeting to her death—
Kailen did something of her own.
So busy focusing on taking back her power, Saoirse hadn't noticed Kailen slide into the goddess's fiery inferno of a mind. In search of one thing and one thing only. Not answers, those could be found later.
But Serilda.
Curled into a fetal ball in the back of Saoirse's head. Trapped behind bars. Kailen reached through the iron and opened her bloody hand, trickles streaming from her forearm where Saoirse had cut into her.
The empress hesitated, but clasped hands with Kailen.
And Kailen pulled her out. It was a long, treacherous journey, but she did it. Through the roaring hell that was Saoirse's mind, the horrific images. Kailen pulled and pulled and she finally brought Serilda to the surface, praying that she could overpower Saoirse—
She was in her own body again, seeing with her own eyes. The world spinning, the crowds screaming, the smoke churning. And her heart, her actual heart and soul ached.
And it wasn't Saoirse wrapped around her. Those eyes were dimmer, the whites clear, the pupils fixated on Kailen. Confused. Scared.
And Kailen realized their situation, the impending doom racing toward them, and squeezed her eyes shut.
When she finally dared to reopen them, after moments of no pain, she gasped. Solid stone found her feet, supported her. She leaned against the wall, the world spinning around her—the castle corridor. Kailen slid down, burying her face in her hands.
Her stomach twisted—something deep, intertwined with the essence of her, missing.
She was safe. Alive.
Kailen crawled to the nearest room and pushed the heavy door open, sliding onto the floor. She scrambled to the attached chamber room, holding herself over the porcelain toilet as she coughed into it.
The water rippled beneath her.
She coughed once more—and a fountain of hot, sour vomit splattered against the toilet bowl, splashing in the water.
After minutes of throwing up her entire insides—what was left of them—Kailen rose. She gripped onto the cold sink basin and heaved herself up.
But once she was on her feet, Kailen froze, staring into the mirror above the sink.
Her burning, fiery, beautiful Witchen eyes were gone.
In their place were brown, almost black husks. Just like she'd seen in the lair.
Kailen stared at her reflection, frantically searching inside herself for any remembrance of her power, of who she was.
She was a Witch, a gods-forsaken Witch—
But her veins were dry of fire. Only blood flowed in them now. And her soul, too. Empty. Mortal and human.
Kailen paused in horror.
That goddess bitch had taken away her identity. Had severed her from her powers, from her sisters, from who she was.
Kailen hung her head over the sink and cried.