Lenesa opened her eyes to find herself lying on an old scratchy sofa, in a room with plain plaster walls and dark ceiling beams. To take the pressure off her injured shoulder, she had been placed on her side, facing a wall with two individual portraits of a boy and a girl staring back at her. Immediately, Lenesa sat up with a gasp, and the familiar inked eyes of the children glared at her in accusation.
Your fault, your fault.
She hadn't seen Ralios in years, and her memories of him had grown fuzzy. With a cautious glance around the sitting room to confirm that she was the only one there, Lenesa slowly stood up and crept across the creaking floorboards for a closer inspection.
Ralios was younger than she remembered him in this portrait. A pointed chin and a crop of short dark hair shone from behind a smooth pane of framed glass, and despite the protesting twinge of her shoulder, Lenesa brought her hand up, fingers hovering just above the image but not brave enough to touch. Light from the flames of a flickering fireplace at the left side of the room reflected on the glass and gave the impression that there was still a glimmer of life in the boy's eyes.
I miss you, she thought. The boy stared back impassively, not a hint of sadness or joy in his features. It was unlike him. Ralios had always been full of impulsivity and gleeful mischief, just like his sister.
Lenesa dragged her eyes to the next image, dreading what she would see. Audeste had been innocent then, and not filled with the hate and grief that plagued her now. Her large clear eyes were framed by thick lashes, and her hair was perfectly arranged around her shoulders. The simple black and white sketches concealed the telltale colors of the bluish hair and mauve irises to any visitors of the house who were unaware of the family's heritage.
Kivirra had been right. Lenesa did not like that she had been brought here. No—it went beyond dislike. This was torture. She had to get out.
She spun towards the doorway, only to find a middle-aged woman in a simple green dress standing in the way and bearing a tray of food and tea.
"You're awake," the woman said. "Thank goodness. We were so worried."
Lenesa swallowed the lump in her throat and looked beyond the woman to the silent, older figure that had appeared in the hallway behind her. Kivirra had changed into a dark brown robe, and a large red goblin crouched at knee-level beside her.
"We shouldn't have come here," Lenesa said as a way of apology, looking down at the paneled wooden floor, then the sofa against the wall—anything that would allow her to avoid the gazes of the two women before her. "We should leave."
"Nonsense." The woman stepped forward and set the tray down on a side table before placing her newly-freed hands on her hips. "You're exhausted and there's a bunch of revelers roaming the streets due to the festival. You'll have to stay at least the night."
"But Shwei—"
"My Heíleòn is with him," Kivirra interrupted, moving into the room to take up residence near the fireplace mantle. "They'll be fine."
Lenesa turned to her. "Why did you bring me here?" she snapped. "You have no right. After what happened—"
"We don't blame you, Lenesa."
This time, it was a man who spoke, and Lenesa jumped at the unexpected addition of a tall, thin man with a gray beard and rough brown jacket at the entryway of the sitting room. At his side was a young boy of about twelve gazing shyly up at the adults around him and at Kivirra's cloak-goblin come to life. Lenesa's breath caught in her throat at the sight of the boy.
"Is this..." she couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence. Somehow, she knew this was the same baby she had seen twelve years ago, before tragedy had struck.
The man's solemn expression softened into a smile, and he placed a hand around the boy's shoulder. "It is. Eliras, I'd like you to meet your cousin, Lenesa."
The boy gave a wide-eyed nod. "Hello." He shared the same large eyes and pronounced chin as those in the portraits on the wall, but his irises were a light hazel and his hair a softly-curling light brown.
"He didn't inherit our family traits, it would seem," the woman with the tray said with a small smile. Like her third child, she had also not inherited the trait for witchcraft, and her eyes were a similar hazel hue as her son's. "But we've told him about his older siblings. He knows not to be afraid of what you are."
"Aunt Barina, Audeste—"
"Shh. I know, dear. I know. But what happened to her and Ralios were due to their own decisions. It had nothing to do with you." Nonetheless, Barina's eyes watered, and she turned away with a sudden need to rearrange the items on the tray she had brought in.
Lenesa glared at Kivirra. "You shouldn't have interfered."
The other witch looked unintimidated. "Two weeks."
Lenesa frowned. "What?"
"Two weeks," Kivirra repeated. "I told you that you'd have two weeks to return Gil to me, or you'd need to compensate. Well, tonight is the eve of the new moon. Your time is up and this is my price. Or would you prefer to be caught by the witch hunters?"
"What does it matter?" Lenesa snapped. "They've already won."
Kivirra was in front of her in an instant. "Don't you ever say that," she snarled. "There's nothing worse than a coward who gives up hope at the end of a long fight."
"I'm not giving up hope for you," Lenesa stated, feeling oddly calm and detached about the matter. "A dead soldier can't fight, that's all." She pulled back her sleeve, and felt a sort of perverse satisfaction at the gasps that echoed in the room.
"By all means, you should already have lost your mind to the Turning," Barina whispered. "But you're still here, not threatening to kill us. How is that possible?"
Lenesa's uncle shook his head. "Eliras, get to bed now," he said, ushering his son down the hallway. His expression had become tense after seeing Lenesa's arm marred by the Turned markings. "Barina, I trust you, but this is beyond me," he said. "I'll leave you to speak with your family." He followed Eliras, leaving the three women in a silence that rang through the sitting room.
Barina was still staring at the sleeve that had fallen back down, covering Lenesa's patterned skin. "Is that what my Audeste looks like?" she asked in a whisper.
Lenesa swallowed hard, not wanting to explain how Turning had affected her aunt's daughter in more ways than just the black marks on her skin. Instead, she gave a short nod.
"Cats and cauldrons," Barina swore, falling back into an armchair with a sigh. Then she looked up to meet Lenesa, gaze sharp and inquisitive. "How is it you aren't Turned, then?"
"I don't know," Lenesa said, raising her chin.
"She's been struggling with it for a while," Kivirra calmly added, earning another glare that Lenesa shot her way. The goblin padded over to the fireplace hearth and settled down with a sigh, seemingly resigned to a night in front of the flames.
Barina shook her head. "Kivirra told me earlier that it was you who used your magic to kill those soldiers at the river gate. If you were already struggling with Turned markings, that incident definitely should have tipped the scales against you."
"Somehow it didn't," Lenesa said simply.
"There's more to it than that," Kivirra added, the tense lines at her mouth indicating her displeasure with Lenesa's unwillingness to discuss the topic in detail. "It wasn't her magic she used."
Barina frowned. "What do you mean?"
Kivirra looked back to Lenesa. "Will you tell her, or shall I?"
Lenesa bit her tongue to hold back a growl. The witch had meddled too far in affairs that weren't hers—as those with the gift of foresight often did. It didn't help that Lenesa could feel Kivirra's powerful aura clashing against her own, weaker one in the small sitting room. Perhaps if she hadn't been so troubled, the other witch's power wouldn't have bothered her so much, but as it was, Lenesa could barely stand to be under the same roof as her.
"Tell me what?" Barina's eyes darted between the two witches in her sitting room. "What is it?"
Kivirra didn't break eye contact with Lenesa even as she finally replied. "She used the magic of a storm witch to kill the guards."
Barina gasped. Though not a witch herself, she knew the gravity of the statement. "But Aunt Mona was the only storm witch from here to Miche-en-Mir, at least," she said. "And Lenesa's abilities have firmly settled on healing. It's not possible. Unless—"
"Mona is dead." Lenesa's words sliced through the air, cutting off the rest of her aunt's speculation with all the cold detachment of a carving knife. "I was with her when she drew her last breath. There's no possibility of her or her magic having survived."
"There must be some explanation, though," Barina said, absentmindedly picking up a biscuit from the tray she had meant for Lenesa and taking a bite. "Perhaps she borrowed it?"
"Sourcing was Ralios's specialty, not mine," Lenesa replied bitterly. "Drawing from the power of others is not simply raw magic. I wouldn't know how to begin even if I wanted to do such a thing." But the idea sparked her memory at something she could do with her healing magic. Almost as soon as Lenesa thought of it, she pushed it aside. She had thought of the possibility before, when Kivirra had confronted her after the incident at the river gate. But it frightened her to think that that was the root of her problems.
"What happened, exactly?" Barina asked. Her words were timid, aware that she was broaching a sensitive topic, and silence reigned long after the question had been asked.
Lenesa felt frozen, torn between the instinct to lash out and the desire to run away from the conversation. "I don't want to talk about it."
"There's no room for your feelings, girl," Kivirra snapped. "Too much is at stake for that, and the evidence keeps pointing to the fact that Mona is involved in this somehow. You need to tell us."
"I don't need to say anything," Lenesa snapped, giving in to her first instinct and fighting back. "This is my problem and I'll deal with it however I see fit. I never asked you to intervene, or Aunt Barina."
"But you're family," Barina objected, sounding almost hurt. "You don't have to be alone in this. We'll face this together."
"And you're a witch," Kivirra added sternly, crossing her arms and raising her chin. "Whatever you do will affect the rest of us, one way or another. Any problem of yours is a matter of mine as well."
Lenesa shook her head, forcing away the memories that threatened to flood back to her. "I told you once already what happened," she said. "I won't do it again."
"That was hardly a detailed story," Kivirra shot back. "You were still in shock and barely able to string sentences together right after it happened. Not to mention the scarring."
Lenesa shook her head again. "No."
But the scrying witch pressed on. "It was an ambush."
Lenesa took a step back, as though putting physical distance between them would lessen the impact. "No," she repeated, this time barely above a whisper. "It's been twelve years. I won't revisit it, ever again."
"I know Ralios was...killed first," Barina added, swallowing a bite of her biscuit with some difficulty and putting the rest of the treat back on the tray, as though suddenly lacking in appetite. "That's why Audeste..."
"Stop! Stop it!" Lenesa put her hands over her ears and shook her head again, backing away until her back hit the wall. The impact made the portraits of young Ralios and Audeste shudder beside her.
At Lenesa's protests, Barina sent a concerned look Kivirra's way. "You really haven't been able to see anything from that day?" she asked gently.
Kivirra shook her head. "Only brief moments." Her voice changed as she recited, "One of wisdom teaches three. The first will die, the second, flee. The third remains to fix the pain, but cannot make her whole again."
Lenesa shuddered at the words that curled from Kivirra's mouth like the smoke from the cobbler's pipe. They had a hypnotizing rhythm that made them unnaturally fascinating to pay attention to, like the steady whirl of a spinning wheel as it changed a lump of wool to thread in the blink of an eye. Snippets of that day came back to her—Ralios's glassy-eyed gaze, Audeste's horrified shriek splitting across the treetops. And Great Aunt Mona, grabbing Lenesa by the wrist and pulling her away through the trees, repeating that there was nothing they could do for the two siblings now...
"The words come more easily than the visions," Kivirra continued to explain to Barina. At her statement, Lenesa blinked away the memory, determined not to think on it any longer. "I think there was too much magic used during the attack, so it obscures any reading when I try to look back on it. I can only guess at what happened based on the repercussions that are yet to come."
Frowning, Barina looked back to Lenesa. "We just want to help," she said. "Why don't you sit down and have some tea, and we'll figure this out?"
Lenesa's breathing was coming in short gasps, and it took her a moment to process her aunt's request. "I can't," she said.
"You will, Lenesa," Kivirra growled, "and you must. You're in no state to do anything else at the moment." She jutted her chin in the direction of Lenesa's wounded shoulder, which was shooting sparks of pain down her arm and along her back from overuse. "Heal yourself first, and then we'll talk."
"Have some tea, honey," Aunt Barina urged, gesturing toward the tray. "Before it gets cold."
"What's the point?" Lenesa snapped, almost regretting her words as hurt and confusion flickered across her aunt's face. "Decliteur has a Fae crystal. There's no winning against that. He'll track down all the witches from here to Völpúnsgard and kill us with a single flick of his wrist. And if we survive the crystal, we won't survive the hordes of witch hunters that come with him. They're all—"
She broke off with a gasp, her unspoken words ringing in her head with alarming clarity.
They're all evil.
Perhaps she was partly Turned, after all. She should know better than to make such sweeping accusations. Life was never as simple as that. Though her heart ached with despair and fear, she couldn't give in to it, or she would truly be lost. It seemed like years ago when she had explained to Theiden about the risks of a witch doing such a thing, and now here she was, scarcely heeding her own warnings.
Aunt Barina had a worried crease between her brows, but it was the shock on Kivirra's face that made Lenesa think that Kivirra knew what she had been about to say.
"In darkest day and longest night," Kivirra whispered, her tone containing muted notes of fear. "With smoke that rises to the skies, when ashes fall, the curse will rise."
Lenesa frowned. "What are you talking about?"
Kivirra shook her head. "Just a vision that's come to me before," she said. "I don't know what that part means, only that the moment is getting closer." Her violet eyes suddenly locked with Lenesa's own. "And it involves you."
That doesn't sound good," Aunt Barina muttered, twisting her hands in her lap.
"Well, what am I supposed to do about that?" Lenesa snapped. "Do your visions ever tell you how I can make things better? They've only ever come too late for me. First Decliteur, then my father. I— "
She was interrupted by a crash somewhere outside the house in the street. It was a loud boom, like that of several oak barrels falling over each other, and it was followed by several dismayed cries.
The cloak goblin raised its head from the hearth and turned towards the sound with a soft whine sounding from the back of its throat. Its golden eyes were fixed on the doorway and down the hall to the front door.
Kivirra looked at the goblin in alarm, then at Lenesa and Barina before uttering a single word.
"Gil."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Hi. So I might have been slightly evil and not done the expected plot thing. I like being not predictable though--hope you don't mind too much! *dodges rotten fruits and veggies* Theiden and Lenesa (and their complicated romance) will meet again soon, just not right now. I just had a feeling it wouldn't go over too well if Lenesa ended up at Theiden's house at the moment, what with him thinking she's Turned and him now being a witch hunter. Plus, we needed some explanations about Audeste and Lenesa's past, and now the prophecy/rhyme Kivirra told Theiden all those chapters ago is finally starting to make sense (oh my gosh how is it 41 chapters already?!). Any guesses how Lenesa ended up like this?
On another note, I've decided to just join the Watty's and see what happens. I guess you never know if you don't try.
Thanks for reading!