Filthy Witch.
Nicholaus
Jeremy joins me in the car, and we plan to travel as far as we can until we need to take refuge before sunrise. The engine’s low hum settles into the bones like a borrowed heartbeat; headlights cut a pale tunnel through the thinning night while the last taste of smoke and wolf blood clings to the back of my throat. Asphalt flickers beneath us in white dashes, mile after mile, and the horizon is already bruising toward gray.
“You know you don’t have to be a dick to her, right?” Jeremy says at last, voice rough with fatigue and something like disappointment. “You’ve found your beloved. This should be a happy time for you both.”
“Did you not see what she did?” I snap, eyes fixed on the road. “She’s a witch, a filthy fucking witch. Do you not remember why we were cursed in the first place? I can never love her.”
The curse. It has plagued my thoughts every day for the last two hundred years, a thorn under immortal skin. Ever since my father was killed by his chosen bride and she laid the curse on our kind. She was a witch, and my father had chosen her for a bride in the hopes she would bring him more power and strong hybrid children. When she didn’t produce an heir, he chose another bride to take her place. She killed him while he slept, cursed our kind to never produce children, never to sire another, and our population has been slowly dying off ever since. That night carved a law into me more enduring than stone: witches are knives wrapped in silk.
Outside, the world blurs, fence posts, skeletal trees, the occasional lonely porch light burning out its patience. Inside, the car is a narrow confessional: leather, steel, the rattle of a loose coin in the cup holder. The bond tugs behind my sternum, a quiet, relentless pull that mimics a pulse I no longer have. It is heat under the ribs, the memory of a heartbeat, a thread I could follow blind. I grit my teeth and drive faster.
“But did you have to tease her with food she couldn’t eat?” Jeremy asks me, pulling me from the familiar spiral.
“What do you mean?” I don’t look at him, but I hear the soft exhale, the pause before he says what he shouldn’t have to say.
He frowns at me. “The mask. She can’t eat food with it on. We could at least take it off for her.”
I’ll admit I had totally forgotten she couldn’t just eat like a normal person. The image flashes, silver lid rising, steam ghosting from steak and potatoes, followed by the flat clang of my own indifference. The fact that I don’t know when she last ate is annoying me. Not guilt. Annoyance. At myself, at the bond, at the way her presence makes the air feel different in my lungs. The bond is strong and already growing and I will not be removing that mask. I will not give her the chance to draw me in further with whatever beautiful words she has. Witches weave with tongues as well as hands; a story is just another kind of snare. No, I need as much distance as possible from her if I’m going to fight the bond. I will not be betrayed like my father was, not by one of her kind.
“No. It stays on, that’s an order.”
“But…” His protest is soft, but it’s there, my brother who has always tried to put salve on wounds that need steel.
“No fucking buts!” The wheel creaks under my grip. “We will not be tricked again! We will take her home to the seer and he will tell us what to do next. That’s it.”
Silence settles in, heavy as a cloak. The tires hiss over a stretch of wet road; somewhere far off a train wails, thin and lonesome. Jeremy angles his face toward the window, jaw working. He doesn’t like it, of course he doesn’t. He has always seen hearts first and fangs second. I know he’s not happy with my decision, but there’s a reason I am King and not him. My little brother, my best friend, head of my armies and the only one who can tell me the truth without flinching, he’s got too big of a heart to understand this properly. He believes a bond is a blessing. I have learned it can be a blade. So I keep my eyes on the road, on the paling rim of the night, and on the only path that doesn’t end with our kind extinguished: get her home, put her before the seer, and let destiny speak in someone else’s voice.
Echo.
We’re ushered into a car with three very intimidating vampires. Everything about them says predator, the stillness, the clean cut of their suits, the way their eyes never stop measuring exits. Farah sits in the middle of me and one of the vamps. I’m thankful for that at least. She has acquired a suit jacket from someone before she got in the car, good for her. At least one of us deserves a bit of modesty. The fabric swallows her, sleeves too long, shoulders too broad, but she pulls it tight like armor.
“Are you sure you don’t want the jacket?” she signs, elbow pressed into my side so the movement is small, private.
“No, keep it. You need it with how close Mr creepy pants there is sitting next to you.”
He watches our hand movements with his eyebrows raised, mouth quirking like he’s trying not to smile.
“Mr creepy pants can understand you.” He signs to me, and it’s my turn to raise my eyebrows in shock. His hands are quick and confident; the shapes are fluent. He laughs, warm and surprised, and the two vamps in the front seat look back in our direction quickly before returning their attention to the road.
“You can sign?”
“I can. My little brother is deaf.”
“Oh.”
“Im Devin.”
“Echo and this is Farah.”
He nods with a boyish grin and looks out the window, the grin fading into something softer. Farah gives me a swooning look over his shoulder and I roll my eyes at her antics. She’s such a horn bag. Even in a car full of killers, she can find the one good jawline and commit to the bit.