Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
I frowned. “Theseus explained that sometimes vampires try to prove themselves by destroying powerful covens—”
“Only your coven wasn’t powerful,” he cut in. “Three witches of your coven were. Your coven head, Evanora Omeron, her husband, Lucian, and her daughter, Isidore. So powerful that, unlike other covens, we were willing to agree to a treaty with them.”
I remembered the family tree in the back of my mind. That meant Evanora was my great-great-great-grandmother.
“However, the Swan family, my family, planned to turn our backs on that treaty after the death of Isidore once we realized her daughter, Annika, was not nearly as strong. We supposed it was because Isidore married a human.”
I wasn’t really sure why I was getting this family history lesson, but I stayed quiet, nodding for him to go on.
“When Isidore died suddenly, my father sent a group of vampires, but Annika was stronger than them. She’d destroyed them on her own.”
“So, you underestimated her?”
He nodded. “Not just her, but all of the Omerons in your line. One by one, we’d believe a witch to be weak, and then she’d become stronger. We merely wrote it off as training or you all not exposing your true strengths. Then in the Omeron line, the first set of male Wiccans came, twins, one born at night and the other in the day. One with a strong gift of magic and the other barely any at all.”
The frown on my face worsened because he had to be speaking about my father and Uncle Axel, but that last part wasn’t right. “Both my father and my uncle were born with strong magic.”
“No, only your father was,” he corrected me as if he’d known my father better than me. But then again, I didn’t know my father beyond the stories I had been told.
Even still, though.
“I was just whipped into a burning building by my uncle. I can assure you my uncle’s magic is powerful. How else would he have become coven leader?”
“Druella, I’m sure your uncle’s magic was weak before because I personally watched as your mother saved his life.”
“You knew my mother?”
“Not personally,” he replied with a frown. “She, like you, hunted vampires and was infamous among us for her power. She, also like you, made her biggest mark at the county border of Bymoor.”
“What did she do?”
“She attacked and defeated my mother, First Lady Mimiteh Swan, wife of President Swan,” he replied, and I gasped out.
“Defeated? Like some kind of duel?”
“Defeated as she did not kill her. Mimiteh Swan’s gift was called the siren’s voice. Your mother punished her for coming onto Omeron lands and nearly killing your uncle by sealing her throat for all eternity as a warning.”
My mouth gaped. “Wait? When was this exactly?”
“Three years before your birth. But that is not my point. The point being I was there, and I saw your uncle could barely make a flame of fire or heal a paper cut. Then there were a series of deaths. His wife, while bearing his son, followed by his brother and then also that same son, and all of a sudden, Axel Omeron had more power than nearly anyone else in his coven.”
“What are you saying?”
“Druella, I believe that maybe, just maybe, Axel took his brother’s magic for his own. Maybe even his wife’s and son’s as well.”
“Are you insane?” I laughed. Why had I listened to him so seriously? “You can’t take another witch’s magic. You can bind it, sure. But to take it? Not possible.”
“Don’t you witches have some ability that allows you to martyr yourselves and give up your magic to another?”
I frowned, not sure how he knew about the Final Sacrifice. Just how deep had his research gone?
“No, that is not it.” I shook my head. “We can do what is called a Final Sacrifice. It’s basically like enhancing the magic of those you share strong bonds with, like family or your circle. But it’s not forever, just at that moment, and it’s dangerous. Most times, it can kill you. If it did kill you, your magic would go with you. I can share a little bit of my magic to boost other witches. But what you are talking about. I’ve never heard of it. It would be…against nature. We are all born with a certain amount of magic, which is why the Final Sacrifice is so dangerous. There is a limit to the amount of magic our bodies can handle and lose. Doing too much of our own magic can tire us out, leave us magic drunk, or worse. If we started to take magic from each other, that would…”
“Certainly kill you all,” Theseus said from behind me, speaking for the first time since Taelon had started his bad-magic lecture. I turned to face him as he looked at me. “Druella, haven’t you ever wondered why your circle especially is only ever made up of orphans?”