AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He nails me with a glare. “What I said? Do you think I lied?”
I raise my hands as if to calm a wild animal. “Of course I don’t think you lied. It’s pretty obvious the curse is real. All I’m saying is maybe there’s more to the story than that.”
When he doesn’t respond, I keep going. “You said she cursed you because she was power-hungry. Because you wouldn’t give her the strength she craved. But you never did tell me what that was, for once. Maybe you could start with that part of the story? What did Isabel expect from you that you wouldn’t give?”
He’s still quiet, still unable to meet my eyes. Every avoided gaze pierces my chest like a spear. I lean forward, forcing myself in his field of view.
“Tei, please look at me.”
He does, and though I may not be able to scent emotions like him, there’s no mistaking the torment on his face. “I’m not her. I’m still me. And I need you to trust me.”
He searches my face for a long minute. Finally, after what feels like an eternity, he sighs and runs a hand over his mouth. “She wanted to rule the Beyond. I had a sigil that could make it happen.”
The revelation is so unexpected it takes me several moments to process it. I have to repeat it back to myself a few times before it finally sinks in. “That’s… possible? Wouldn’t she need to be part of your kind to rule the Beyond?”
Tei seems to hesitate. This time, I don’t push him for an answer. If he thinks I’ll use it against him, we’re already doomed. Seconds tick by so loud in my head. When he opens his mouth to speak, I let out a sigh of relief.
“The Beyond is ruled by the most powerful being — there’s no law that it needs to be one of my kind. Isabel had been gathering magic. So much of it. She had me steal grimoires for her, as many as we could find. She’d basically amassed as much knowledge as she could find on Earth. And she’d been feeding from me, too. She was the most powerful witch that had ever lived.”
He pauses, looks down at his forearms, at the round tattoos — scars? No, sigils — marring his perfect skin. “She was vying for one last thing, a sigil our kind share with each other to display our loyalty. Usually, it’s something rulers receive from their most trusted subjects. It channels power. When she told me, that’s when I knew — that I’d been used. I was a means to an end for her. If I’d given her what she wanted, she’d command me. Not only would she be able to enter the Beyond as Queen, but she would own me. I couldn’t let her have that.”
“So what did you do?” I ask, though I’m not sure I want to know the answer. But I’m tired of half-truths and withheld information. Something has been off about Spain from the moment we got here, and while I can understand this may be difficult for him to relieve, he can’t continue to shut me out as a way to protect himself.
He has to let me see him bleed. He has to trust that I will not use it against him, that I’ll be here to lick the wounds. None of this is going to work if he doesn’t.
“I asked my mother for help; she gave me a sigil to banish Isabel from the Beyond. So I tricked the witch into thinking I would give her what she wanted, and instead, banned her.”
I can’t keep the gasp from escaping my lips. “Oh, Tei…”
He lifts a hand to quiet me. “I’ve spent centuries regretting my choices. Trust me, if I could go back and change them, I would undo every single one of them. I do not need you to tell me they were in poor judgment. I’ve cursed the day I met the wretched witch for the past two centuries.”
I reach for the grimoire between us. “So you betrayed her, and then she cursed you.”
“No,” he growls, but his conviction doesn’t reach me. Because it sure feels like a betrayal, from where I’m sitting, and the curse the result of a scorned lover. The weird brew of emotions simmering in my belly is not one I can easily pinpoint. I’m not surprised, I’m not even that disappointed, to be honest, that Tei betrayed Isabel. I’ve come to learn him enough to know that’s what his twisted sense of duty would require him to do. The way Isabel retaliated, though, feels personal, emotional. Like she lost more than just a chance at an unnamable power. I look at the grimoire as if I could pluck her thoughts right out of it, understand her motivations, but the book doesn’t speak any truth to me.
“She betrayed me first. She told me she wanted the world. She never told me it was my world, she wanted. My throne. She used me. The whole time, I was a pawn in her twisted game.”
I nod, because I don’t really have words for any of this. If one thing is clear to me, and it’s not much at all, is that Isabel and Tei had a difficult relationship, with a clear struggle for power. I run a finger over the blue oval stone inlaid in the cover of the grimoire, feeling its cold and smooth surface under my fingertip while I swallow something sour to the back of my throat.
Is the only reason Tei cares for me because I am not powerful enough to threaten his position? If I had more magic and we were equals — or worse, if my power started threatening his, would he betray me, too?
The thought stings so hard I have to clench my jaw to keep my eyes from watering.
“Esme,” Tei calls out, forcing me to look up. “What is going through your head? You smell like the ocean, and it’s never a good thing when that happens.”
Damn him and his emotion-smelling powers.
I shake my head forcefully. “It’s not fair for you to do that.”
“I can’t exactly turn it off, so…”
“Would you do the same thing to me, if I were that powerful? Is the only reason you’re entertaining me as a partner because I’m a mediocre witch?”
Tei — the asshole — laughs. Laughs.
“Esmeralda, you’re absolutely not a mediocre witch. You may be green, but you don’t lack power. It’s one of the things that drew me to you in the first place, whether I knew it or not. That fire I saw in you? It was your magic all along, little witch. It’s pretty fucking twisted, if you ask me, that it comes from Isabel in the first place, but at the very least through the centuries it has found a much worthier vessel.”
My eyes bulge. “So I’m as powerful as she was?”
