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“What your purpose is.” She inhaled slowly and began to recite the story. “Everyone has a purpose. Mine is taking care of you, because yours is protecting the whole world.”
Little Reagan’s eyes grew round. “The whole world!” she exclaimed in awe.
“Shhhh,” Elda chastised quietly, even as a smile tugged at her lips. “I’ll tell you why if you promise to be quiet. Can you do that?”
The girl nodded in excitement.
“In the beginning, there were twelve primordials of creation. Each of them were responsible for making our world and everything in it.”
“Even cookies?” the little girl asked, forgetting herself.
“Especially cookies,” Elda smiled gently before continuing. “For thousands of years they lived peacefully, coexisting with one another and the worlds they’d created, but the serenity didn’t last. One of the primordials grew unsettled. He felt that the people were ungrateful for what he’d done in creating them, and that they needed to experience true strife to appreciate the gift of life.” Little Reagan gasped and Elda lifted a brow. The girl’s lips pressed together as she resettled.
“The other primordials disagreed, and rightly so. Light and dark exists in us all, and they knew that the balance would be altered if he was given his way. As time went on, his discontentment grew, and he was adamant that chaos should be unleashed on us all. He began making plans and the other primordials knew they had to do something,but a primordial cannot be killed.So the eleven bound together and imprisoned him. They put him in Tartarus, a realm of his making?—”
“Wait a minute. If he’s so strong, then how did they do it?”
“By taking away what made him a primordial. They removed half of his soul, stripping him of the power to create portals and life itself, ensuring he could never escape. But the eleven could not contain what they had taken. They were already primordials themselves, and they worried that if they took on his soul—it would corrupt them all. But a brave witch stepped forward and said that she would bear the burden and become a vessel. So they placed half his soul inside of her and charged her line with its safekeeping. She was the first guardian, and her name was Abraxia.”
“But Elda, what washisname? The one they trapped?”
“He is the Soulless One, and nothing more. He remains locked in his realm, because of you.”
“Me?” Little Reagan gasped. “But I’m only five.” She held up her fingers to show. Elda nodded, clasping the girl’s hand in her own.
“But you’re also the guardian. The ward on your back keeps him contained, so as long as it’s there and you’re alive—he can’t come back. You’re a hero, Reagan.”
“I am?” she asked with wonder in her voice. It churned my stomach, sickening me.
Elda nodded. “If anything ever happened to you, if the ward broke, the Soulless One would return and the end of days would be nigh.”
I didn’t stick around to hear anymore. Stumbling backwards, my butt hit the forest floor with a thud.
I hadn’t heard that story in ages. It was troubling that the tale was familiar, but the scene wasn’t. The room and the glimmer of it as a memory felt so . . . real.
Standing up, I brushed myself off when I heard a man’s voice speaking in low tones. My heart rate increased, adrenaline shooting through my body. They couldn’t see me, I reminded myself, and walked up to where I heard them speaking.
A tall man with a gray beard stood beside Elda. She looked older than she had only moments before. Traces of white hair streaked her bun, and the corners of her eyes crinkled more. They both looked into the trees warily, taking a moment to listen. Elda waved a hand, sending magic out. A stunning spell hit a squirrel, and it fell to the forest floor. The old man chuckled.
“You laugh, but she’s getting better at sneaking around, Josiah.”
“She’s getting too powerful is the problem,” he countered, crossing his arms. “I told you not to teach her magic.”
“She’s a witch. It comes naturally. Accidents are more likely to happen if she’s untrained, and none of us wanted to take that risk. I just didn’t expect her to excel at it.”
“She’s only half witch,” he said, disgust laced in each word. “The other half of her is a beast. A disgrace to her line. Every guardian has always been a witch, but her whore mother had to go and fuck that creature.” He shook his head. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t take pleasure watching the life drain from her eyes the day she bore Reagan, but the fact remains that she still damned us. Without Reagan having full power as a mage, I don’t even know how long she’ll be able to contain the devil inside her.”
“Nor do I,” Elda said, sighing as she scanned the forest. “I worry she won’t have the strength to make it until she’s twenty-five. Twenty, maybe.”
“We won’t have to wait that long. I’ve already made arrangements.”
Elda’s eyes snapped back at him. “What do you mean?”
“She’ll be old enough to bear a child within the year.”
Her lips parted. “She’s ten!”
“She’s a vessel, Elda,” he said, lowering his voice. “You helped raise her mother for the same purpose. We were too late with her, and I won’t have it happen again with Reagan. The ward needs to pass on to someone with more witch blood. Charles is powerful. Coupled with what her mother’s line has passed on, we can breed the shifter out of the offspring within a few generations.”
