?Jullia whispers out of the side of her mouth, “Are you sure you’re allowed to be telling us all of this? Or at least saying all of this out loud in the open?”
?Varian, Castiel, and Mr. Kyros land pointed looks at me, but that wasn’t my fault. I point to the fire currently an ordinary red, orange, and yellow flame now. “They say Aora and Genifer the Twin Flames used their blue flame to the max ending the War of Gods which ended up burning them from the insides. They turned to ashes but spirits and souls tend to linger depending on circumstance.”
?“Girl, at this point you should just be our teacher,” one of the girls, Mila who’s high fae, throws out. “We learn more from you than we could ever from the professors. They’ve all taken blood oaths about speaking certain histories.”
?I glance at Callahan who’s now writing notes in his notebook. His grip on his pen is tight and his jaw is clenched.
?“It’s not like it’s their fault,” I try to console, but Mila shakes her head.
?“They could have refused. My father has said there are secrets deeper than any of us could imagine, and that’s the reason he refused to teach here. He’s learned a lot on his own and while he didn’t know all that you have taught us, the histories taught here are wrong.”
?“The only reason your father couldn’t is because high fae cannot lie,” the creepy shifter interjects. “You have to be invited in to be a professor at Syngenia and high fae would never be approached.”
?“That’s not the point,” Mila spits.
?“It is.” And while I keep my voice low and calm I release just a bit of my aura to shut them all up. “It is when they had a blood witch forcing blood oaths.”
?Asher leans further onto the table to look past Jullia at me. “You can’t force a blood oath. That’s the whole point of them, you have to truly want whatever it is being sworn.”
?“No,youcannot force a blood oath because you do not have the needed blood art or primordial blood.”
?A hush falls over the room and I feel a presence behind me. It hums. And my blood begins humming with it.
?No.
?“One twin died,” I whisper, going as still as possible so I can concentrate within. “The other was forgotten. That’s how the War of Gods ended.”
?“What do mean primordial blood?”
?I don’t know who asked it because I’ve shut my eyes and I’m trying really hard to ignore that hum.
?“Locklyn was her immortal name, her true name taken and making her, who was a goddess, cursed to the life of a blood witch. A twisted mockery because blood is how the gods can be killed and yet she as a blood witch could do nothing for those that made her true form forgotten.”
?“Where did you learn that knowledge?”
?Releasing a strained breath, I open my eyes and look up to twin blood moons. Dark hair carefully styled, face clean shaven, almond eyes the exact same as Thorne. I could almost say hisfather looked closer to an older brother than the one who sired him.
?Thorne stands beside him in his uniform with a softer expression on me and Mr. Kyros is on his other side. I wonder where Darian is.
?“I learned it when I watched Locklyn’s daughter, Esmirra of Ebony, kill her mother.”
?Mr. Arcturus’s throat bobs as he swallows. “That’s not possible.”
?I look up and past him around the library. This school built by a vampire descended from Syngenia the Vampyr. But he did not name this school after her. He named it after Syngenia the Blood Witch. Who’s blood and venom was procured right before her death and passed on through generations so her magic and story would never be forgotten.
?“It is when that blood and venom that was shoved into me was not a vampyr’s. It is when Syngenia the Blood Witch’s spirit remains on these grounds and her blood flows through my veins.”
?That presence shifts, reminding us it’s still here. It’s still listening. She’s still watching. Even now, nearly twenty-five millenniums after her death.
?“You said you didn’t know whose blood it was.”
?I slide my tongue over the front of my top teeth before answering.
?“I lied.”
?“Why?”
?I clench my fists and let my nails imbed themselves into my palms. It helps ease the strain.
