Page 91 of Maleen

She hobbles past us and into her house, leaving the door open for us to follow.

I stare wide-eyed at my mates. “Um, do we just… I’m sorry, a witch? What is a witch?”

They all shrug except Killian, who says, “They’re legends: powerful beings who could conjure anything and perform magick beyond your wildest dreams. But I thought they were just fantasy, a story to entertain fledglings.”

Jesper wiggles behind me and jumps off the horse, pulling me towards him and placing me on the ground as he practically shakes with excitement. “Come on! Let’s go, I want to talk with the witch!”

Nero lands back on my shoulder after having to jump off with Jesper’s sudden movement of me. “Do you think she has snacks?”

I raise my brow at Nero and glance at Jesper before turning to the others. “You should probably put your weapons away before we go in there.”

Talyn moves next to me, dropping a kiss on my forehead. “Stay next to us. I don’t trust the old hag yet.”

I nod, knowing when to pick my battles and all that. I get no bad feelings from her, but my males are overprotective and it’s growing on me… Kind of.

We make our way inside the quaint cottage, its warm lighting and heat brought on by the many candles laying about. Herbs hang from the ceiling to dry and a cauldron sits in the fire, smelling of a warm delicious meal that’s making my mouth water.

“Come, sit, eat. You’ve been traveling hard,” she says, using a wooden ladle to fill bowls with a hot meal. She passes the first one to me and gestures with her head toward the long table.

I scurry over and place the bowl down and wait for the others. I was always taught to wait until everyone is seated to start eating. “Our horses—”

“They are taken care of. Eat.”

My lungs inflate as I inhale deeply, staring at the stew, chunks of beef and vegetables in a thick broth. I smell rosemary, sage and garlic.

Once everyone is seated she looks directly at me and says, “Ask your questions, young Queen.”

A million of them bubble up all at once and they just spew out of my mouth. “How are you here? Are there any other witches? What do you know about the Soul Stone? What kind of magick hides houses—”

Talyn slaps his hand over my mouth and winces. “Maybe give her a moment to answer them?”

Celeste laughs. “Oh, I forgot how refreshing it is to be around the young.” She’s smiling, but there’s a sadness in her eyes. “Let me see where I should begin. You all eat.” She whispers something and another bowl appears, and fruit and nuts drift across the room to fill it. “For your familiar.”

I desperately want to ask her if it’s air magick, but I hold my tongue.

She sips her tea and leans back in her chair as she gets a faraway look in her eye, as if she’s drifting away to another time—with her age, she might be.

“How much do you know about the history of Damorleia? About the Demon Wars?”

I glance around the table and see the befuddled expressions on the others’ faces. “My librarian said something about it, but I can’t remember at the moment.”

She sighs. “Of course they aren’t teaching you about the wars. Over a thousand years ago, fae and witches lived together, worked together and even lived together in Damorleia. Until there was one coven of witches who decided that they wanted more power and got their hands on tomes that contained forbidden magick: magick that ripped through time and space and conjured creatures that no one had ever heard of before—demons. You see, the demons rival us in power, and it’s foretold that you can make deals with them, for a price.” She sighs. “But the price is never worth it.

“These witches and warlocks made a deal that changed the entirety of Damorleia. Demons began pouring through this rift after granting them forbidden magick,” she scoffs. “If you can even call the meager power-up they got ‘magick’. That’s the thing with demons—they’re tricky and ruthless. Anyway, I digress. The demons caused chaos. Fae and witches worked together to rid the realm of them. The war between us and the demons lasted almost a century before the fae Queen of that time was gifted an artifact. They say it was gifted by the Fates, but some thought it was demon-made, stolen from their homelands, and that the Fates gave the Galallaus fae the ability to use it with a hefty price. How the Queen came to have the Soul Stone still remains a mystery.”

“It weakens us and takes a bit of our magick when we use it,” I add between bites of the delicious food.

She nods, a proud glint in her eyes. “Precisely. The fae Queen of old used the Stone to defeat the forces of demons surrounding her city, but the war was far from over. Thousands on both sides were decimated, so what little remained of the witches came together. We had the worst losses because it was our war. We started it by inviting them here, so we came up with the only solution we could to save us and the fae. We left.” She watches the flame flicker on the candle next to her. “I opened a portal into another realm for the witches to flee through, hoping the demons would follow or give up. And because the demons were bound to the witches thanks to the deal made with the coven, they had no choice but to leave Damorleia.”

Aemon crosses his arms and sits back. “So how are you here then?”

I scoop another spoonful into my mouth, waiting to hear the answer, because he makes a good point.

“I’m still here because, when the war eventually ends with the demons, I can open the rift for the other witches to come home. My kind are not long-lived, but we can we live as long as the ones we bind our lives to. My life is bound to a soul contract. This is my home until either the end of time or the war between witches and demons ends. Now. Enough about my life. You have questions about the Soul Stone, correct?”

My heart aches for the female in front of me, living away from everything and everyone because of something her fellow witches did over a thousand years ago. I swallow the lump in my throat. “Yes, we want to know if there’s a way to destroy it.”

The silence that follows my question is enough to hear a pin drop from across the field outside.