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“Lately—well, not exactly lately for you as it has been a few decades now—I’ve been keeping track of the covens in our lands, how many Wiccan within a coven, the birth of new witches, their family history…things of that nature. And nothing stood out until almost three decades ago.”
“What happened?”
“The mortality rate of one coven started to spike,” he said, walking over to a desk at the end of the library. There, he pulled out a black leather ledger, worn so badly that the leather had started to rip and stretch in some parts. “Normally, we’d only see this type of spike during a witch trial or a witch hunt. But none were happening at this time. The deaths didn’t make sense. Do you know which coven I am talking about?”
I shrugged. “How would I know?”
“It’s the Omeron Coven,” he replied. “Out of nowhere, despite the fact that you all have almost no differences to any other coven, nor do you live nearer or farther from vampires, witches of your coven were dying.”
“Being murdered,” I corrected. “Our coven has been under attack by vampires for generations. It doesn’t really make for a long and happy life, especially when we are out trying to fight back.”
“Your coven called it vampire attacks, but I do not think it is true. Why would vampires only attack you more than other covens in surrounding areas? The Denholm Coven is only one hundred miles from your coven, which is barely a short run for a vampire, and yet they were not losing witches as you were. On the days your coven claimed attacks, not one other coven had an issue.”
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 so
