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“What?” I blink, confused. “I said stay out of my business—”
“Make sure her door is guarded, that Zoey doesn’t harm her. We need her, Jax. See what the spell is doing to me. We all need her.”
Damn him for doing this, turning the tables. Pretending to be all noble. It’s an act and I should know better by now. Not to trust. Not to believe. Not to go out of my way for these bastards.
I’m not helping him, and that’s final.
4
MIA
Someone is rattling the handle of my door but I’ve shoved the desk in front of it and am sitting on the bed… numb. I know I need to get up, act. Go back to classes.
Back to my revenge plans.
Get up, Mia, I tell myself and have to wonder why I cling to the nickname. Ophelia called me that once or twice. It’s not my real name.
But I don’t even know who I really am. A foundling, never really fitting in, never actually feeling humble or wishing to dedicate my life to the Church, never really believing in the teachings. Such a disappointment to Father and Mother.
I lift Ophelia’s diary from the floor where it must have fallen when I dozed off earlier—before Jax came in, before he kissed me.
Focus.
A golden moon. Miss Worthy said that during the last Golden Moon event, the Apollinari and the other witch families tried to take over the world. Why haven’t I read about this anywhere? Of course, the Church library mainly contained religious books, the classics, and some poetry. Ophelia snuck in some contemporary books for me, too, but nothing of history, ever.
I flip through the diary as someone starts kicking at the door and screeching something that sounds like“slut”. How original. I turn more pages. I’m certain I read the words somewhere, something about a moon and magic. I hadn’t thought much about it then, intent as I was on digging out as much information as I could about these four boys.
The four bullies.
How dare he, kissing me and then telling me they only went to talk to Miss Worthy because they realized they needed a witch to… I can’t even. To help reverse the spell put on them by the black arrows? Was that what Jason was saying?
Well, they’re in for a surprise, I think, and find my mouth curling into a nasty smile. Let them put their hope in me. Waste their time thinking I can help them as their magic leeches away. Kissing me, then hurting me. Emrys sending me out of their decision-making meeting, Sindri disseminating videos of the magical tattoo on my back on everyone’s phones—hence the screeching outside my door—and now Jason…
Yeah. It’s no wonder I feel raw. Scraped bloody.
And I shouldn’t feel that way. Kissing them was a way to get close to them, find out their darkest secrets to use against them. I shouldn’t be seeing myself as a victim. I came here to hurt them and anything else should have slid right off me.
From now on, I swear to myself, I won’t allow any feeling into the equation. The emotions snuck in, catching me unawares—but they were superficial, of course. I wanted to be wanted, to be desired, after the years I spent like a prisoner at the Church. I enjoyed the attention. My body appreciated the sensations. And then my pride was hurt when I’d been pushed away.
No more feelings, no—
There. I go back a page and squint at my cousin’s—well, adoptive cousin’s—spidery handwriting. I was right.
‘A golden moon will rise, big enough to take up half the sky, when the spheres align.’ Riiiiiight. The spheres, what else?‘Elemental magic ebbs and rises with the phases of the moon and the flow of the earth’s lines, which is why creatures particularly tied to the elements like the shifters or the fae become more affected. Yet if the power of demonblood were to lessen, all races with elemental magic would manifest it at last.’
Okay. That was… not very informative. Not regarding this Golden Moon event, anyway. Does the size of the moon’s appearance matter? The bigger the better? Bigger moon, more elemental magic? It does sound like it. It—
“Mia! Open the door.”
That’s Jason’s voice. It’s like a déjà vu. Orentendu. Whatever “hearing” is supposed to be in French. My knowledge of the language is rudimentary.
“Go away!” I shout at him.
“Mia, please.”
Something in his voice stops whatever other words are about to come out of my mouth—and they aren’t pretty words. I’m still mad at him. Atthem.
He said ‘please’.
