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It sounded like she was telling me I would be team dragon, but I had just told her I wasn't. Either she was crazy, or she knew something I didn't, and I was getting sick of the cryptic bullshit. “You can’t see the future, and you don’t know me. I wouldn't do that.”
“It’s not a question of knowing you. I know our blood.”
“Stop with the fucking riddles and fucking explain,” I yelled and strained uselessly in the ropes. My blood was boiling, and with the adrenaline now pumping through me, I was able to loosen the ropes slightly. I tugged my hands against their ties.
“It's history. Family history. If you want to understand everything, you need to listen."
I barely restrained an eye roll.
Like I can do anything else while strapped to a pissing chair.
"I'm listening. That's what I'm here for," I told her as calmly as I could.
“We are a very powerful line of witches. We have gifts many do not. We have been hailed as witch royalty, hunted as monsters, and sought out for our power. A very powerful man came in search of my great-grandmother. He wanted our power for his own and decided to take it in a less conventional way."
"What does that mean?" I didn't know what a conventional way to steal power was, let alone the less conventional way, but the grimace on her face told me it wasn't favorable.
"He married and raped her. Our magics merged in the offspring, and the females were stronger for it, but the boys did not have this effect.”
“They didn’t get any power? That's why you got rid of me?”
She shook her head. “The boys in our line hunt for magic, as my great-grandfather did. You’ve probably been surrounded by it your whole life and not realized. In the beginning they were taught magic, as the girls were, but they started draining their cousins, sisters, aunts, and mothers of their magic, becoming powerful and twisted. We learned from our mistakes. Now, our line doesn't allow boys to live.”
"Let me try to understand—the boys were taught magic, and then when they did it, they became too powerful, so you killed them, and the rest of this twisted family haven't allowed boys to live since?" I shook my head, the disgust evident in my tone. Elizabeth looked as though she wanted to defend herself, but I interrupted. “You kill them? But you didn’t kill me.”
She looked away, and her shoulders sagged. “I couldn’t. I would feel you move or kick and …" She rubbed her stomach, and then her eyes met mine suddenly, and her sorrow was palpable. "I couldn’t understand how something so small could be evil. I thought since you were half human that you wouldn’t emerge as the monster our blood carries, and I gave you away.”
I loosened the rope around my wrists and held on to it to stop it falling to the floor. "But I'm not half human. I'm lots of witch. So, if I learn magic, I'll be able to take it for myself?" She nodded. "But I have my own magic, so how can I be like the other boys of the family if I have my own power?"
And I definitely have my own magic, right? I'm not making that up? Lydia said I'd been finding things as second nature, but is that enough testament? I have a familiar but only through dire circumstances.
I wasn't sure of anything anymore.
Neither was Elizabeth. "I don't know. You clearly haven't emerged …"
The “yet” was silent.
“Emerge? What do you mean?”
“Stealing magic can come naturally to some, or it can be learned through trial and error. However, sometimes it has an adverse effect on the body …”
This story seemed to trigger something in my brain. The Norse myth of Sigurd and Fafnir, the protector and the dragon that rose from their graves, who seemed to have risen before.
A magic-stealing dragon, a magic-stealing great-great-grandfather.
Holy shit.
“The dragon, Fafnir, is he our powerful rapist ancestor?”
CHAPTER24
CLAWDIA
Awhole host of emotions battered at me as I looked at the man who caused my abuse, suffering, and death.
Mr Jenkins … no, Fafnir paced naked across the cold warehouse floor, shaking his head and clean dark hair, which was longer than I remembered it being, and muttering to himself. He had the same perfect white teeth and deceptively handsome face, if not a few more wrinkles.
Despite his pale skin and private areas being fully displayed, he didn’t look vulnerable. He moved with power and confidence, and his black eyes were still so soulless. Now I knew exactly how evil he was, I didn’t want to sit this close to him, hiding and shivering, afraid of discovery.
