AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Maddox tsked. “Attendance is mandatory. Edmund told me to remind you, in case you were going to say you were too busy.”
I sighed. The man knew me. “I’ll go,” I said, relenting as if I had a choice. “Did Edmund also tell you about the spell he had us go check on last night?”
He nodded. “The tracing spell? Yep.”
“Do you think the murderer is cloaking themselves? I mean, to use a spell of that magnitude…”
“He believes so, yep. Or, even more unlikely…” He paused, looking at the last of the coffee in his cup. “They’re not a witch or warlock.”
Naomi’s eyebrows pulled together. “A human then, but how? Even if one did manage to get into Istinia, there’s no way they could overpower a witch and get away with it.”
Maddox shrugged. “It could be a shapeshifter. Normal tracing spells wouldn’t be able to locate them.”
I shuddered, thinking about the creatures who lived in the depths of Hoai Forest to the east. “But the bodies were found intact. Wouldn’t a shifter have, you know, stripped them of their flesh?” I questioned.
“That’s true.” Maddox nodded.
“It could be a god,” Naomi said, earning looks from us both.
Maddox scoffed a laugh. “Are you kidding?”
“I mean, they’re the only other option that isn’t a shifter, human, or witch.”
I shook my head. “The gods are imprisoned, Naomi. We’d have heard if they got out.”
“Supposedly imprisoned,” Maddox stated. “No one even knows if they exist anymore. There’s only mention of them in old texts. Maybe they died in their prison realms.”
Naomi bit her bottom lip. “What about Freya, the goddess of the hunt?” she asked, as if we didn’t already know from the many religious lessons shoved down our throats from the high council and elders. “She’s real and still exists.”
“She’s the only one,” Maddox said, “and hardly anyone has seen her in our lifetime. She sticks to hiding out in the mountains. Who knows if she’s even a goddess? There are always imposters.”
“She is a goddess, Maddox,” Naomi scolded.
He clicked his tongue. “Even if she is, she doesn’t do anything for us. I don’t even know why we include her in worship.”
I tilted my head. “Maddox, come on. We’ve read about them on ancient runes, in Lor.”
He tugged the small black ring, pierced on the side of his ear. “I’m not saying they didn’t exist. Only they could have died.”
“They’re immortal.”
“Freya wasn’t an original goddess,” he argued, and he did have a point. “Originally, Leda was the goddess of the hunt. She obviously died or something.”
Naomi interjected. “I mean, yeah, but Freya took her place. Someone had to.”
Maddox finished his coffee, then sighed with exasperation. “It doesn’t matter how it’s done, only that a god is not running around sacrificing people. If they do still exist, then they’re locked away. If not, they’re dead. We’d know if they were walking among us. Even back in the old ages, they were known to be dramatic.”
I rolled my eyes, sarcasm lacing my tone. “Dramatic? Really, the texts said that?”
He gave me a look. “The stories told through them show it. Thalia tried to destroy the underworld because she fell out with her father.”
“Supposedly,” I said.
“Then there’s Raiden, the god of beasts, who set a pack of wolves after his brother because of an argument,” he said. “Not to mention how they all started sacrificing people for no good reason.” He sat back, folding his arms across his chest, a smug smile on his face. “See. Dramatic.”
“Still,” Naomi said, leaning over the table, “the murders are getting closer to home. Someone or something has to be causing them.”
A grim look shadowed Maddox’s soft features. “We don’t know who’s responsible yet.”
