I ran as fast as I could, nearly tripping, from left to right, following where I felt the magic of other witches gathering. The wind threw my hair all over my face, my lungs and legs burning, so I leaped, and my feet l
eft the ground. Within seconds, I saw them, Adelaide, Rue, Fiona, and many others in our coven all circled around. All I saw was a hair tie, a bloody hair tie.
“Druella!” Adelaide rushed to me, grabbing my arms. It was then that my feet touched the ground. “Druella? Druella, no. You don’t need to see—”
With a wave, I tossed her to the right of me, stepping slowly, all of me numb as they parted for me to s-see…
“Mag…Magdalena?” My hands shook. All of me shook as I touched the space where her throat should have been, only now there were just bits of skin and blood. It coated my hands. Shaking my head, I put my hands over it. “It’s okay. I’m going to heal you. Okay? Heal,” I ordered my magic, and my hands filled with magic, overflowed with magic, sparking gold right before my eyes, but it did nothing. And my heart began to tremble. “Adelaide, come here. My magic is being stupid. I need your help.”
“Druella…” Adelaide placed her hand on my shoulder. “I already tried. She’s gone.”
“She is not!” I screamed at her. “I don’t care if you tried! Then we will try together! Then we will try as a circle and then as a coven! We are bringing her back if we have to!”
“Druella!” she screamed back at me. Why? Because magic of this type was forbidden, but I didn’t care.
Magdalena was eight. Only eight! She wasn’t going to end like this. She was a little girl. An innocent little girl!
“Druella.” I knew that voice.
Glancing up, I looked at Mrs. Reyes, whose red eyes were lowered to her daughter. “Don’t worry…I will bring her back. I will. I am—”
“Druella, please stop,” she whispered.
I didn’t want to.
I felt too sick to.
Too angry.
So angry I couldn’t breathe. My mouth felt like it was full of ash, the tears in my eyes started to burn, and as I stood up, trying to look away, I saw Magdalena’s hands…strands of long, straight, bloody, black hair, and something…something about it was familiar. Leaning over, I picked it up, staring at it for the longest time.
“Druella?”
Leaning up into the air, I flew through the tree lines.
“Druella! What are you doing?” Adelaide screamed after me, but I didn’t stop. Like a bullet, I shot forth, not stopping until I collided with him.
The force of both our bodies colliding had us rolling onto the ground, snapping anything and everything that we touched. Pinning him under me, I held the hair out for him to see. “Tell me I’m crazy right now. Tell me there is no way that, for some reason, this feeling in me is wrong, is off, that there is no possible way that this hair could belong to the same vampire who nearly killed me when I was a child.”
He said nothing, just stared into my eyes.
“Tell me I am wrong right now, Theseus!” I screamed in his face.
Again, he said nothing. I shook my head. “It’s not possible. It can’t be. That vampire was a Lesser Blood. We’ve taken out all the Lesser Bloods for miles, even if you didn’t kill it all those years ago. Why? Noble Blood vampires are prejudiced against them. You all don’t care about them. So why? Why did you spare it then? What aren’t you telling me now?”
“Druella, something does not make sense here—”
“Who is it!” I grabbed his shirt, flames slowly eating into it. He still didn’t answer, and I shook my head. “Why are you protecting them? I thought…I thought you cared more about me.”
“I do, and that’s why I am trying to under—”
“If you really care, if it wasn’t all a lie, tell me the truth.” I tried to hold my tears, but they fell anyway. “Please, Theseus, because if you keep this from me, I-I will never see you again. I swear.”
He closed his eyes and inhaled once before saying, “Her name is Lucy Ming. She is Taelon Swan’s mate.”
Letting him go, I stood up straighter, and my magic crackled under fingernails. It came out of my pores, my breath. Every heartbeat was alive in ways I’d never felt before. The trees around me bent under the howl of the wind, sending leaves, twigs, even rocks into the air. The sky darkened. “I warned him. I warned all of them.”
“Druella, I’ve watched you all your life, and at your core, you have always wanted peace. To prevent a full war—”