But it has never been proven, which meant that the family responsible had to possess great strength and power, to keep their misdeeds so well hidden.
It was thought that her line had died with her, and since the gift wasn’t evident in any of her cousins, and there had been no siblings, her death had sent everyone into a spiral.
Theories were reexamined and the legend taken apart and looked at more carefully.
It was at this time that one of the other remaining families made their bid for their place in our society, or what they saw as their right, because of some medieval slight.
Apparently this line had once been one of the greatest, but because of fraudulent behavior and other atrocities frowned upon by the other families, they’d lost their standing.
That family is Mina’s, the Divecki clan. She is the one you saw today.” I squeezed her hand when I felt her tense up, but carried on.
“After Ekaterina’s death and the uproar it caused within the society, things had calmed down somewhat. Or as much as they could for a people who had believed in something for hundreds of years, only to have it disintegrate in one afternoon of bloodshed.
Ekaterina had been poisoned before her home had been set on fire. It was thought that she must’ve been ill at the time that this happened or she would’ve sensed the danger to herself and not been taken by surprise.
Her death set off a chain of events that almost destroyed the whole society back then.
I wasn’t born at the time of her death of course, but the legend was set and the society knew that my father’s firstborn son would be the son of the great house that is supposed to fulfill this legend.
So it was strange that it was my near madness in the end all those years later that brought the truth of her demise to light.
When you first disappeared, no one said anything to me of it, but they didn’t need to. I felt your terror as if it were my own. I was ten years old and a thousand miles away.
My rage I well remember, rage and crippling fear. One of the elders had to be brought in. I had raged and fought myself into exhaustion by the time my family thought to seek help from that quarter.
It took them days to get me to make sense. I had become almost catatonic, or so they thought.
In fact I was using all my strength and energy to travel over seas and lands to reach you.
I had no idea what was going on. Up to that point, all I knew was what my father had shared with me.
I had always believed them to be nothing more than just some fanciful stories that he made up. Tales I thought to be fiction mixed with half-truths, stories of legends and supernatural strengths!
Because they thought me gravely ill, I had been sedated for my own good. But the medicine had the opposite affect on me, and instead my strength grew.
I kept screaming that we needed to save you. I could see you but I could not reach you. Could hear you, but you could not hear me. It was the worst time of my young life, horrifying.
Our connection was strong, but we had not had enough time to form the kind of bond that could withstand such a separation.
It was my screaming for my Jasmine and my parents explaining to the elders about my strange attachment to you since birth that got them to thinking and questioning.
It was then I learned that my family was one of the two greats the legend spoke of. And like I’ve said, it had been believed that Ekaterina’s had been the other.
At her death, the Divecki family, because they were next in line, made their bid. But such things aren’t so easily or hastily decided, so even at the time of your abduction and your family’s...slaughter some twenty-one years later, the issue had not yet been resolved.
Upon hearing of my strange attachment, coupled with the fact that I was fast losing my mind, men had been sent out to uncover the truth, but first they had to save you, even though they had no idea who you really were at that time.
To them you were just the daughter of a teenage American mother and father, so could have no bearing on the legend. But my reaction gave them pause, and so they stepped in.
I was able to lead them to you and the madman who’d taken you. I wasn’t told then if it was a random act, or deliberate. At the time I was still as yet unaware of the legend in its entirety.
After you were saved when the monster who’d taken you was killed by the cop who’d been hunting him for years, you were given over to your mother, and promptly disappeared again.”