Page 158 of Bound By Fury

When they come into focus, my blood turns to ice.

I try to call the magic again. I fail. Again.

“There’s no use,” Alastair Matsoukas says, crossing his right leg over his left where he sits in a chair across from me. “That nifty little iron collar around your throat should take care of whatever power you have left after that display.”

He’s holding a large syringe with a long, thick needle, the barrel filled with a deep red liquid.

There’s a throbbing ache in the crook of my arm.

Alastair replaces the needle cap, but not before a droplet of my blood leaks out onto his finger. He pops it into his mouth, and I gag. “I’m sorry things have turned out this way,” he says as he shoves the full syringe into his pocket.

“You know, when I invited you to tonight’s event, I envisioned a much more peaceful meeting. I’m normally a pacifist, you understand. But unfortunately, when people deliberately disrupt my carefully laid plans, I can’t ensure things will work out in the most ideal way.”

My brain is mush, the world sways around me like I have the spins. I curl my toes in my shoes and try to root myself as I take in my surroundings.

We’re in a dark room with a dirt floor.

It’s familiar, but I can’t place why. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing in here save for Alastair and me and a metal table with various-shaped blades.

He stands, pacing away from me.

“Harper, I’m going to tell you a story, is that okay?”

My eyes are wide, and my mouth hurts where it’s stretched at the edges.

When I don’t answer him, he nods his head. “Excellent.”

He turns, meets my eyes, looks like he’s going to begin, but then he stops, his gaze settling onto something behind me.

“Actually,” he calls into the void, “Mal, come closer. You should hear this too.”

I shake my head. Fuck. I’m trying to piece together what happened out at Hanging Rock, but it’s useless. Where is Lucas? I yell, but the words are too muffled to decipher.

I knew something was wrong when he didn’t show up in the clearing like we’d planned. Did his father figure out that he’d been betrayed? A well of sorrow opens at my core. Despite my doubts, Lucas was adamant that Alastair was good. And now, thanks to me, who knows what’s happened to him?

A figure stalks from behind me, near silent on his feet. I scan over his dirt-dusted, black metal leg and scraped-raw pale skin. His ripped, gray hoodie and scarlet hair. He keeps his gaze trained on Alastair, avoiding me.

I wrestle against my binds, but it’s no use.

“Kai, son, it seems like you need a history refresher. There is a reason why we do the things we do. And a reason for how we do them.”

When Malachi finally looks at me, his eyes are jade stones.

Cold. Hard.

Visions of him accepting the death I offered him back on that cliff—of him wanting it—bring the nausea back, but I swallow it down. There’s no evidence of that boy in Malachi’s face now.

“One hundred years ago,” Alastair starts, though I can barely hold onto his words as the room continues to spin around me, “my ancestors had a plan. First, you must know, we are not a greedy people. We are self governing. We have always had ranks and roles and rules, and for a long time, this order was enough. You see, our magic is a limited resource, and we had to have order if we were going to maintain our status as some of the most powerful beings in the world.” He holds out his arms as though he is speaking to a crowd instead of just me and Malachi.

The single, flickering lamp overhead sways as he talks, playing with his shadow. Maybe this is why it takes me a moment to realize that the shadow is alive. Skating across the floor, reaching out from him in tendrils. I recoil against the sight. The air is beginning to smell of sulfur.

“For years we curated the witch population in Earnest. We grew them, we pruned them, we primed them for the taking. But slowly it became clear that the witches knew something we didn’t. The tides were changing between our kinds. There had been rumors of revolt.

“We’d been planning a culling, attempting to perfect the foiled power transfer from Wilmington many years prior, and when my grandfather Bud made contact with a scorned witch named Lucille, those plans were finally put into action. Thanks to her, we knew when your kind would gather. We knew that there would be a great display of power—enough to crack the river wide open.”

Nora had called Lucille a traitor. I guess this is why.

“So we marked twelve witches. Twelve witches for twelve seasons. My grandfather believed that if we harvested the Twelve all at once, the Holy River would bestow upon us the power that should have been ours all along. Where the Origin was a leader of the beginning, my grandfather was a visionary.