Ritual of the Broken (Haunted Hearts)

Chapter 19

Chapter

Nineteen

A drian’s fingers traced lazy patterns on Ollie’s arm as they lay sprawled out on the bed. The dimmed room light seemed to accentuate their entwined forms, the soft glow complementing the warmth they felt from each other. What was this room? A recovery room? It wasn’t like any hospital he’d been in.

And what he and Ollie had just done wasn’t the kind of thing that happened often in a hospital.

They’d just finished with a third turn in the bed, and the sheets were tangled like they’d been tying them together to escape somewhere. But in between, Ollie flagged down someone in the hallway and got them some food. Next to them, a rather large spread of pita bread, vegetables, and lamb meat for gyros sat on trays along with water in a crystal decanter. That was something else far different than any hospital Adrian had ever been in .

Adrian inhaled deeply, and, over the meat and pita bread, he found the familiar scent of Ollie enveloped him—the vibrancy and comfort he’d come to enjoy. There were hints of aged wood and fresh rain. But now, after their recent closeness, the fragrance held a richer depth, more intoxicating and layered.

Every nuance of Ollie’s scent seemed magnified, teasing Adrian’s heightened werewolf senses in a way that stirred an unexpected hunger within him. Ollie’s aura became a heady siren call, making Adrian perceive Ollie not just as a companion but as something more primal. It made Adrian lean his head close enough that their hair brushed and tangled together, and he bent down to kiss Ollie’s shoulder.

“You know,” Ollie mused, lifting a piece of lamb meat and dipping it in the tzatziki sauce, “I’m pretty sure food is supposed to come before the... other activities.” He smirked, holding up the dripping meat as Exhibit A.

Adrian chuckled, accepting the offered morsel and savoring the garlicky tang of the sauce. “Oh, you implying it’s my fault we’re tangled up like this?”

“You did fling me over onto the bed.”

“I found you very… flingable in that moment.”

“I’m not complaining.” Then he kissed Adrian, his tongue passing over Adrian’s lips. “You taste like tzatziki sauce.”

They shared a fit of giggles and more kissing between pieces of lamb and tomato. Adrian found comfort in the moment, an understanding that despite all they had been through, they had reached this point of vulnerability and playfulness. It struck him as odd, considering his feelings about mages. And here he was in the proverbial mage headquarters, sharing pita bread and lamb with a mage—who he’d just sucked off.

Adrian laid his head back on his arm, and Ollie moved the spent tray of food to the other side. He curled in next to him to lie on Adrian’s shoulder, his hand tracing shapes on Adrian’s chest. “When I met you at my crime scene, I never expected this,” Adrian said.

“I’ll say. I thought you were going to eat my face.”

“I thought about it,” Adrian said with a chuckle.

“Funny how that worked out, huh? I’m the one who ended up eating your ass.”

That made Adrian bellow a laugh, and Ollie joined in. Ollie rolled over and propped his chin on Adrian’s chest so they could look at one another.

“You’re not what I expected either,” Ollie said. “I haven’t dealt with a lot of werewolves. I mean, none, really. I guess I expected a lot more anger and fur.”

“Well, there’s more of that where I came from. I never quite fit in with the rest of my pack.”

Ollie made a sound and looked away. “I know what that’s like.”

Adrian studied Ollie’s face, noticing the way his usually bright eyes were clouded with uncertainty. “Tell me,” he whispered .

Taking a deep breath, Ollie began, “Growing up among mages, you’d think magic would be the norm. And it was, for most. But not for me.” His fingers played with Adrian’s chest hair in a way that was stimulating and distracting. Still, Adrian listened. Ollie’s nerves were evident. “You’ve seen how it works. Things start off normally, but then they get out of control sometimes. I was always treated differently. There were whispers, sidelong glances. It’s like being marked, being the odd one out. Then there’s everything that happened with my family. It only made it worse.”

Adrian entwined his fingers with Ollie’s. “Why? What happened with your family?”

Ollie sighed, his shoulders drooping. “It’s an old family shame. Over three hundred years ago, one of my ancestors did something that got him executed by the Synod. I don’t even know the full details. My mother never told me, and it wasn’t something we ever talked about beyond my mother telling me I was going to be treated differently at school. But whatever it was my ancestor did, it left a lasting mark on our lineage.”

“Three hundred years ago?”

Ollie shrugged. “Mages live a long time. There are probably even some still alive who remember what happened. They hold grudges and tell all their friends about that thing Preston Hartley did. And it was enough that the people in my family were hunted and killed by the Synod. Things were supposed to be fine, though. My mother negotiated to allow us back into Synod society again. But that didn’t matter because she was killed two years ago.”

“How?” Adrian asked.

“Plane crash.”

The expression on Ollie’s face made Adrian squint. “But you don’t believe that.”

“I saw the body when I had to claim her,” Ollie said. “A plane crash victim would look, I don’t know, a lot more bruised, maybe? Some cuts?”

“Maybe she died of internal injuries,” Adrian said.

“No good mage—and my mom was a good mage—should die from something as mundane as a plane crash. Wind could be manipulated, portals could be opened… Hell, the plane could be made to work purely on magic.”

Adrian sat still. “So, you think she was murdered.”

Ollie turned to him. “I mean, it’s possible. It’s probable, even.”

“You said she negotiated to be allowed back into Synod society. Who’d she negotiate with?”

“Darius Vale. He’s the Archmagus Sovereign of the Synod.”

Adrian made a sound. “And that’s supposed to mean something to me?”

“He’s the head of the Synod. Like the Alpha, I guess, but of the entire Synod worldwide.”

Adrian’s brow wrinkled. “Why would a guy like that want your mother dead?”

“Because she’s a Hartley? Because of Preston Hartley’s deed? ”

Adrian fixed him with a stare that made Ollie sit up. “Then why are you still alive?”

The question appeared to catch Ollie a little off guard. “Huh?”

Adrian sat up too. “Why didn’t he just finish the job? You’re the last Hartley. A man as powerful as this Darius what’s-his-name, if he hated your family so much, could have just taken out one more Hartley and been done with it.”

Ollie sat. He took on a stare that said he was lost in thought. Good, because he needed to have questions. It was important to break out of thinking ruts when figuring out a case. Ollie needed a few hard questions, it seemed.

“And nobody ever told you what Preston Hartley did that would make a whole group of mages want his entire bloodline dead?”

The question snapped Ollie out of his own head. He sighed. “Every time I asked about it, I was shut down. Once, when I had a fight at school with this girl… Evadne Gates. Gods, she was horrible. Mean, like it was her job. I was, like, eight years old or something, and she used to tease me relentlessly for what Preston Hartley did. She didn’t even know what he did. None of them did. But kids have a way of picking at scabs no matter what they know or not. So, I asked my mom about what Preston Hartley did. She played it off at first, but when I wouldn’t let it go, she teleported me to my room and sealed the door magically for three hours. I learned real fast never to ask again.”

A heaviness settled over them, a stark contrast to the lightness from moments before. Adrian tried to fathom the kind of societal structure where one’s destiny was determined by an ancestor’s actions centuries ago.

“My academy days,” Ollie continued, “were a brutal reminder. While others excelled and were celebrated for their magical prowess, I was sidelined. Often mocked. There were days when I felt so isolated, so alienated. It felt like a cruel punishment for a crime I wasn’t even alive to commit. Then the thing with Thornton Halls happened, and that was it. I still went to school, but I barely scraped by. I only went because I had to. All mages do. But once it was over, I never looked back.”

Adrian tightened his grip, conveying the support he felt for Ollie. “That’s incredibly unfair. No one should be made to bear the weight of someone else’s mistakes.”

Ollie’s eyes met Adrian’s. “But that’s just it. In the world of mages, past and present blur. Ancestors’ deeds, good or bad, determine the futures of their descendants.”

They lay there, side by side, letting the gravity of Ollie’s words sink in. The stillness of the room was punctuated only by the distant sounds of the city.

Adrian turned his gaze to the ceiling. He swallowed deeply, then spoke. “It was a colonel in the Marines,” Adrian said.

“Hmm?” Ollie met Adrian’s stare, then Adrian turned his attention back to somewhere else.

“The mage who... well... who did what he did to me.”

Ollie didn’t move. He still lay on Adrian’s chest, and he didn’t say anything, and Adrian could still feel him watching.

“I’d been out of boot camp for four months when they shipped me to Afghanistan. I was just a boot, not yet assigned to a unit. So I spent my first few months there getting my ass chewed out and cleaning latrines. The colonel was a man named Langford.”

“That’s the name you mentioned when we met,” Ollie said.

Adrian nodded. “He was my commanding officer, and he was a mage. I didn’t know he was a mage at the time. I had no idea mages even existed. We don’t have academies like you, and werewolves pretty much stick to themselves, so it was never really relevant. And it left me unprepared.”

That comment hit him. It was the truth. His parents raised him in a closed community, one where he was expected to live by their strict, exacting standards. They only told him what they wanted him to know, like when they had to chase out a vampire from their territory. Adrian wasn’t even told what they were going up against until after. If they’d educated him more about what lived beyond the borders of pack territory in their small town, maybe things would have turned out differently.

He took a deep breath and continued. “I didn’t know much about mages, but Langford knew about me. He figured me out real quick. I don’t know if he did some kind of magic to read my soul or whatever, but he knew I was a werewolf, even though I hadn’t told anybody. And I didn’t plan on telling anybody. Langford took a special interest in me, requesting me to work with him, even though I was assigned to work the motor pool. I didn’t really understand why at first. I thought maybe the guy just had a crush on me or something and figured out I was into dudes.”

Adrian paused, and he took a deep breath. Ollie remained quiet, his hand touching lightly on Adrian’s.

“Turns out, he was just biding his time. It seemed really weird to me at first. I kept cutting myself while doing work for him. Accidents, or so I thought.”

Ollie’s eyes narrowed. “Sanguimancy? Is that what he was doing?”

“What?”

“Blood magic.”

For a moment, Adrian paused. He’d only been working on assumptions all these years as the points where he went wrong played over and over in his mind. Sanguimancy. This was confirmation. So, there really was a term for it. “Is that a whole school of magic or something?”

“It’s strongly regulated by the Synod,” Ollie said. “Some rituals use the caster’s own blood or the blood of willing participants. There are strict rules against certain spells in Sanguimancy, and the conditions surrounding its use must be stringently monitored by another mage, preferably an agent of the Synod. Blood contains power, and in the wrong hands, it can be used against someone very effectively.” Ollie met Adrian’s gaze. “Even werewolves. ”

“Well, I lost control of myself,” Adrian said after a long moment. “Can it do something like that?”

Ollie sat up. “Definitely. And that branch of Sanguimancy is strictly forbidden.”

“Langford knew how to manipulate me.” Adrian swallowed hard. “He saw the wolf inside, and he weaponized me. He used what I am against me. And there was a threat of exposure and losing everything if I resisted him. I was just a pawn, a tool for death with no will of my own. And he made me steal things for him. I’d kill whoever had what he wanted, and I’d bring it back to him. Normally, when we change, our senses, human and wolf, they aren’t separate. They blend, coexist, harmonize. But when he was in control, I was barely aware. It was my body, my claws, but I could not make them do what I wanted. He made me do things I never would have done on my own. And a lot of it is lost. I can’t even remember everything he made me do.”

It took Adrian a moment before he could continue. He couldn’t even bring himself to meet Ollie’s eyes. The emotion built in his chest as he played over what he was about to reveal, something he’d never told anyone. It wasn’t lost on him that he was telling it to a man—a mage—he met only two days ago. But for some reason, Ollie was the one he felt comfortable with, someone who might understand—and who might not judge him for what he was about to say.

With a swallow, Adrian continued: “But there was one village... I barely remember changing forms. It was just a haze of bloodlust as Langford’s magic compelled the wolf to surface. When I came back to myself, I was naked, coated in gore. Bodies surrounded me—hundreds dead by my hand. The monster he saw me as made real.

“Langford always controlled me completely. But then, out of nowhere, his control ended. I found myself alone, disoriented, in the middle of the desert with whatever it was he made me acquire in a bag strapped to my back. Somehow I made it back, cleaned the blood away, pretended nothing happened. But I knew Langford could make me a killer again whenever he wished.

“I expected to see him around every corner after that. But to my shock, Langford was just... gone. Vanished without a trace. The base was in an uproar trying to find him. They feared the Taliban had taken him hostage. Search teams scoured Afghanistan, investigations opened. But Langford stayed disappeared.

“And ever since, I’ve expected him to return. There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel like I can turn around and see him there, ready to pull my strings again. So when you appeared, Ollie... I thought you were another mage sent by Langford.”

After Adrian finished his story, he felt lighter, his soul cleansed of the weight of years of fear and shame. It was the first time he’d ever spoken to another person about what happened, and Ollie’s genuine empathy was a balm to his wounded spirit.

Adrian stared up at the ceiling, his fingers still entwined with Ollie’s, and let out a sigh.

“I’m so sorry,” Ollie said, his voice thick with emotion. “I can’t imagine what you went through. A mage using you like that, abusing you.”

Adrian shook his head, dismissing the apology. “It’s in the past. I can’t change it.”

“You don’t have to carry it alone,” Ollie said. “Not anymore.”