Unblessed Witch (Phases of the Moon #4)

1. Deva

1

DEVA

My hand shook, knuckles white as I gripped my athame. I stared down at the old man, his eyes shut peacefully as blood seeped from the lethal cut across his throat.

I’d done it. I’d killed someone. At ten I’d killed my first unblessed witch.

I should’ve felt something. Something other than a growing void in the center of my chest. Still, tears leaked from my eyes.

“Are you crying?” Astaroth’s voice rang through the empty room with surprise. I blinked away my tears, feeling ashamed as he came to crouch next to me, staring at me with curiosity before his gaze slid to the body on the floor. “You did it—you killed him.” His critical tone was gone, replaced by pride.

“I did,” I whispered. I was the first in my age group to do so, and Astaroth had taken me on this mission specifically because he believed I could. Anything but success would’ve been absolute failure.

“Well that’s the important part,” he said, then he nodded toward my victim. “Do you know why I don’t cry when I kill?”

I hung on his words, hoping he would give me something to make this easier. Some trick. Some secret.

“Why?”

“I remember that they aren’t someone worthy of mourning. They are unblessed. No one should regret the death of such filth.”

Oh. I suppose…I suppose that made sense. I wiped away my tears with my sleeve and set my shoulders in a determined stance. I didn’t think I agreed with him, but I knew he felt strongly that it was true. Considering every single adult around me felt similarly, I had to assume they were right. Even if they weren’t, if I wanted his acceptance—anyone’s acceptance—well…I would agree with him. Or pretend to.

“Should I carve the runes you taught me?”

“Not tonight.” He put his hand out for the blade as I handed it to him willingly. “Tonight, I will show you how to do it far faster than we have in training, and next time I want you prepared to do it.”

And I would be. If it got his approval, I would be prepared to do anything.

It was no wonder I’d been loyal to Astaroth for so long. He’d been so different at the start, nearly caring and considerate. The things he’d had me do were fucking atrocious and monstrous, but he’d truly stepped in as a teacher, as someone to guide me. He’d never pushed me too fast, and it wasn’t until I’d completed twenty kills that he performed my first rune ritual as a reward for being so good at…well, killing.

But it had all been a guise. Every single ounce of compassion and thoughtfulness had been calculated, a move designed to craft me into the perfect weapon.

A weapon he was now set on destroying.

Guttural chants rose around me as I stared skyward, looking past the monstrous man that was my father to focus on the gray clouds above. On the sun trying to break through. On the white light that was so pure it was painful to stare into.

My velvet coat had been taken away to bare the space between my throat and the top of my corset, my moonstone still hidden from sight. My limbs were numb, my magic subdued by the suffocating bindings that held me to the stone slab, pressing down on me and restricting me from saving myself.

From saving my men. They were going to feel every torturous moment, and I was desperate to keep that from happening.

Grief dragged through me as time seemed to stutter to a halt, Astaroth raising an athame above my chest with a manic smile—before slamming it down, right into my chest.

The pure, excruciating agony of the weapon infused with his magic ripped me from my body, a wild, untamed scream forced from my throat. Never before had I cried out from the pain he’d caused me, but this was different. In an attempt to protect myself, I felt as though I was floating above my own body, watching the moment but detached from it.

Nearly a hundred silver cloaked individuals surrounded the altar of my demise, worshiping Astaroth, whose aura was pulsating with a black shadowy glow that sickened me. Everything about the bastard was poisonous. Toxic.

His knife dug in deeper into my sternum and the pain broke out of my control, trickling out of me and into my bonds. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I felt my men’s shock.

Their agony.

Their pain.

Before I could even try to stop it, the world turned hazy around me, pulling me deep into my subconscious…

“Ayla, could I speak to you?” My head snapped up at the direct summon of my name, and I made my way to the front of the training room.

Standing next to my instructor was a man well older than my thirteen years, as well as a younger girl who appeared to be my age. Her expression was filled with exhaustion, but upon seeing me, it shifted to include a tiny bit of hope.

My brows dipped, confused. This was not a place for solidarity.

“This is Demiana.” I nodded in greeting as my instructor continued, “I’d like you to take her under your wing for training.”

“We can be friends,” the girl offered, her caretaker snorting with humor. I gave her the smallest smile before turning toward the room. I rarely spoke, so my instructor wasn’t surprised.

“If you don’t want to—” Demiana had caught up to me, her brow furrowed as I came to a stop.

“We can’t be friends,” I whispered. “No one is friends here.”

And if we were friends, it would ensure her death.

It had.

The minute Astaroth thought I’d gained an ally, he forced me to fight her. To kill her and steal her magic. It was one of my lesser sins, since at that point we both had blood on our hands and were no longer innocent to the violent world he’d placed us in, but it was a painful, heavy memory.

She had been one of my only friends, and I’d lost her to him. Now my friends back at DIA would be at his mercy too.

If Astaroth could steal my magic, no one would be able to stop him.

A nightmare unfolded as he sliced along the line of my collarbones and peeled back a strip of skin, revealing glowing runes underneath. As his fingers hovered over my body, I realized what he planned to do. The spell he planned to use was one that would pull out magic from me, like an artery being slit open. He would take every drop of it.

Over my dead body.

Pulling on every ounce of willpower within me, I desperately searched for a way to protect myself. I knew that whatever I tried, he would wait me out. Let me bleed until even this small well of strength had been drained.

But I could not let my magic fall into his hands; my magic was the only thing that could defeat him.

My power would be better in any hands that weren’t his.

I knew what I had to do.

Forcing myself back into my body, I conjured the image of my body as a house, just as I’d done when Alek taught me to heal myself, but this time I had a different plan in mind.

Running inside and slamming the door, I reveled in the solid thud of my heart, sheltered within the sanctuary of the walls I had built around it. That my men had built around it.

It was my point of connection to them and it would be the way that I sent every last ounce of magic I had towards the five men that I loved. I was going to break this house and leave myself powerless—but it would ensure they had more than enough magic to protect everyone against Astaroth.

I just wouldn’t be around to see it.

As the sky had gone from day to night between my states of consciousness, I’d blocked my bonds with my men, not wanting them to know the type of pain I was in. But now I started down a path I couldn’t return from, opening the pathways with my men once again.

One by one, room by room, I shut the windows and locked the doors, shutting out the pain that Astaroth wrought upon my physical form.

I extinguished the lights within, each time sending little bursts of pure magic through the line of connection with my men, the silver light pulsating in time with my heartbeat. As I systemically released my power, I mourned the loss of the energy that I’d grown so used to feeling under my skin. Lunar magic. Shadow magic. Blood magic. Even the runes that hovered under my skin like the scent of death became lifeless at my command. Null and void.

Soon darkness surrounded the house, Astaroth’s power gathering for another attack—but it was too late. He was too late. Relief filled me as I looked around the barren home, the weak walls shaking under the threat of Astaroth. My heartbeat was the only source of life left—one that I knew would have to go. Closing my eyes, I forced the last trickle of magic toward my men before nearing the front door.

Looking back, satisfied with its emptiness, I stepped outside. Astaroth’s darkness cascaded over me as raw power seared my skin, and I dropped to my knees in victory as his magic assaulted me, for he would find nothing . He would gain nothing. There was nothing of me left.

I couldn’t do it anymore. This…this was the last time.

When Astaroth returned, I would run. I had to run.

My hand shook for the first time in years, tears leaking down my face as I stared at the young woman at my feet. She was maybe five years older than me, if that.

My stomach churned as I examined my hands, completely spotless yet stained with hundreds of kills. My knees broke as my head pounded, feeling like I was going to suffocate on my own guilt.

How had I not stopped this? How had I strayed so far from anything remotely…good? I was rotten. I was truly evil, and the runes under my skin said so.

My athame rose as I turned it toward my chest, wondering if I couldn’t simply end it here. If I couldn’t just cut out my useless heart and leave it on the carpet. It was a dead organ anyway, the shriveled black tissue a tombstone for the person I wanted to be.

It didn’t matter, though, what I did—I was being watched. If I killed myself—if I could even do it to begin with—they would bring me back. And if I hadn’t killed her, they would have. I knew that, but it didn’t make it better. I’d made it fast. Painless. But it didn’t take away the guilt from my soul.

Was there no redemption for me?

When a sound in the corner drew my eye, my athame fell and I stepped back, my breath leaving me as a small girl, only four or five, came out of the closet. Tears welled in her eyes as she saw her loved one dead on the floor. Because of me.

“Sissy?” she whispered as I watched her approach. Her eyes moved to mine in confusion. “Sissy?”

“Sissy is sleeping,” I said numbly. My gaze darted to the window, knowing they would come if I didn’t string up the body outside soon. It only took so long to mark a body with runes, and I hadn’t even started yet. If this girl was here when they came looking for me…

No. That couldn’t happen. I needed…I needed to do something.

“Hey, hey, where are your mommy and daddy?”

“Sissy said they were working,” she said, casting another confused glance at the girl on the floor. A single blast of lunar magic right through her heart had left a small round hole— cauterized and not bleeding. It was one of the easiest ways to kill and caused the least amount of pain.

Then I needed to hide her away until I could do more—until I could reunite her with her family. I hadn’t been assigned to kill them, just her sister… Oh fates, I had killed her sister! Tears threatened to spill anew. It was far from the first time I had killed someone’s family, but this hit so differently.

“Can you go get that blanket over there? We’re going to go find someone to help wake up sister. Okay?”

When she returned, I swept her up in the blanket—not wanting to touch her with my stained hands—and left the apartment through the main door. I wasn’t sure what I would tell my keepers or retrieval team, but I would not let them harm this girl.

I wouldn’t let them turn her into a monster like me.

Sprinting through the streets, worried with every step that they would find me, catch up to me, take her, I brought her to the only place I could think of—the only good place I knew of.

The Welcoming Witch. It was an orphanage, a safe house. It was a place I had heard of before and had been tempted to seek it out for myself when I was younger. But even then, I knew I’d be risking the lives of those inside when Astraoth sought me out..

My voice was soft as I looked down at the girl, realizing she was sleeping. “I am so sorry. I promise this will never happen again. I promise.”

Astaroth’s furious roar pulled me from the foggy memory of my last kill, satisfaction ringing through me at how the tides had turned in that moment.

Remembering how I’d kept that girl safe, remembering how I’d kept my promise, and remembering how I’d even made sure she was reunited with her mom and dad. I had done that. It was the first good thing I had ever done.

But that wasn’t the only thing my satisfaction was based on.

No, it was Astaroth’s fury. My eyes flickered open one last time as I offered him a smile as he stabbed me again and again, ranting about my magic being gone. I felt my eyes flicker shut as the moonstone sank further into my chest, skin growing over it as if to hide it from him.

Yet underneath all the satisfaction, there was emptiness.

I stood on the doorstep of ruin. I’d never had a home, so the burning destruction around me seemed perfect. This was it. This was the end.

I was finally getting what I’d wanted all those years— true death. I just wished I’d been able to see the men I loved one more time.