Wildfire Witch (The Cursed Coven of Spells Hollow)

4. Nix

NIX

He was a natural redhead, reds and oranges threading through his receding hairline and neatly trimmed beard. Under the glare of ghostly light that surrounded his incorporeal form, he was wearing a rustic tunic and pants that wouldn’t look amiss at a renaissance fair.

I believed in ghosts and knew they moved around the living, stuck on the mortal plane. But to actually see one…I’d paled and frozen in place. Malevolent shades didn’t smile as kindly as he was, as far as I knew. He seemed to be made of a vortex of pure witch power. I felt the pull of it drawing me in.

“Hello, Verity. Melisande sent me.” He had a wisp of a voice, barely here despite the energy I sensed in him. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

Slowly, I shook my head. I searched for Aodhnait in my head, but she was still and quiet. It was just the ghost and I here as the moon shaded a vivid crimson above us, bathing us in red light.

“I’m your brother, Royce, and I’m here to help you break your curse. Take my hand, and I will show you the way.” He extended his palm toward me.

Royce . Melisande . The two people from my past that Ceridor had thought to ask me about. “You’re really my brother?” I asked with a twinge of sadness.

He nodded and flexed his ghostly fingers. “There is not much time. I need you to come with me into the past.”

I took his hand and sank into darkness.

Royce’s ghostly presence shot me into a fully formed recollection of myself. In my first life, I was Verity Carmine, daughter of immigrant witches escaping persecution. I was born in Spells Hollow, arriving shortly after Royce. Neither of us experienced the horrors of the outside world, but our mother described the fate of her old coven to us multiple times, down to the excruciating details.

Most of her coven, a group of herbalists and green witches, were burned at the stake in front of Edinburg Castle. She and my father escaped notice and stayed only long enough to bear witness and perform a private blessing for their friends and family. They then packed up what was left of the coven’s resources and fled in the night.

Thus I grew up as gratefully as I could for the new world and the hidden coven of witches who made their homes in Spells Hollow. But I was still a child and didn’t realize the incredible value of the books, reagents, and tools scattered around my home—the remnants of an entire coven’s riches dating back centuries—until I caught my parents whispering over a velvet pouch.

I was a girl of seven, fresh from wandering till dark with my best friend, Melisande. I wore a crown of woven wildflowers she’d made, while she was going home with an even grander crown I’d clumsily made with double the flowers, since she would be the next high priestess one day and even then I knew she was incredibly blessed.

“Verity!” Mother exclaimed. My spine straightened, and I assumed I was in trouble since she so rarely raised her voice. “Come quickly.”

Perhaps it was fate that my brother was still away, roaming carefree with his pack of friends. In those times, it wasn’t unusual for kids to wander on leisure days, and we knew the limits of the hollow’s safe boundaries.

I joined my parents and looked inside the pouch curiously. They’d loosened the drawstring and spread the fabric, revealing a mound of ashes. Something shifted within, a core of embers. “Don’t touch it, lass,” my father whispered. “The phoenix will ignite any second.”

He put a finger to his lips with a wink and I nodded rapidly. I knew they’d taken the phoenix ashes by accident, assuming it was one more reagent left behind when one of their coven sisters was dragged away. It’d remained dormant, patiently heaped in a cool, dark corner for this moment.

I clasped my hands and watched with my mouth hanging open with wonder as every flake of ash burst into a puddle of red flame. The phoenix chick took form, burning orange, then yellow, before extinguishing completely and flopping in the charred remains of the velvet bag. It lay shivering and limp with exhaustion as it took its first breaths.

My parents exchanged a meaningful glance over my head before Father’s broad palm settled on my back, nudging me forward. “Go ahead and hold it, lass. Without feathers, it must be cold.”

“I will knit it a scarf,” I declared. Father chuckled, patting my head.

I picked the baby phoenix up and held it to my chest with both hands. Despite its skin feeling like a coal warmed from a fire, it shook in my hold for a few minutes before settling and squeaking out a scratchy birdsong. It looked up at me with utter trust through a set of eyes that burned with white-hot flame.

Father built a custom perch for Aodhnait and painted my desk with a fireproof varnish made special by Mother. The phoenix watched me grow up at that desk, soon exchanging long days of leisure for the drudgery of memorizing spells, facts, figures, and the very basics of what would someday become my profession as an alchemist. I studied fractured facets of the ancient art from books smuggled away by my parents, most of which were written by the scientific minds of magicless humans from times long past.

A green witch could not practice alchemy with her magic before she understood the principles of the world around her and how all matter was related. I learned how to combine my magic with herbs and other reagents to form tonics, potions, and medicines with extra beneficial properties.

I could’ve stopped there, but I grew obsessed with a branch of alchemy concerning the elements and some of its niches of study, the transmutation of magical elements and the symmetry of magic. As my understanding of alchemy grew, so too did my desire to experiment with the line where magic and science met.

Aodhnait grew with me, reaching adulthood within a few short years. There were no other birds like Aodhnait and she knew it, standing with her chest puffed out proudly any time she was noticed and admired. Here in Spells Hollow, she was safe from being hunted or poached by those who wanted the powers of rebirth unique to phoenixes.

When she wasn’t ignited, most of her feathers were crimson, though she had a fine fuzz of orange in a patch under her beak and a flash of white amongst her long tail feathers, the only outward sign that she was female.

She was built tall and delicate, with a skinny, swan-like neck and a delicate clasp for a beak. Flakes of soot and ash occasionally rained from her feathers, which I had to clean up. As she and I had swiftly formed a familiar bond, it was my job to pick up after her, keep her fed, and groom her. She loved grooming time and I adored her, so I kept her spotless and gleaming, despite her regularly setting the surface of her feathers on fire.

Aodhnait stepped into her role as my best friend, always there while I experimented with the element of earth I’d inherited as a green witch. We talked theory together, and she gave me her feathers and fire to help with my experiments.

By the time I was fifteen, I discovered that transmutation of the elements was possible after drinking a potion that allowed me to play with a puddle of water and cause it to dance by my will alone. I dreamed of making such control permanent and being the first witch to wield more than one element at a time.

It was possible, in theory, if I changed the alignments of my magic internally through my experimentation. I wanted fire most of all, to master the most destructive element. It would only be right to match the majestic creature who’d chosen me as her witch.

I still spent time with Melisande, but she was often away of late, training intensely to take her place as high priestess far earlier than she should have to, because of her mother’s poor health. She had true power, a connection to the land of Spells Hollow. And the night she would ascend was marked by an auspicious event, the first blood moon I’d witnessed.

We watched the moon rise together, standing amongst a crowd made up of the nine witch families in our coven and a handful of supernaturals who’d traveled from far and wide to watch the ritual. “You will be a fantastic leader,” I said, squeezing her hand.

She took her eyes off the sky for a moment to smile my way. Goddess, she already looked the part in her ceremonial robe, though she couldn’t hide the nerves she felt. They shadowed her eyes, no doubt spurred on by a fear of failure.

“You’ve certainly trained enough. You’ll be fine,” Aodhnait twittered from her perch on my gloved hand.

Melisande breathed a laugh. “Thank you for your support, you two,” she said.

Royce stepped up on her other side, clearing his throat. She released me and I winked, seeing her expression change at his mere presence. She was completely smitten with my big brother and spent the rest of the wait whispering with him. They were perfect for each other, I thought.

Though… I couldn’t help a bit of good-natured jealousy of how fast and easy it was for them to fall in love. My alchemy table, books, and experiments were the company I preferred. I’d developed a tart tongue and a learned opinion, things older men didn’t like in a potential bride. I refused to act demure to find a husband, despite my parents’ growing fears I would become a spinster because of it.

The moon shaded as red as blood that night, as Melisande ascended. I bore witness to the ceremony, though as my memory looked into the sky, for a moment I was self-aware this was the distant past and that I was still Nix, watching the festivities of long ago with a tourist’s awe.

Time skipped past. I grew to become the town’s resident alchemist, running a business from the first floor of the Carmine family’s house after my parents passed and Royce moved to be with Melisande as one of her lovers. Though single, I had the respect of the community for the power of the items I brewed at my table.

I was there when Melisande declared her intent to take an eligible man from each of the nine witch families as her consorts, laughing my ass off at the scandalized expressions of the elderly council members who failed to deter her. Melisande grew into a powerful leader, a mother, and a force that attracted attention from supernatural communities across the new world. She turned Spells Hollow into a utopia for all peoples who possessed magic.

And I was amongst the first to advise Melisande to banish or kill the one man she rejected from her cadre of talented consorts—Morfran, the self-named “Sorcerer of Spells Hollow” who will not take her no for an answer, despite hearing it far too many times.

“Spells Hollow is a sanctuary for all with magic, Ver,” she’d told me. She waved away the idea with a fond laugh, used to my sharp-tongued suggestions. “I cannot tarnish my grandmother’s legacy just because I suspect one of our own is experimenting with the darker side of his powers.”

“It is your call,” I’d acknowledged begrudgingly. But it’s wrong, I didn’t add aloud.

“It would be as wrong as banishing you for your experiments with the symmetry of magic. And you know I would never do that to you.” She ended the conversation with this, and a hug, like the matter was concluded.

I was officially labeled a spinster, too old and opinionated to be wed by the few remaining men in our small community. It didn’t help that Melisande had removed eight bachelors that I could’ve married, but alas. My partner clearly had to come from another town, and he arrived with the breeze one afternoon.

The Wind Court, a distant entity in those times, flew across the continent to make an alliance with us. They were a beautiful people universally, honed to a deadly edge in the way only fae can appear. As we celebrated their arrival, I admired their frosty hair and long, graceful limbs. Some had wings, gigantic versions of butterfly or bird wings, though others had made the flight here by allegedly hurtling themselves through the sky with sheer wind magic.

It was fascinating, and I quizzed the handsome guard Ceridor Farrick while he had to stand in one place, minding his duty as a guard for the wind lord he served. He didn’t seem to mind my endless questions or the fact that, at first, I only searched him out when he was a captive audience.

When he was off duty, he found me in my shop, and leaned against the counter while I worked on fulfilling orders at my alchemy table or experimented with elemental magic.

He was a shockingly young fae. Not that fae weren’t allowed to be young, but he was the same age as I was. Possessed of fae beauty, but not the cruelty his elders all seemed to have; I talked to him for hours at a time without noticing the time passing.

His silver eyes never dimmed with boredom, even when I droned on about transmutation and my experiments with balancing my internal symmetry to perfectly reflect the four elements. I demonstrated how I had changed myself already so I could, at will, summon washes of water or eddies of air, displaying the equivalent of party tricks while sweating profusely for the effort. He applauded like I’d worked the greatest magics while I took playful bows.

Eventually, he returned to the Wind Court with his lord and the rest of their group. Melisande turned to me once the flying fae were mere specs in the sky, and said, “Tell me about your man. I drew out the negotiations as long as possible to give you more time together.”

I blushed nearly as red as my hair. “That wasn’t necessary! We had many a friendly conversation, is all,” I protested.

“Please,” she scoffed. “He was completely enamored with you. And why wouldn’t he be? You’re pretty, intelligent, driven…and eligible.” She turned a knowing look over at me. “I give him a fortnight before he returns for you.”

And my friend, in all her wisdom, was right. I missed every silvery-blue curl on Ceridor’s head until I looked up two weeks later to find him in his customary spot leaning against my counter. “Good morning, lady alchemist. I seem to have misplaced something important.” He flashed a smile so warm, it was like the sun emerging from a bank of clouds and my heart doubled its beating.

I fumbled my tools with a clatter. I could barely think when he looked at me like that. “What thing might that be?” I asked.

He rounded the counter and approached my table, reaching up to skim his fingertips over my cheek. “My good sense, for choosing to leave rather than staying here with you,” he answered. He brought his lips to mine, and I melted into his kiss. I found my place in his arms was as logical as the flow of the elements.

Our union was soon secured with a handfasting, the ceremony performed before a mixed audience of fae and witches, a symbolic act between our different peoples. Melisande’s eyes welled with happy tears as she tied the cord and completed our marriage.

Ceridor’s wind lord cast the spell that marked my new husband’s arm to the elbow with a series of marks representing wind that I would later memorize by tracing them with my fingertips. The same spell gave me a single symbol that spanned the back of my hand, the upright triangle with a line through it that made the element of air.

I had never been happier, nor had my husband, who cupped my face and said permanent vows over me in the tongue of the Wind Court. He never translated, but I felt them in my marrow. He promised to be loyal, to always protect me, and to cherish me as his fated mate.

I made my vows too, tasting the mint at the back of my mouth that was the residue of the fae magic binding me to him in return. From that day forth, I wore a bracelet made of his magic, a stunning piece of jewelry that marked me as his.

Not even Morfran, uninvited and scowling at the back of the room, could dampen my spirits on that day.

Aodhnait grew to what she called a “respectable age” as more time passed. She did not incinerate into a pile of ash to start a new life, as she enjoyed her current one too much.

Melisande and her men welcomed more children, and I helped raise them as an aunt to the big group. I wanted one of my own, but despite quaffing an endless series of fertility tonics and potions, I never fell pregnant with a child. Ceridor held me tight in the night and promised that fae children were rare and hybrids, even more so. That didn’t stop us from trying vigorously and often.

It didn’t help that Ceridor spent chunks of time away at the Wind Court, serving as a part-time guard. He was allowed to leave to live with me because I was his fated mate, but he still had to return because of a fae deal sealed contract with his wind lord that wouldn’t be up for four more decades.

He would return to sweep me straight to bed, as the first thing he did when he finished the flight to Spells Hollow. Some men grew tired of their wives and their aging bodies, but my man’s intensity never dimmed. I was a satisfied woman each day he spent with me. I was his firefly, the Ver to his Cer, when we used such nicknames. I’d never realized love could feel so fulfilling before I had him in my life.

While he was away, I continued working on perfecting the balance of elements within me. Wind and water answered my whims more often now as I honed my magical symmetry and discovered more ways that I could brew unique potions to sell and use. But fire remained the domain of my familiar alone. I was a great success and yet, also a grand failure at the one thing I had originally wanted.

“I should be content with what I have,” I told Aodhnait one fateful day, when my magic rebounded painfully back into my chest while I attempted to turn earth to fire through the most complicated array I’d made yet. It’d fallen to pieces on the table as soon as the spell failed.

“If you want fire, I can supply it for you,” the phoenix offered.

As frustrating as it was to behold the broken array, I was a woman grown now and wouldn’t cry over yet another sign that I had found the limits of my body. I was a woman of the sciences, and I understood trial and error.

I was taking notes on this failure when the door to my shop banged. I turned, eyebrows lifting in surprise when I saw Morfran standing on the other side of the counter. I’d made my dislike of him no secret and sneered at his audacity at visiting my shop. “Do you need something?” I asked, lips flattening. If only Ceridor were back. He was due to return from his job any day now.

“I smell the sulfur of another attempt at making fire.” His tone was low and cold as his gaze slipped past me to my shattered array. “What if I told you I know a secret that will make you a flame wielder?”

“I would tell you I’m not interested in your secrets,” I scoffed.

He tilted his head. “What have I done to make you so standoffish?”

“I may smell of sulfur, but you have the stench of black magic upon you.” I accused, gesturing for him to leave my shop. He stood there, staring at me unblinking for long enough that it was uncomfortable. Unnerved, I continued, “I do not work with corrupted witches. Plus, you’re always sniffing around Melisande’s skirts like you belong with her. My friend has told you no countless times, and despite my insistence, you’re still here and welcome in her town.”

“To think you pleasure your husband with that tongue,” he remarked. “No wonder he is gone a third of each year.”

I smacked my lips in offense. “Leave,” I said, pointing at the door.

“Not until I’m done with you.” He flicked his wrist, shooting out a globe of black magic. It exploded outward when it hit me square in the chest, becoming tight strands that bound my limbs to my body and splashed over to ensnare a screeching Aodhnait. She lit herself on fire and pecked at the magic, to no avail, while I squirmed like a worm on a hook, screaming uselessly while a strand bound itself over my mouth.

“You see, I have tired of waiting for Melisande,” he continued like nothing was amiss. “Spells Hollow will know my wrath, starting with those the high priestess loves most. Her spawn are already dealt with.”

I screamed louder, nearly breaking my vocal cords as I struggled to escape his magic and the terrible implications of what he was saying. My writhing ended as I tipped over, falling on my side with no way of getting up with how tightly I was bound.

“Now, her lovers and friends. Don’t worry, though. You will live.” He loomed over me, weaving magic between his fingers. “One member of every family has to live to suffer the consequences. Generations to come will remember my name, through curses of my design. I’ve decided to fulfill your greatest wish with your curse.”

He held out a hand and a thick pulse of magic surrounded Aodhnait, who released a single protesting squawk before going limp. “I curse you, Verity Carmine, to share your body with this being of fire. You will neither live nor die, but you will forget who you are until you are a dazed, broken shell wishing for an end that will never come.”

With one shove of black magic, he pushed my familiar into my chest and tears rolled down my face as I was wracked with white-hot agony. I bent in unnatural angles in the restraints, whispering one word, “Why?”

He regarded me with icy hatred, spitting his response, “I know you’re the one who’s been trying to have me banished. You’ve poured poison in Melisande’s ear, and for that, I hope you remember one thing: what happens next to those who live here is blood on your hands.”

He turned and left my shop, the door closing with a bang. I blacked out from the onslaught of pain inside of me, coming in and out of consciousness until my eyes opened to pitch black nighttime.

My senses returned suddenly. The floorboards around my body were intact in a perfect circle, but the rest of my shop and home were blackened with rising flames. They poured out of me with every heartbeat and there was screaming…I wasn’t the only one shouting, though mine came from the agony in my chest and the uncontrollable magic that threatened to burn me from the inside out.

Morfran’s magic had melted to a sticky mess, so I could stand…except the pain was too great. I dragged my body through the burning shop and abandoned everything to the flames. My fire had spread past the house, which collapsed behind me once my legs reached the already ruined grass.

Everything I could see was lit on fire. People fled in all directions, trying to escape the fire and the black magic rising from the ground itself. It stunk of Morfran’s influence, the blackest of curses seeping in and ruining the sacred land of the hollow.

My horror shifted with my awareness. Even I was burning. My skin charred, licked by overzealous flames which leaped to consume anything living. Despite that, I still called into the night in blind panic. “Melisande!” Not knowing she was already slain.

And, “Royce!” Not realizing he had died with her.

Then, finally, to the only force that could save me. “Ceridor!”

The pain had nearly stopped, and my lungs filled with smoke. Still, I called to the three people who meant something to me until all I could do was cough and wait for the end to come.

Ceridor arrived ahead of the dawn with all the wrath of an avenging angel, descending from the sky and putting out swaths of flames with a wave of his hand. He kneeled by my side and turned me, his face going slack with horror at what he saw. “Firefly, no,” he whispered.

“The…child…ren…” I croaked. “Mor…fran…cursed…”

“Shh. Save your strength,” he said. Tears made his eyes into mercury. “I will fly you to New Amsterdam. I’ll find you a healer.”

He shrugged off his cloak and cradled me in it. I closed my swollen eyes. The breeze licked the raw wounds over my body as we took to the sky, weightless with his wind magic. I tried to tell him along the way that I was cursed, that Aodhnait was somehow inside of me now. That I was the one who started the fire and undoubtedly killed several innocents in the blaze.

And the children. Morfran had murdered the children.

Who knew how much Ceridor took from my dry, broken whispers. I died for the first time under the light of another blood moon, burning to death in an unfamiliar bed. The physician survived the resulting blaze and picked up the newborn baby reborn in the ashes. “How peculiar,” he’d murmured, before taking the baby home to his wife, who was glad to raise another child as her own.

The memories continued in a more broken sequence as I died a little more each time I lost control of my magic. The worst section was when I was presented to a dragon shifter a century later, who wanted Aodhnait’s magic to bring back his mother after her untimely death.

“We all have things we want,” I’d snarked at what would become the first leader of the Fire Brotherhood. At the hands of him and his underlings, I died countless times in their varied attempts to extract Aodhnait from my body.

It took one compassionate woman, who’d tired of participating in the cruelty, to smuggle me out. But by then, it was too late, and Verity was gone. I was Nix from that life onward, a shell, just as Morfran had intended.

But instead of remembering my part in the ruin of Spells Hollow, as he’d wanted, I had my time with the fire bros as a scar on my soul and one mission left intact in my heart: to reach Seattle, the closest human city to the Wind Court and my fae husband.

I felt myself emerging from the darkness of the past. The ghost of my brother was nothing more than a presence now as the red light of the super blood moon before me waned. “Return to Spells Hollow. Use what you remember to break your curse and set us free…” he whispered, just a voice in my mind that faded on the wind.

“Wait,” I whispered in the here and now. “Don’t leave me. Royce!”