Page 88 of The Heartless One
Fortuna shrieked and backed toward the door only to realize that Sybil had locked it behind her. Without a word, Jessamine urged Elric’s shadows in this room to dim the light. The only thing illuminated by the candles was her dark figure sitting in the chair before Fortuna, deciding just what terrors she was going to face.
Her cousin went pale as snow. “Feeling better, I see.”
“Did you think that would be the last time you saw me?”
“I suspected it wouldn’t be. After all, it is very difficult to kill a thing without a soul.”
Jessamine gestured toward the other armchair. “Have a seat, Fortuna. We need to have a nice long chat.”
“I think I’ll be taking my leave. You can’t keep me here.” But then she froze at the sight of Sybil’s grinning face in the darkness.
Jessamine rarely had thought of her friend as a witch. Sybil, in the beginning, had seemed more like a creature from the sea. A siren with black-pearl skin and wild-woman hair, who had seen more of the world than Jessamine could ever dream. But in this moment, with the shadows clinging to her form and her eyes narrowed in sharpened hate, she could see the witch inside Sybil.
She might call herself a kitchen witch, but there were still knives in a kitchen, and Sybil knew how to use them better than anyone.
“Sit,” Sybil said, her voice low and filled with anger. “You dealt with a god last time, but forgive the poor dear, because he is still a man, and men are such flawed creatures. Now you deal with two witches, and we will be much harder to escape.”
“You forget I still have the blessing of my goddess on my side,” Fortuna hissed.
Jessamine breathed out a sigh. “I see no goddess here. You have the skin of a creature who was more powerful than you could ever hope to be, yes. That gives you some magic. But even the priestesses of old knew to fear the witches.”
“You have no power over me! Get out of this house, Jessamine, or I will banish you from it!”
Jessamine lifted a hand, feeling the shadows coil through her fingers like she held a snake in her grip. “No,” she murmured. “I don’t think you will.”
With the flick of a wrist, she let the shadows fly free and savored the sense of power that came with it. Coiling around her cousin, Elric’s shadow-snakes swiftly bound Fortuna’s arms behind her and dropped the woman into the chair. Jessamine noted a heady sensation and a ringing in her ears—this level of power was addicting and amazing and terrifying all at the same time. If she wanted to, she could really hurt someone.
And that gave her pause. She took a moment, allowing her eyes to roll back in her head as she reveled in the sensation before returning her gaze to Fortuna’s.
“I think you have forgotten what witches are,” she said quietly. “You think I am weak because I am not like you. You thought I was weak as a child because I saw use in those you did not. Your judgment of other people is your greatest weakness, Fortuna, and my greatest strength is that I see beyond what you do.”
“We are both just women seeking power.”
“I am nothing like you,” Jessamine replied. She let the words seep from her tongue and sink into her skin, where she knew they needed to be. She said the words to heal herself and all the past that still clung to her likesticky glue. “And I cannot express how happy it makes me to know that I willneverbe like you.”
Silence rang between them, a thousand words said all in an instant. She could see the fear in Fortuna’s expression, and the thoughts glinting past that sharpened mind. Fortuna would try to spin a tale now. She would try to appeal to Jessamine’s softer side, hoping to crack open some fissure of kindness that would let her go.
“I don’t want to let you go,” Jessamine said, her voice a little harder than before. “I don’t want to be kind to you right now. In case you missed it, I have been kind to you since the moment I stepped foot in this district. I sought you out, hoping that you were doing all of this without realizing who you had attached yourself to. I thought you were worth saving, Fortuna.”
“I am. I have to be. Because there is never anyone beyond saving—that’s what you used to say. You were always the better of the two of us. You saw so much more with that kind heart of yours. I was wrong, Jessa. I was so wrong, and I have given a dangerous, powerful man too much information. I am sorry for it.”
But those words dripped from a poisoned, desperate tongue.
Sybil leaned against the door, her arms crossed over her chest and her dark eyes narrowed. “Lies.”
“It’s not a lie, witch,” Fortuna snapped. “I do feel guilty.”
“You couldn’t feel guilt if you tried.Youwere the one who set the spell and cost all those people their lives and souls.Youinvited them.Youprovided your home.Youare the reason they are now dead.” Like a raven, Sybil cocked her head to the side. “Would you go back and change anything you did? Or do you, even now, still think you made the right choice?”
And there it was. The flicker of defiance in Fortuna’s gaze.
Jessamine sighed, then said in a bored voice, “You have one last chance. Tell me what he’s doing, Fortuna, or I will rip the memories out of you.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I can. I already have from others. Benji, your little accomplice. Callum, the man who guided you.” She leaned forward, her hand on Nyx’sback. She wanted Fortuna to look into her eyes and see madness in her own gaze as well. “And I will do it again.”
But Fortuna had never been easily frightened. Her cousin straightened her back on the bed, primly crossed her legs, and looked very much like she wasn’t tied up with shadows in her own safe house. “I will tell you nothing until I am unbound.”
