“Leave,” Samara said again. “I sensed the dark magic within you, and I will not let you contaminate my home with it.”
“Dark magic? I . . . I have magic, magic I don’t completely understand, but I would never harm anyone!”
“Leave!” she screamed, snatching the obsidian blade off the table and storming toward him.
Magnus moved between them.
“Don’t you dare,” he growled at the woman. “Whatever you may think you saw has no bearing on my visit here. You’re the one who insisted on telling our fortunes, witch. You told them. And now I need you to do what I came here for.” He nodded at Maddox. “Wait outside.”
Maddox didn’t argue this time. He left, closing the door behind him.
Samara trembled from head to toe. “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” she whispered. “A darkness spreading out like black wings to cover the world in its entirety. A feeling of loss, of emptiness . . . of destruction. That boy . . . that boy is a demon.”
Magnus knew many superstitious people, from the high priest who led the weekly prayers at the palace temple to kitchen maids who wore silver amulets against evil around their necks. Even his mother, Queen Althea, wore a gold ring she felt brought good luck and fortune to her life.
Considering the woman had been married to the cold and brutal King Gaius, Magnus thought she’d begun wearing such a ring far too late.
His mother believed in demons, but Magnus did not. And even if he did, Maddox Corso certainly wasn’t one of them.
“Do you want me to return to the old woman and tell her you failed?” he asked softly, hoping to coax action from this witch with such a threat. “What do you suppose might happen then?”
Her gaze snapped to his. “You don’t have enough magic yet to return.”
Didn’t he? The thought was alarming, but the old woman had warned that if he failed he would never return. “Do you know that for sure?” he bluffed.
The color drained from her beautiful face. “Do you even know what I’m about to do?”
“No. And I don’t care. I just want you to do it.”
Samara stared down at the obsidian blade. “I am her slave, you know. I exist only to do this one task for her. I can’t use my magic for anything else. Once, I was the most powerful witch in all of Mytica. Now, I am a courtesan who hides under another name, another identity, so the goddess can’t find me.”
“Valoria,” he said, still stunned to use the name in such a context.
She nodded, searching his face. Magnus could tell she was looking for answers he didn’t possess. “Valoria was jealous of me—jealous of any witch with strong elementia. I was sentenced to death, but that woman—that old woman who sent you here—she sent another to help rescue me just in time. Now I must do as she asks until the day I no longer have any magic left to give to her. And that is the day I will die.”
Magnus didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to feel badly for someone he didn’t know, someone who had lived a thousand years before he’d even been born.
Yet there was so much pain in her voice as she told this short tale to him. Her story pulled at something deep within him.
“I’m sorry . . .” he began, not sure what to say.
Samara shook her head. “We’re all trapped in lives we didn’t choose, aren’t we? There is no escape. Not for you, not for me, not for anyone.”
He shook his head, feeling his cheeks grow warm as frustration rose up inside of him. “I’m not sure I believe that.”
“You’re young.” She nodded with understanding. “You’ll learn.”
“It’s a lesson I don’t want to learn.”
“Only a fool refuses to accept reality.”
No, she was wrong. Magnus could change his life completely if he wanted to and leave his memories of his father far behind him. He could run away and not look back, like he’d urged Maddox to do.
Life was a series of choices—conscious choices—that defined one’s life.
Even by not making a choice, one was still choosing.
However, this woman either didn’t realize that or didn’t believe in such a possibility.
Samara sat down at the table again and held the obsidian blade in her hands, raising it like an offering. She closed her eyes.
And then Magnus felt . . . something. A stirring in the air, similar to the unrest before the coming of a storm, one that raised the hair on his arms.
His heart pounded as he watched the witch summon her magic, the black shard she held beginning to glow with amber light.
“Don’t get too close,” she said, “or I may accidentally heal that wound on your hand. Without that, you won’t be able to return.”
Magnus moved away from her until his back pressed up against the door, and he watched with disbelief as her face began to change. Her beauty faded, her dark hair becoming gray and brittle. Wrinkles snaked across her face like cracks in dry earth. Her back became hunched, her cheeks gaunt.
Finally, the glow ebbed away, and she opened her eyes, now a faded blue.
“It is done,” she said.