Ari pulls on my arm, her fingers gripping around my elbow. “I’ve never seen so many people.”
I grimace as I cast my eyes around the newcomers clad in crimson robes, to signify the upcoming Harvest. Dressing up like sacrifices is one thing, but some even have red paint slathered over their shoulders and faces, representing the blood that will be spilled.
“A travesty,” I state.
“It’s also quite beautiful,” Ari counters.
The people are as eccentric as the items on their tables, many wearing masks fashioned from clay or plaster, decorated with silver leaves, crow feathers, and the flowers of the Night Evedelain plant. I wonder if they realize the rose heads they have torn from their stems induce insanity when properly crushed. They are beautifully arranged around the mask’s edges, the layers of blood-red petals slowly turning black the closer they get to the midpoint.
Located in the center of the square, where we normally barter with local farmers and bakers, stand tall, pointed tents decorated with paints depicting the scales of the shadow viper, and the sigil of the God of Death.
He is everywhere—his symbol embroidered into people’s tunics, and painted on their bare arms, his likeness forged in stone effigies, and depicted on canvases. He is ethereal, with flowing silver hair, and predatorial eyes glistening like stars. Even those who are not in his coven worship him this week.
Not me. I grimace as his essence surrounds me, surfacing a painful reminder of the magic I harbor. Arabella’s hand tightens around mine, her grip conveying a silent comfort as I am transported back to the night that changed my life forever.
Even now, seven years after the incident, I can still feel the icy tendrils of death as I remember that night—the pointless fighting and panic as I was dragged into the forest by the deadliest creature of them all: a Phovus. I shudder, recalling the shapeshifting shadow creature and how it first appeared in human form, its wide, yellow eyes resembling those of a cat. Then it morphed into a serpentine shape, made of darkness and mist, as if it were crafted from the essence of the night itself.
The sound of my bones snapping under the Phovus’ tight hold will forever be imprinted into my mind along with the relentless agony that followed and made me wish it would hurry and kill me. But I wasn’t so lucky.
As the creature’s final squeeze brought me to the brink of death, it was my best friend, Drake, who saved me. An illusion, born from his powers from the Goddess of Dreams, bathed the forest in a bright light, distracting the creature.
I’d waited sixteen years to find out which of the Goddess of Creation’s powers I would possess. When my magic presented itself for the first time, and the Phovus crumbled, falling like ash between my fingers, I realized I instead harbored one of the most dangerous powers possessed by the God of Death himself. Magic, that if discovered, will see me at the end of a rope.
The gods gifted witches many powers, but never their ethereal magic, and for Azkiel, his decay magic gives him the ability to kill anything with one touch.
My fingers pulse, as if my magic can sense my dark thoughts, and I quickly pull my hand from my sister’s.
“Get your hands on the Choosing’s list of volunteers,” a man’s voice rings out into the crowd, with a cart filled with rolled-up papers.
I grimace, shooting the man daggers through the crowd. My glare penetrates his aura enough that his eyes lift to meet mine.
“Don’t,” Ari warns as I step forward, gritting my teeth. Her hand lands on my arm, and she swings me toward a small booth.
“I wasn’t going to do anything,” I whisper as we stop in front of Eren’s table.
She shoots me an incredulous glare, and I smile.
Eren watches me as I lean over the stall. Her hands slam on the table between us, her over-shaped face etched with wrinkles, each a reminder of the irritation and stress from having witnessed seven Harvests.
“I’m not selling to ya,” she says, and sweeps her long, silver braid hanging below her stomach, over her shoulder.
I sigh, and I climb my eyes to meet hers. “Coward.”
Eren’s thin lips curve as she leans back, shaking her head when we both let out a clipped laugh. “Your father will have my head.”
I roll my eyes, then tug Arabella closer. “Hear that, Ari?”
I direct my words to my sister, whose eyes brim with anxiety as the night darkens and the blanket of stars glitters.
“He would never,” she snaps, then pulls her hand from mine, crossing her arms. “Excuse us, Eren. You have a uh… lovely display of… medicines?”
“Poisons,” Eren corrects, then smirks at me. “Suppose I should be grateful your father won’t allow his daughter to become a potioneer.” She points a long finger at me as my sister ushers us along. “Might put me out of business. Ya got talent, child.”
“See, Ari?” I tease. “Someone thinks it is a talent.”
“Goodnight, Eren,” my sister says, then pushes me toward the Weaver’s tents erected outside of the Grumpy Gurger Tavern. Once we’re out of earshot, her scent of vanilla and jasmine wafts towards me as she leans in and whispers, “Are you trying to get us in trouble?”
I shrug. “Eren’s harmless. I wasn’t actually going to buy any.”
“No,” Ari says, her full lips slanted. “But you would buy ingredients for your own collection.”
I swing the coin purse, then tuck it away inside the bosom of my dress, guildre and libren coins jingling inside. “It isn’t against our laws,” I point out.
“It isn’t,” she concedes, huddling closer, and pulling the hood of her dusky-purple cloak over her head, her golden curls tumbling down either side of her heart-shaped face. “However, it is frowned upon. Let us hurry, please. I want to see everything before Mother discovers we have snuck out.”
“She won’t check on me,” I say, casting a glance at Ari and gauging her reaction. She rolls her eyes. It is uncanny how she shares the strongest resemblance to our mother, with her golden hair and violet eyes, yet is nothing like her.
However, I look most like our father, with blue eyes and chestnut-brown hair, and according to Ari, I’m just as stubborn as he is. Our two youngest sisters are somewhere in the middle. Cecilia, the youngest, took on mother’s violet eyes, but father’s dark hair and sharp features while Emilia inherited Mother’s blonde waves, paired with her soft, dainty features.
I wiggle my fingers as the deadly magic threatens to surface again, and I shake my head, dispelling the thoughts of our mother, itching at the crevices of my mind.
“Look,” Ari squeaks from beside me, and I trail my gaze to the opening of the main area of the market, with erected wood pillars reaching twenty feet in the air, tapestried with a canopy of silver and blue, woven from the fabrics of those skilled in embroidery and animation magic. The dream magic pulsing through every thread dances in purples and blues.
My breath catches in my throat as we enter. I may hate everything about The Harvest, but the elders truly have put on quite a show.
“Father didn’t tell us it would be this spectacular,” Ari announces as we walk past hordes of witches, all coming from different covens, wearing the colors and sigils of their gods with pride.
“No,” I state, drawing Ari close. “He’s good at keeping secrets.”
