I left my home behind, my family, my closest allies, and my friends, all despite the tight watch they’d put on me after I ran off to be with Jade the first time. They hadn’t wanted me to run off a second time when I’d just come back, but I wouldn’t be stopped this time either. I’d only returned to see if they had heard any news of her. They hadn’t, so I left.

Soaring over, across land and sea, as fast as I could, I followed the trail she left behind.

A note, with a time and place.

She never showed.

I went to the witches. And, I learned she’d been taken west… all the way to the coast of the Western Territories.

And it led me here.

I set my feet down on this new ground. I’d never been here before – never had a need to be here. It felt different from home, different from the land of the witches too. Despite that, before much time passed, I was staring down at the castle.

It really didn’t look like much, but it was new. All bright and shiny, no obvious signs of wear and tear on it yet.

Nothing like the home in which I grew up.

So, this was the castle that Alpha Norcell chose as his home? I’d heard about it, despite the distance between our lands, and the overwhelming difference between our kinds.

Again, it… looked small compared to the palaces I’d seen… even the one I lived in as a kid which was at least fifteen times smaller than the main house.

Traversing down to what looked like a side door, I snuck in.

Their security was lacking… or, as I realized one step in, at the silence despite the hour of day, was everyone just gone?

There was nobody here.

No voices, no whispers.

I raced down the hallways, one after another, all of them different, until I smelled it. I skidded to a stop on instinct, my head whipping back around to find the source.

Jade.

Jade had been here.

I spun back around and shoved the door open.

It was a room.

I sniffed the air.

It smelled like witches too… that is, their magic, their spells. There had been one in this room.

From what I could sense, this wasn’t Jade’s work. No, instead of being the caster, she’d been trapped here from it. They hadn’t quite cleaned up yet, as there was a cot in the corner, and a blanket that wouldn’t have even completely covered her unless she curled up into a ball.

Rage was red hot in my veins as I looked around the small, simple room.

They’d trapped her here.

They…

I let the fury fizzle out in me.

She had to have left a message.

That’s the kind of person she was.

When we’d spent all those peaceful days together, I’d ended up with a whole box of little notes from her. She’d just leave them anywhere and everywhere. Some were long and coded, others were just a sentence. Different languages, different methods, all full of the same thing… her and her ever growing feelings for anything and everything around her.

And…

For me.

She wouldn’t just be able to disappear into thin air.

I scoured the room with my eyes, looking for any trace, any note that might help me figure out where they went.

But she had to be here… she had to have–

Left something behind…

My eyes landed on the bookshelf. I rushed over, my breath catching in my throat.

Because Jade was never the type to vanish without leaving a trace.

I felt along the side, feeling the characters and letters carved into the wood with my fingertips. They were small, but it was her. She’d made them, left them there secretly, probably for me to find.

‘Behind. Right. Two. Opposite.’

And she wasn’t without a riddle or trick either.

I couldn’t help but smile at those strange directions.

If I was reading it from top to bottom…

Opposite was bottom to top.

Two – was the second shelf.

Right became left.

Behind.

Behind?

There was an extra mark next to behind.

Like it didn’t apply to the opposite rule.

It didn’t apply…

I squatted down next to the bookcase, at the place where the second shelf was when going up from the bottom, and stretched as far as I could to the wall behind it. There was a small gap there.

My fingers brushed against something. A ribbon.

I pulled on it and out came a…

A journal.

Her…

I flipped through the pages quickly, coming across numerous entries. Moments I remembered sharing with her…

She’d had this with her all the time. I’d – I was the one who bought it for her. My fingers caressed the cover like a lost friend as the pages of words went by. I had watched her write in here with a joke and a grin…

It felt like so long ago already. It felt like hundreds of years had passed since I saw her face.

I stopped on the last page with her handwriting, a chill in my soul as I scanned the thoughts she’d written out there. The words she’d written… in such great contrast to her beautiful lettering. I looked through the pages that came before it in a panic.

No…

My gaze stopped on a name.

Returning the journal to the same spot, hearing voices for the first time, coming closer, I ran from the room. I sprinted down the hallways, hearing shouts of surprise following me as I went.

So, there were people here.

It didn’t matter anymore.

I was not going to be stopped. By anyone or anything.

Not even as I raced out the front door.

I didn’t care anymore.

Then, suddenly, someone appeared in my path.

Magic.

I bumped into her, but shook my head, moving by.

I wasn’t going to let any of them get to me before I reached her. Not after what they’d done.

“Pardon me, but I have no time to apologize to you,” I said as I passed her.

“You’re looking for Jade.”

I stopped in my tracks, frozen by the name I’d heard.

“Aren’t you?” the feminine voice called out to me again. She sounded young. “I know where she is.”

Slowly, I faced her, unsure of what I was supposed to see from her now. A grin? A sparkle in her eyes? An outstretched hand reaching for me, pulling me along with just one name?

She wore none of those.

Her eyes were full of guilt, her mouth a grimace of pain, her hands – as small as they seemed to be – were clenched in fists.

If this wasn’t some kind of deception… then she really knew where Jade was. And she felt… at fault.

“Where is she?”

“I’ll take you there.”

Now she outstretched her hand. I narrowed my gaze at her, conflicted.

“I don’t know if I can trust you,” I bit out.

“Understandable.” She shrugged. “After what they’ve started, the number of people I can trust is dwindling. Fast.” Her eyes seemed to burn like fire as she continued speaking to me. “But I trust Jade. I’m hoping… I can trust you.”

The number of people she can trust?

If she was a witch, she was one of them. They didn’t rely on trust. It was loyalty. And this one – this witch – she didn’t agree with something they’d done.

She trusted Jade?

Why?

I couldn’t hold the question on my tongue.

“Who are you?”

“Ashena Porter.”

“Porter…” I paused. Jade… one of the entries that said Porter was trying to help her. Was this the very one? Did I dare… I reached my hand out to hers, preparing for some kind of backstabbing to occur. An ambush. A cruel surprise. Something built for my demise. Still, I took her hand in mine with a nod. “Take me to her.”

She formally bowed her head to me, with the customs I was attuned to, before magic engulfed us. I squeezed my eyes shut only to open them when I smelled smoke. We weren’t in the same place. She’d teleported us to a cliff overlooking…

I took a step closer to the edge, even as fear tried to anchor me down.

My heart hammered in my chest painfully at the sight before us.

Terror gripped me, but it wasn’t for me. It was for her.

There was blood.

Bodies.

Roars and cries reached all the way up to this secluded spot.

From this distance, I could see their shaking hands.

The pain as they limped away, barely keeping their lives before the next wave hit them.

There was a wolf down there.

And witches.

I’d have laughed at their expressions had it been any other kind of moment. I knew Jade would’ve joined me in that, in finding witches fearful from their own creation… she’d laugh and say I told you so. She’d tell them not to play with fire when they had no water to extinguish the growing flames… but here, now, it was at her expense. For once – for the very first time, they actually looked scared by what they were seeing. By what they had done. And so was I.

How could they do this?

The witches…

They weren’t just scared. No. They were far beyond scared.

What a rare sight.

But I couldn’t laugh as I gazed down at the limp bodies on the ground, staining the grass red, pooling in puddles on dirt patches. Blood soaking into the ground. They didn’t breathe. They didn’t live.

They were – all of the ones who lay on the ground – dead.

“What… what have you all done?”

Next to me, Ashena looked off to the side, away from the scene, tears in her eyes. I could see the guilt. The regret lingering in every fiber of her being. But I also saw the determination to try and save this, to fix this, even before she said a word.

“Nothing can make up for the role I’ve played in this. But… can you stop her?”

She wasn’t meaning her. She was meaning this scene. She was meaning the one truly behind it all, the one without a shred of fear, just looking on with boredom as precious irreplaceable lives perished before her eyes.

The one truly responsible for such bloodshed and tragedy.

Atella.

The High Witch.

“Yes,” I told her, without a shred of doubt. I would do that. It would be my revenge against her, and then, when it was done, the price would be plenty paid. “And I’ll bring Jade back while I’m at it.”

I leapt off the cliff without another word, not waiting for the go-ahead from Ashena. She wasn’t in charge of me. Though, I supposed, when all was said and done, and we all lived to tell the tale, thanks were in order for her. Thanks were in order no matter if one of us didn’t make it out. Just so long as this ended. Here. Now. Forever.

The wind whipped around me as I dove down. Nature itself seemed to scream louder as I moved closer.

The girl I knew wouldn’t do this. They’d done something to her. They did this to us. We were their pawns. We always had been.

But I wasn’t going to play their game anymore.

I was going to end it.

It would be the checkmate of chess.

I landed in front of her, containing the shock from the high distance within my body so I didn’t simply keep falling. Stepping out of the small crater I made in the red stained mud, I stretched up a hand toward her.

“Don’t.”

In response to my voice and presence, her body stilled, a small exhale taking the place of a large one. And then a sniff and a tilt of her head. Something in me felt relieved. This wasn’t too far gone to return… I could fix this. I couldn’t return the lives lost, but I could help those which remained.

“What is this?”

I heard the voice, coming from off to the side. She was upset? Upset I ruined her little game? Upset I was minimizing the damage she’d cause all of us?

Just what had we all done to incur her wrath?

What had we ever done that was so wrong?

Run away together?

Love each other?

Tried to carve our own path for our lives?

Hah.

It was no matter.

Nothing she said now could ever fix this.

Nothing she said would ever be enough.

Because she was wrong to do this.

She was wrong to believe this path right. The path of slaughtering innocents, no matter the age, race, background, or actions of the past could ever be justified.

“You’ve done something unforgivable, Atella,” I snarled her way.

I shifted into my other form, feeling the change in my bones, the strength in my muscles. I was seething with rage on Jade’s behalf. I was furious with what she’d made us go through, an arranged marriage, and everything that followed… but this?

This was a wildfire in my bones.

If Jade would wake from this, she might never forgive herself.

And you’ll pay for that, Atella.

You will be the one to pay for these crimes.

By my hand.

If it was by death, then so be it…

Let me be the monster to lay you to rest.