Chapter 47

Chapter 47

W ith her new powers, Fey felt her hunger return with a vengeance. Alice left to get more food and have her hands tended to, and while she was gone Fey couldn't help but call her powers again.

Water came even easier than before. Stronger, too. It filled her not like a rushing river, but like an ocean. An endless sea roiling inside her, so deep she thought she might never touch the bottom.

Air felt just the same as before, though. A soft, gentle power that she called and dismissed.

Earth was difficult, and though the element responded to her, it felt distant, harder. Like a language she had to concentrate to understand.

And Fire?

Calling Fire was as easy as breathing.

How have I lived without this , Fey wondered, watching flames dance from fingertip to fingertip at her command.

No wonder she couldn't heal, couldn't use her primary power the way it was intended, she realized. Was this her real power? Her whole life she'd felt out of place, just as Alice had said. She had been forced to reshape Water to be a weapon… was it all because of this ? Because of something that had been taken from her? A power that was made just for her, that had been stolen away before she ever knew that she had it?

Fey heard Alice's footsteps on the stairs and advance across the basement, and she dismissed her power, letting the flames disappear into nothing.

"Don't stop on my account," Alice said, appearing with a grin. Her arms were loaded with food, and Fey's stomach growled loudly at the sight of it all.

"You need to eat," Alice warned. "That power has to come from somewhere, and if you're not careful you'll lose all those muscles you've worked so hard to get in training."

Fey nodded, thinking about the Med Witch who had said something similar, and took a plate from her sister. Alice set the rest down around them and grabbed an orange for herself, peeling it slowly, removing the skin carefully in one long strip.

I forgot she did that, Fey realized, and remembering it made her smile. Alice, eating oranges in the kitchen, Merle swatting at the peel from the floor as it grew longer and longer.

"So," Alice began. "How much Allium did the White Priestesses give you during your Awakening?"

"That was Allium?" Fey asked.

Alice popped an orange fragment in her mouth. "The silver elixir they gave you to drink? Yeah. That was Allium, all right."

Her nightmares reared in the back of her mind, and Fey shook them away. Maybe they weren't nightmares, after all, she realized. Maybe a warning, from something. From the Goddess herself, even.

"Do you remember how much the Priestess gave you?"

"Yeah," Fey answered. The food was delicious, but she barely tasted it, she was eating so fast. She swallowed. "She filled two goblets and made me drink it all."

Alice whistled through her teeth. "Two full goblets? Fuck the Goddess, you might be even stronger than I'd hoped, Fey. They must have been terrified of you." She chuckled.

"Why did they do it?" Fey asked, her voice small. Hurt.

Alice shrugged. "Control, is my bet. The royal family is only in power because they were blessed by the Goddess with control over all four elements, right? But what if, over time, the Goddess's blessings outside of the royal line became even more powerful? What if Witches all around the realm were becoming stronger, not weaker, over the years?"

Alice motioned toward Fey with an orange slice before popping it into her mouth. "You're a walking threat to the throne. Not because you could kill the Queen, though you obviously could, if what you did earlier is any indication. But your real threat, Fey, is what you represent . A stronger Witch, Goddess blessed with all four elements, and not of the royal family line. Your very existence is a direct challenge to the Queen's legitimacy."

Fey's stomach sank.

"How many Witches like me are out there?" she asked.

Again, Alice shrugged. "Who knows? Could be ten. Could be a hundred. Or it could just be you." She chewed her orange thoughtfully and said, "You're the first we've given the antidote to, though. The first one who received Allium during their Awakening. Most Witches weren't strong enough to be given any. Maybe one in twenty, as best as we can tell."

"Were you?" Fey asked.

Alice shook her head. "No," she admitted. "No, and I was one of the first to take the antidote, just as a test, but it didn't do anything to me. The Witches who were given Allium weren't picked at random, either. The Priestesses are looking for something. All those rituals, all the cards and bones, they're assessing our power, somehow."

Fey remembered the old Priestess, the way she had scrutinized her, tested her. Spent seemingly far longer with her than the other Witches who had been there that day.

"When they find someone that they deem too strong? They use the Allium to dull their powers, cutting off their connection to certain elements. And they've been doing it for generations. Taking our young girls and ripping their birthrights from them, just to maintain the Crown. Just to convince us all that the Goddess chose their line to rule over everyone."

Fey felt sick. Thousands of girls throughout the realm, every year, were sent to the Goddess Temples. How many of them were neutered like she was? Made lesser, more insignificant, all to maintain the status quo?

"How did you find out about this?" Fey asked, stunned. "How did you uncover any of this?"

Alice stared at her for a long moment, assessing.

"You," she said, finally. "Or, you were the first piece to the puzzle, I guess." She set her orange aside. "It was something you mentioned when you were inducted into the Blades, years ago. I brought you a healing elixir for your sigils, do you remember?"

Fey nodded.

"Dameon must have assumed you would make one for yourself, being a Water Witch, but I saw you the next day and you weren't healing fast enough, and you clearly hadn't taken anything for it."

Fey remembered.

"So, I brought you one, from our own stock in the training gym. And you know what you told me? You told me it tasted awful." Alice laughed.

"It did," Fey said. "Like garbage water. It was foul."

"Yeah, so you said… But do you remember what you told me next?"

Fey shook her head.

"‘It tastes like garbage water,'" Alice quoted. "‘But it's not half as bad as the shit they give you during your Awakening.'"

Alice stared at her, unblinking. "That stuck with me, Fey. Not just what you said, but the way you said it. It was such an offhand comment, like you were talking about some universal experience that everyone goes through. But they never gave me anything to drink at my Awakening, Fey. And I'd never heard any other Witch mention it before.

"So, I started asking around, just out of curiosity, at first. And everyone I spoke to had the same experience as me. They had never been made to drink anything. But then I mentioned it to Joy."

Fey's heart skipped a beat. No. Not Joy. They couldn't…

"Joy drank the elixir at her Awakening, too, Fey. Said it was the worst thing she'd ever tasted."

Joy. Joy who could command Air better than any Witch in history. Joy had her power taken from her. Reduced. Anger burned bright and hot in Fey's stomach at the thought that someone could have done that to her sister, could have taken something so special that was meant to be hers.

"I asked more people, and over time I found more Witches. Witches who'd been given something to drink at their Awakening, or who'd known someone who had. No one knew what it was, though, and no one knew why it was only given to some of them."

"I thought it was to unlock my primary," Fey whispered.

"So did a lot of them," Alice replied, her tone gentle. "I even went to the head of the Water Coven to ask her about it. I know, I know," Alice laughed when Fey immediately made a face. "You don't like her. And I don't blame you, believe me. Sana can be an uptight twat, and no one is denying that. But I figured if anyone would know what the elixir these Witches were given was, it would be her, right?"

Fey agreed, but Alice shook her head back and forth. "Except she had no idea what I was even talking about. She said that the Awakening ceremonies were handled entirely by the White Priestesses, and she'd never made a single elixir for them over the years. Not one. And she couldn't identify it for me based on my description, either.

"But… she said something as I was leaving. I don't even think she thought about it, not really. But it was about the color. She said she'd never even heard of a silver elixir… So, I started to think… what if it's not an elixir at all?

"And that's what I found when I broke into a Temple and stole some."

Fey choked. "You broke into a Temple of the Goddess?"

Alice shrugged the comment off as though it was nothing. "It wasn't the last time, either. Not the one in the city, obviously. Too many people, too much risk. I went to one in the second octant, miles from here. And inside I found the ‘elixir' they'd given to you. Given Joy. And I took a few bottles."

Something clicked inside Fey. "And you gave them to a chemist… Someone who would recognize it if it wasn't an elixir, someone who was an expert in poisons. You gave it to Phillip Danvers."

Alice's smile was genuine and a little proud. "Well done, babe. Yeah. That's exactly what I did. "

"That's what he told you, when you met him at the club, wasn't it? He told you it wasn't an elixir; it was a poison."

Alice nodded. "A poison he already knew, could already identify just by sight—one they used to use to cut Witches off from their power when they were sentenced by the Crown. One that used to be used on Blood Witches."

Fey felt like she might be sick.

"But they stopped that practice years ago, Fey. And do you want to know why?"

"Because someone made an antidote," Fey answered, her voice sounding far away. Willow had told them that, hadn't she? She'd read it in one of Lilith's books on poisons.

"Yeah…because someone made an antidote," Alice said. "A gold-colored antidote that cleared all the Allium from your system, almost instantly."

"Phillip told you all of this?"

Alice nodded. "He did. And he even gave me instructions for making it. That's what I've been doing here, Fey. That's what all of this space is for. I've been trying to make enough antidote for every affected Witch in the realm, enough that Phillip says will guarantee they'll all be cured."

Fey swallowed, struggling with how to break the news. "He's dead, Alice," she said, softly. "Phillip Danvers was killed a few weeks ago."

Alice swallowed. "I… I figured he might be. We lost contact with him, but we'd hoped…Was it you?"

Fey shook her head. "No. But it was one of us. Dameon gave the order."

Alice nodded, understanding. "I don't think Phillip understood the danger of what he was getting involved with. Of any of it. Neither did I, not really, until that night when he gave me his findings, and I realized what was happening. Realized what it meant."

"The night you faked your death?"

"I had to," Alice insisted. "Fey… there's no way the Queen doesn't know about this, no way she didn't sanction this. Her own twin is the head of the White Coven. They are purposefully cutting Witches off from their gifts. All to keep themselves in power. And if Dameon sent a Blade to kill Phillip, if he sent you to burn down my warehouse, they must know that someone is on to them, someone is trying to fight them. They know it's only a matter of time, and they'll get more desperate and more dangerous to keep this from getting out."

Fire roared in Fey's veins, as though in response to the challenge Dameon and the Queen posed. She could have gone her whole life without knowing this part of herself, Fey realized. Gone her entire life missing such a vital part of her, a gift entrusted to her by the Goddess herself.

"So… what now?" Fey asked, giving in to the rage that flared inside her.

"Now you know the truth. And I can unlock your shackle and let you go if you still want to. But if not? If you want to help?" Alice's smile was full of menace. "Then we're going to make them pay for what they've done."

Fey considered it. Considered what they'd taken from her. From Joy.

"Unlock me," she told Alice. "And I'll help you however I can."

Alice's smile widened. "You and I are going to take down an empire, babe, and with you by my side, there's nothing any of them can do to stop us."