19. Chapter Nineteen

Crowe Manor loomed in front of me like a mansion out of a horror movie. Made of dark bricks, the building stood proudly on top of a hill, casting its long shadow over the village below. The grey sky made the place look even worse and my stomach knotted itself over and over again as I walked towards the front steps. The door opened as I approached it, the blood red panelling swinging inwards into the dark recess of the hallway beyond. I hated this place. Loathed it. I wanted to burn it to the ground and then bury its ashes somewhere no one would ever find it. There was something wrong with this place. It was old and twisted. Stained with the blood of the Crowe ancestors that had lived here. A handful of them were good, but most of them were like my father. Cruel leaders who enjoyed the pain of others.

“Good evening, Master Crowe,” Gideon said with perfect intonation. His tone was always the same. Neither happy nor sad, polite but not charming. He was the epitome of a butler; smartly dressed and always on top form.

“Is my father in?”

“The Arch Mage is in the library. He is waiting for you.”

Always the ‘Arch Mage’. Never Octavius or Master Crowe. What a pretentious prick.

“Thank you, Gideon.”

“I have prepared your rooms—”

“That won’t be necessary.” I wasn’t staying here any longer than necessary. I could already feel the walls closing in on me and I wanted to leave as soon as my conversation was over.

“Very good, sir.” Gideon bowed with a moderate flourish and then disappeared, leaving me alone in the entrance hall. My footsteps echoed as I walked to my father’s sanctuary. I hated the library. It was littered with memories of punishments. All those beatings and for what? So my father could feel more powerful? So he could shape me into his image?

Well, more fool him. I was nothing like him and it pissed him off that he couldn’t bend me over his knee anymore. That I was too big to be beaten. It didn’t stop the intrusive thoughts invading my mind or stop me from picking at the skin around my cuticles until they bled. I knocked on the large wooden door and then thrust my hands into my pockets so he wouldn’t see my anxious little habit.

“Enter,” came the smooth voice of my father.

I took a deep breath and crossed the threshold. Panic had my fingers trembling in my pockets with the effort to keep them still. Memories flooded my mind as I stepped deeper into the room.

The bookcase where I cracked my forehead.

The spot on the rug where I bled when I broke my nose.

The deep groove on the surface of my father’s desk where a knife went through my hand.

So many memories. So much pain.

So much hate.

I stood at the edge of the desk and waited for my father to finish whatever it was he was working on. Old habits had me stood regimentally still, my gaze fixed on the painting that hung on the wall behind my father. The scene depicted the great witch hunt in Salem with three witches being burnt alive. The consequences of ignorance and stupidity was what he’d say to me, and I never missed the implications of his words. Hard not to when they were always accompanied by something painful.

“Fenris, I’m disappointed.”

Well, that was not a great start to our conversation. “Why, father?”

“Are you really that much of an idiot?” His voice was bitter, and he looked at me with something tantamount to disgust.

“No. But I am always doing something to disappoint so my options are probably numerous.”

He scoffed. “My, we are in a provoking mood this evening, aren’t we? The wedding, you fool. Elissa has cancelled it.”

“Ah. That.”

“Yes, that. Care to explain?”

I swallowed, trying to buy myself more time to think of something suitable to say. Not that there would be anything suitable. I’d ruined his plans for the future and there was nothing I could say that was going to make that okay.

“We decided we would not suit.”

Bang.He stood up and slammed his fist on the desk. “Would not suit?” Bang. “Like that matters, boy. Like that has any bearing on a successful marriage. This wasn’t about you; it was about the future of mages.”

“With all due respect, father—”

“Respect?! Where was your respect when you called the wedding off? Where was your respect when you flounced around with that whore who has more than enough men wrapped around her disgusting fingers that she didn’t need you to—”

I saw fucking red. I threw a blast of wind at him so hard I propelled him into that stupid fucking painting and pinned him there.

“That’s enough,” I growled.

“Put me down this instant.”

“No,” I yelled. “Lori Monroe is the most amazing woman I have ever met, and I will not let you sully that.”

He laughed, the sound a wheeze as he tried to breathe through the pressure that I was putting on his chest. “You’re a fool. She doesn’t love you. No one loves you.”

That wasn’t true. I knew it wasn’t true. I had felt love. I had memories of my mother and her love for me before she had died. And I knew Lori loved me. I could see it in her eyes every time she looked at me. I know we hadn’t even kissed, but, as soon as I got back to base, I was going change that. “You’re wrong.”

“You’re weak and pathetic.”

“Really?” I asked with a grin. “Then why are you still pinned beneath my power?”

His smile dropped and, for the first time in my life, I saw a flicker of fear darken my father’s eyes.

“I can feel it, you know. Your magic. Like a fly buzzing around an elephant. Inconsequential.”

“Let me go, Fenris.”

“Feeling vulnerable?”

“No,” he said, spittle flying out his mouth. He looked ridiculous, pinned against that painting he loved. Like an angry pissed off badger.

“What do you know about the Wanderers?”

He barked a laugh. “What do you want to know about those doddering old fools?”

“I came across some limbs bearing their marks.”

“What?”

“They’re the ones stealing witches.”

“Impossible.”

That piqued my interest. “Why?”

“Because I exiled them a decade ago.”

I was stunned into silence. What the hell—

A pulse of electricity hit me square in the chest. Fuck that hurt.

I dropped my magic and my father fell to a heap on the floor, laughing as he tried to regain his footing.

I threw a ball of lightning back at him, knocking him back down to the floor.

Still, he laughed. “So predictable. So pathetic.”

A blast of air hit the back of my knee and I stumbled to the ground.

“Come on, boy. Is that all you’ve got?”

Lightning cracked through the room, loud and sharp, as I channelled it towards him. He dodged and rolled, and I scorched nothing but the carpet and some of his precious books.

He hurled shards of ice at me. I managed to miss most of them, but one sliced my cheek and one caught the inside of my thigh. That one stung like a motherfucker.

“Perhaps you need more lessons?” he sneered. “You never were any good at combat. I thought being part of the Elite would have improved that.”

I launched a fire ball, catching his shoulder and enjoying his shout of pain.

“You should just give up. Like your mother did.”

I froze. His words barely registering.

He used that to his advantage, hammering me with everything he could think of. I threw up a shield, but he knew how to beat me. He’d been doing it for years. It wasn’t long before my knees faltered, and I gave him the opening he was looking for.

Pain radiated across my cheek as he hit me. I fell to the ground and his foot found my ribs. Over and over again.

He was right, I was pathetic. I deserved this.

I should get up.

I tried to roll over, to get my knees under me, but he stomped on my back.

“I thought you’d be stronger without your mother there to coddle you. But you’re not. You’re just like her.” Another kick. “Soft.”

He fisted his hand into my hair and pulled me to my knees. Another punch to my face. A crunch as he broke my nose. Blood poured down my chin and I felt pain everywhere. It would all be over soon.

My eyes closed, my body succumbing to the pain my father inflicted.

A slap to my cheek brought the world back into focus.

“Do you want to know what her last words were?” he asked, his grin wide and cruel. “She begged me to protect you.”

Tears burned the backs of my eyes as I pictured my mother, in the same state as me right now, begging for my life to be spared.

Fingers gripped my chin, his nails digging into my fractured cheek, causing me to cry out in pain.

“And do you know what I said to her?” His voice was gleeful. Manic. “I said that I was going to make you turn out just like me. And then I slit her throat.”

Something inside me snapped.

Broke.

I roared as all the hate and fear and anger fuelled the absolute rage that burnt my veins. Power exploded from me, like a sonic boom destroying everything around me. My father was flung clean across the room, landing in a heap right where his desk used to be. That piece of furniture was in bits, scattered across the floor.

I slammed the power of the wind down on him, delighting in the audible snap as the pressure cracked a couple of his ribs. His eyes widened and his skin paled as he tried to breathe through the pain. He wasn’t fucking laughing now, was he?

I was so angry. All the years of pain and hatred flew to the surface, and I wanted to give that to him tenfold. But there wasn’t anything I could physically do to him that would really make him suffer.

But I could take away everything that he loved.

“What was it you always said to me, ‘beware the consequences of ignorance and stupidity’. Well, maybe you should practice what you fucking preach. You have no idea who I am or what I am capable of. I could easily squash you, like the pathetic worm you are, and there is nothing you could do to stop me.”

“You’ll regret this.”

“No, father. I don’t think I will.”

“Fenris…”

I knelt down and brought my face close to his. “I’m going to take it all.”

I wrapped my fingers around the ring on his finger, the one that marked him as the Arch Mage of the Arcane Forum.

“No,” he whispered, finally understanding.

“And you’re going to watch, knowing there’s not a single thing you can do to stop me.” I pulled the ring from his finger and sensed his magic desert him. The magic turned its back on him, and I almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

I slipped the ring onto my finger, watching as it resized itself to fit me. A feeling of wonder washed over me, and I finally felt free. Free of my father, of the burdens of my past. Free of the hatred of him and, as I looked down at him, I realised that I felt nothing for him. Not a single fucking thing.

“Goodbye, father. This is the last time you’ll see me. You are hereby banished.”

“No!” he screamed, but I didn’t care. I turned my back on him and walked out of the library with my head held high.

“Master Crowe,” Gideon gasped. I almost chuckled. Trust my near death to be the thing to finally get some kind of expression out of him.

“Gideon, get everyone out of the building. Now.”

There must have been something on my face because I got no argument. He scuttled off and I walked out the front door. Within five minutes everyone was stood on the lawn in front of the house. Apart from my father, who was a weeping crumpled mess.

I opened my palm and created a ball of fire. Then I hurled it at the house, and I burnt it to the fucking ground.