Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
“Thanks,” I muttered instead, hugging her back.
“Now, come on. We should wait outside before Theseus rips through the house when he arrives,” she said, linking arms with me. It felt more like she was making sure she had a good lock on me, preventing me from “disappearing.”
I said nothing because, once again, I felt like I was causing all kinds of trouble. This really was too much. Why was this all happening to me? Couldn’t I be a normal vampire? I had to have magical books flying at me, paintings burning when I was jealous, or the ground shaking when I was angry. I was a walking, talking disaster. I should have just stayed in bed with Theseus, but then again, who knows what would have happened then. I might have teleported us to the moon.
When we stepped outside into the rose garden, the new day I thought I had started was now night again. The stars were brighter than ever before, but I couldn’t see the moon at all.
“He was frantic,” Melora whispered beside me. “None of us knew you were missing at first. Arsiein and Atarah said they planned to meet you in the library, but when you did not show, they assumed Theseus had kept you in his rooms with him. However, when Theseus awoke and questioned where you were, and none of us had an answer, he became, well, as I had never seen him before. He was ready to start a war, demanding Father summon the witches. Father tried to get him to calm down, but he would not have it. He said you would not leave him like this on your own, so you must have been taken. And Father argued no one dared take you right from under our nose like this. We have checked the security cameras, too, but you were not in them. The last time we saw you was when you stepped out of Theseus’s room. You walked forward and should have been in the next frame, but you were gone.”
I frowned, hanging my head. “That is crazy to me. In my mind, I was just with Theseus no more than an hour ago! I was going the meet Arsiein and Atarah, but they weren’t in the library. I was going to look for them, but then I couldn’t go because the library was…It’s all so crazy.” I reached up and ran my hands through my hair. “I’m tired of all of this. Every day, something new happens that is not in my control but, somehow, is in my control. I wanted simple, yet I am more complicated than the plot of a telenovela!”
She snickered even though I wasn’t trying to be funny. “You are amusing when you are not weird.”
“Thanks.” I pouted.
“Do not pout. We are all a little bit weird.”
“Really? Do you talk to ghosts? Or vanish into thin air? Or have a grimoire that likes to play tricks on people or show you horrid images?”
“Horrid images? No,” she said seriously. “My grimoire was more like a cookbook.”
“Wait? You had grimoire?” I stared at her, shocked.
She nodded, taking a seat on the stone railing of the back patio stairs. “To be a Noble Blood vampire, you must be a witch beforehand. And I was a witch.”
“And you did spells and stuff?”
“Yes, Druella, as witches are known to do. I was strong—not the strongest, but strong,” she mocked me. “I loved playing with magic. I often lit a fire with my finger or closed the door with a wave of a hand when I was alone in my home. I just loved the feel of magic though I tried not to do it often. To be a witch is dangerous, but it was perilous in Constantinople. I didn’t want to give up and not practice it at all, so I focused my craft on healing, potions for toothaches and headaches, some to ease birthing pains, others to prevent pregnancy altogether or to abort.”
“They did that back then? How far back was this?”
“I was born on April twenty-second, 1424, and reborn in March of 1453, a few months before the city fell.” She looked up to the sky. “And to answer your earlier question, a lot of things were done back then. Just secretly. The women of the city usually protected each other. One of my biggest selling potions was actually poison.”
“Poison to kill?” I asked.
The corner of her lips turned up. “Some would call it killing, but to me, it was healing, saving. Back then, there was no choice in who we married. It wasn’t all bad. But there were times women were given to men who were not always kind. There was no divorce, no way for a woman to free herself. A husband could beat her until she’d lost all of her teeth and broken every bone, and the elders would tell her, ‘Don’t make your husband so mad. Try to make him happy.’”