DOTD Chapter 17

A deadly threat. Morwenna's necklace. An escape plan to Feymoore.

The study was dim.
The evening sunlight held a cold light, casting sadistic shadows along the walls and reminding me how many hours I been bound to the chair.

The muscles in my back ached from being forced into one postion for so long. I was hallowed out—exhausted from screaming and beaten to a lifeless pulp. Red, raw stains marred my wrists from the hours of struggling against the ropes. Each second that ticked by was one closer to him returning. One closer to more judgement, more pain.

All I could look at was the safe, the small metal box holding the answers to my fate.
I had to know what was in there.

What had he meant…“I have work to do” ?
Who had been writing too?
The knife…in the safe…as if it was only used for one purpose.
Death.

I thought I’d known this man I called Father. Thought I had discovered the extent of his cruelty. Today had proved, I new nothing of him. The abuse was only the tip of the iecberg. I had full confidence I was sleeping under the same roof as… a killer. A bloodthirsty montser who masked himself behind gold and finery, silencing suspicion with lavish balls and swooning the gentry with grand displays. How could one help but turn a blind eye when the luring sparkle of weath seduced each and every one of them. They were moths. He was their flame. So this was how he dealt with things, why he’d always been so vague: ‘ Business matters you wouldn’t understand’ and ‘things riding on the success of it’

I now knew what happened if they failed.

If slicing me open was today…what would be tomorrow? What would be next week? What would be next month? Would I even see next month? Would the cycle ever end or…would I?

Needles pricked my spine.

I had to know what was in that safe.
Too many secrets.
Too many secrets.

Footsteps sounded outside the study, ones that held a familiar sick feeling. He was back. I braced myself, my body tensing with anticipation. The door swung open and in he strolled, a satisfied smile on his wicked lips. He paused, watching me helplessly tied to the chair, chest covered in ink stains. My stomach went sour.

He stepped closer. My heart burst, pulse racing rapid once more. His face closed into mine, intntentionally violating the personal space. Those eyes, his rotten breath–it took everything in me to not look away from him. I willed my bones to be made of iron, my breathing a steady flow of a mighty river.

“ Will you defy me again?” he threatened quietly.

Fuck you. You muderous, morbid pig.
I will defy you for the rest of my life. No matter how short that may be now.

“ No,” I replied quietly, my face frozen with rage.

“ Good girl,” he praised, tucking my hair behind my ear.

My whole body cringed at his touch, my stomach lurching violently. I stayed motionless. I would not yield.

He sliced through the ropes with the same dagger he’d dragged across my flesh. His eyes locked onto mine. It was like staring at Death himself, murky black swallowing me.
“ Dont worry. You’re little secret will die in this room. I wont have it bring shame to the name Undergrove. You’re free to go…for now.”

Frost gripped my insides.
I knew what that meant. It wasn’t security, safety…it was a threat.
A deadly one.

He backed away, strolling to the secret door once more to open the safe. For only a second, I caught a glimps of something inside. A thick book, some type of tattered journal. He placed the weapon inside and closed in quickly behind him, blocking my view intentionally of the code.

I needed in that safe.

“ Leave,” he boomed.

I wasted no time, leaping from the chair and staggering into the hall. Each movement tore mercilessly at the wounds maring my chest. I knew they would heal soon. My powers would see to that, but the scars would remain. Constant reminders of what was to come. I grabbed Lucien’s dagger from the rug, the motion sending searing pain down the front line of my body.

I needed to find Ewoyn.
I needed her.


I made it to the kitchen, each wobbly step stretching and tearing the incision even more. Limping towards the door, I leaning my body weight on on it so that it opened. Teeth gritted, hands pressed to the cuts, I stumbled into the kitchen.

“ Eowyn,” I barely breathed out. The effort it took to get sound into my voice had a fesh wave of pain tearing across my chest, causing me to trip and fall against the wall.

My eyes, blurred. Fresh, hot liquid dripping down my hands. The bleeding wouldn’t stop. Fear and pain and fear and pain. The world around me spun.

Two warm hands found my shoulder, a blurry face of concern morphing in my vision.
“ Gods all mighty,” Eowyn exalimed, “ My sweet girl, what happened?”

Her voice was soaked with panic, eyes widened as she gaped at my wounds. Wasting no time, she laced my arm over her shoulder, a cry of pain ripping from my lungs as the movement sent sharps ripping through the flesh all over again.

“ I know. I know,” she soothed, helping me hobble over to a wooden stool. “ We’re almost there.”

I struggled for air, the pain stealing my breath from me. Solely through her efforts, she managed to prop me up on the stool. I leanded against the hard stone behind me, my chest throbbing without cease.

“ Did he do this?” she boomed, her word threatening to tear down the gates of hell to find him and rend him apart. “ Did that devil do this?”

I managed a nod, a broken sob leaving my lips. I couldn’t take it anymore. My resolve shattered, tears pouring freely, unrestrained. Ewoyn disappeared, coming back a moment later with a damp wash cloth and what look liked a handful of gauze.

“Why?! How could he do this to you? That sick, vile–” she thundered, gently placing the rag against my raw skin.

I winced and she began to clean away the blood, salt stinging my tongue. The nipping of the washcloth felt like sandpaper, harsh, inflaming. My vision vanished behind tightly squeezed eyes, every nerve screaming.

“ This is going is going to hurt,” she warned, the familiar sound of liquor moving in a glass bottle sentencing me to more pain. I had been here before. I knew what followed.

“ Just do it.” I brought a lacey sleeve to my mouth and bit down hard.

Hot coals exploded beneath my skin. A cry shot from the back of my throat as the liquid seeped into the cuts, searing along the tender flesh. Air caught in my lungs, every muscle in my body as tense as concrete. Black specs dotted the muted red behind my eyes. I wanted to punch something. I wanted to break something with my bare hands.

“ Breath,” Ewoyn commannded, bringing the washcloth to my skin once more. “ You’re going to pass out in a minute if you dont breath!”

I released the built pressure in my lungs, the falling of my chest eliciting a wave of pointed bee stings. Her soft fingers met the wounds bringing with them a balmy substance that smelled of herbs. It carraesed the skin like margarine, pouring cool water on flames. My body relaxed into the soothe it provided as I cracked an eye open. The worst was over.

“ This–this is sinister. I knew he was wicked but…cutting? Permanent scars?” She was rambling furiously, head shaking back and forth in a fidgety rhythm.

“ He–he knows” I said between uneven breaths.
“ He knows what I am.”

Eowyn stilled. Her chocolate eyes finding my own, an emotion threaded across her warm features I couldn’t place.
“ What do you mean..what you are?”

The secret was too heavy. I was too broken. Everything spilled out all at once. The door knobs, the locks, the stranger, Edwin’s death, Lucien…my blood. It fell from my mouth like a cannon ball ripping through vapor. I couln’t stop it, like it was breaking free from the small pandora’s box I’d locked it in. It kept coming, every fear, every discovery…it drained from me like pus from a cyst— the pressure at it’s peak, bursting through the skin.

“ He knows Eowyn! He knows and I know its only a matter of time before this happens again. Maybe something worse,” I stammered, my voice high and shaken. “ This curse, it will be the death of me—”

My word were cut off. Both of Eowyn’s plump hands cupped my soggy cheeks. I couldn’t meet her eyes. I was too afraid of what she would think of me. I could picture the horror on her face, the disgust. The thought of her too finding me repulsive was unbearable.

“ Look at me Fluer Undergove.”

Bracing my heart for the next blow, I complied looking up at her through lashes wet with shame.
Kindness, of the purest form stared back at me willingly, eagerly. Her bottom lips trembled, eyes pinched and lined with silver. When she spoke, her word were reverant.

“ I knew,” she breathed out, “ That— that you could be nothing less than extraordinary.”

Her response jarred my tears, causing me to still. I sniffled, wiping my eyes.
I couldn't believe it.

“ You’re– You’re not afraid of me?” I asked tentatively.

“ My dear, I could not be prouder of who you are,” she whispered, her own voice cracking. “ You are not a curse…your are a gift.”

The weight of the world dissolved in a single breath.
A gift.
Those two words cracked open my rips, spilling out fresh tears. For the first time…I was seen. Seen, discovered and still….wanted. She still wanted me and….she thought I was extraordinary.

My forehead crashed into her shoulders, a voilent release of emotion unexpectedly breaking free from my body. I was shaking. The grooves of my muscles, the tension in my core, the long and tiresome pathways in my mind–-eveyrthing simply let go and let be. She wrapped her arms around me as I shuddered forcefully in her embrace. The weight I’d carried for so long, the secret that had been tangled in grief and guilt and shame. The cold hands that strangled my identity loosened. It was free. I was…free.
Exposed and still...loved.

After a few moment of release, a need for understanding had me pulling back to look at her.
“ I don’t understand. How-how are you not afraid of me? You don’t seem surprised at all,” I questioned, my voice thick with congestion.

A honeyed smile bloomed across those rosy cheeks with quiet knowing. “ Your mother told me there would be a day like this one. When you would come to me. A time your abilities would awaken.”

My face went numb. Surely my ears had betrayed me. Something hard caught in my throat.
My mother? My…mother.
Eowyn knew? My mother knew?

Ewoyn’s kind eyes hugged my own. “ I know it’s alot to take in. There is much to tell you, my Flower,” she soothed, brushing the hair from my face.

“ What–?” My words wouldn’t form…couldn’t. “ How…when did she–”

“ You never knew her, but she loved you with everything in her. Even as she took her last breath. She made me promise her that I’d look out for you. Raise you aware of the presence of magic. Raise you strong, capable and full of passion.”

Moisture welled once more, my mouth dry with stun. Each word that fell from Eowyn’s lips changed….everything. My mother knew me, knew what I would become. She knew me and… wanted me. All the years of carrying the weighty guilt of her death, accepting that even long before my magic awoke I was and always would be the black stain on our family’s good name. But no, she wanted me to be who I was, a person I’d continuously shoved down and caged. A person who’d been beaten into the same identical square of every high society lady. There had been a reason I’d never been like my sisters, never been like the Duke, always struggling to conform to what they deemed was the norm. As it would seem, my wrongess and my oddness had a righteness to it. It meant I was like…her. She was like…me. My heart swelled with something foreign and warm. This moment, this truth…it split open time. Nothing would fit the same again.

“ But why? What did she know? What does this mean about me?”

“ I know very little,” she replied, plancing a hand to my knee. “ Only that she prepared me for this moment. She believed in you, Fluer. Whatever you are meant for…she believed in you.”

My bottom lip quivered, sparse tingles dancing across my nerves. Silence flooded the small room as her word soaked into my like medicine. I drank them eagerly.

“ What was she like?” I whispered, finally breaking the quite.

Eowyn’s round face turned up tenderly. “ She was like you,” she mumermered with endearment, as if she was looking directly at Morwenna Undergrove herself. “ She was a wildfire wrapped in silk, beautiful, untamed and impossible to ignore. Full of passion, burning with love.”

My chest tighten as I listened to glimpses of a women I’d never known but now suddenly felt so close to. It was like a mirror had been held up to my soul, reflecting a face we shared, a heart that beat at the same rhythm. As the new truth set in, real and raw, my breath caught on the edge of a sob. I wiped away a fragile droplet rolling quietly down with a shaky finger, but the ache stayed full of longing and an unexpected sense of belonging. I had been hers once.

She continued on, unfolding more precious glimmers of the women she was…the woman I was. “ She made me vow to give this to you, when the time came.”

I watched as she removed the blackened silver chain around her neck, so finely worn it caught the fire light like spun frost. One I had seen for years, one I had always admired. Cupping my palm in hers she let the small necklace fall and coil into my possession. The skin that met the charm blazed, my body physically surging in response to it’s presence, like it was always meant to be mine— like she was with me. It was as delicate as moonlight on still water, my eyes unable to look away from the exquisite piece. It’s center was a pale crystal, it edges traced with intircate runes too small to read. It was the strangest, most beautiful thing I'd ever owned.

“ When you magic finally stirred awake, that is when I was to pass it down. This parting gift, it’s yours, My Sweet,” she said bringing the necklace around my hair and securing it at the nape of my neck.

The pendant warmed my chest as it rested softly against the wounds that were already starting to heal. I felt the warmth spread through my ribs down to the tips of my toes, mingling and dancing with the magic within my viens. The sensation was indescribable. The closest I coud come to pinning it was like melted butter dripping along the lining of your body– thick, soothing full of comfort.

“She told me to advise you to wear it always. Never take it off. It will guide you,” she relayed, the pure awe and astonishemnts of this moment curling around me in the same way the rarefied chain did. “ She told me that fate would whisper and when it did…to listen and follow.”

“ What does it mean Ewoyn?” I asked breathlessly. “ What does all of this mean?”

My mind was buzzing like an busy hive of bees, the numbing sound drowning any reasonal explanations. So many questions. So few answers.

I continued on, the words flying out of my mouth like bullets. “ How do I have this ability? Did she have magic too? None of this makes any sense!”

“ No, your mother was fully human. How you inherited this ability, she never confided in me. There wasn't much time for her to explain things before she slipped away, still holing you in her arms,” she replied earnestly.

Her last sentenced tore through my chest all over again. How I could love a women I’d never met, I wasnt sure. But there it was. A fierce bond pulling my entire spirit, tethering me to her memory in the intensity of this moment—to her dreams, to her hopes and belief in….me. I clutched tightly to the crystal, rubbing my thumb along its smooth edges. My fingers caught at its center, snagging on prongs that cruled inward to an….empty space.
Was a piece missing?

Eowyn broke into my thoughts with her next words, her tone shifting to a seriousness. “What does he know about you?”

The Duke.

“He only saw my blood. When I bleed…the color it’s blue and the door— I broke the door. He suspects…he doesnt know all,” I replied, anxiety nipping away at the loving glow Mother’s necklace provided.

“ Listen carefully,” she prompted, fixing me with a severe stare. “ We need to get you as far away from here as possible. He won’t rest until he’s satisfied. It not safe for you here anymore.”

“ I can’t leave,” I said, shaking my head. “ Not yet. There’s a ledger. I suspect it contains the stranger’s name. And there’s a safe– a safe in his study. I need answers. I have to know what I’m up against. The stranger is the only lead I have to discovering what all this means. What I mean.”

Eowyn sighed. “ This is dangerous. Being in this house alone is risky enough, but breaking into his study? Into his safe? Stealing his private things? I’m afraid it will be the last straw.”

I shuttered.
“ I know,” I replied solemnly, “ But it’s all I have.”
Her hands went to her temples, shaking her head back and forth. “ What is your plan?”

“ The night of the ball. He’ll be distracted. I’ll be masked. It’s my only shot,” I said, accepting the horror of my future.

Her face dropped. “ Fluer…if you get caught—”

“ I know,” I said quietly.

“ Your Father’s loathe for magic is strong. I could never understand why, but it grew more hateful, more violent when Morwenna became pregnant with you. I fear for what he has planned for you next,” she explained nervously.

Did he know? How would he know I possessed gifts…even before I was born?
There was more here. More I didn’t understand, more even Eowyn didn’t know.

Would the answers I needed be in the safe?
It was possible.

Ewoyn stood to her feet and began pacing. “ You’re going to need an escape plan,” he started, she round figure shifting with haste across the stone floor. “ There has to be somewhere you can flee to. Somehwere he can’t find–”

She stopped in her tracks, a thought blooming in her mind.

“ What is it?” I prompted anxiously.

“ Your Aunt Ophelia…” she trailed off.

“ My what? I have an aunt?” I exclaimed, shocked at the new found understanding.

“ Yes. Morwenna’s older sister. She lives on a smaller island in the North: Feymoore. It far enough away from Innswood. The Duke would never find you there.”

“ Why have I never know I have an Aunt Ophelia?” I demanded puzzled.

“ She kind of an odd character,” Eowyn said, thrumbing her finger against lower lip. “ Some folks say she’s gone mad due to her remote lifestyle, her…beliefs. Although she certainly looks it, Ophelia Blackwood is incredibly sharp-minded.”

I looked on with speculation. “ What do you mean by beliefs?”

“ Some say she’s a witch,” she replied in hushed tones. “ And well…she is.”

A knot twisted in my gut. I pictured Mother Viel in all her horrifying glory.

Yeah, great escape plan!
Send me away from my murderous father into the hands of a bloodbent witch.

A shiver ran down my spine.

Ewoyn, noticing the shift in my features, chimed in. “ She doesn’t practice the dark arts. She’s an herabilst vielborn. She specializes in classifications of plants and potions—deeply connected to the Earth.”

There were good witches?
An Herbalist…that didn’t sound too bad.

“ Alright, I’ll do it,” I confirmed, as if I had another option. “ How do you know she’ll take me in?”

“ She cherrises all life and had a close connection with your mother. I would be shocked if she turned you away in an hour of need,” she replied, hushing my angst.

“ Alright then,” I said quietlty.
I hated this life, this world I live in. But there were a few that still belonged to Innswood. I would be saying goodbye to Ewoyn, to Lucien, to a certain messy-haired asshole who I hated to admit… I still cared for. The thought felt empty, as if the safety those relationship provided had already been ripped from me. I stifled the emotions, willing my mind to stay focused on what mattered: survival.

Eowyn and I spent the next hour crafting my escape route and means of transportation. After I secured the leger and explored the safe, I would conviene behind the manor where a stable horse would be waiting, loaded with enough of my things to function but still travel light. The journey was three days. I would find the docs, stow away on a ship heading North to Feymoore, and the find my crazy witch aunt Ophelia and pray she would take me in.

In just five days, I would say goodbye to Innswood forever.