(VAL POV):
Ever since we had come back from Sleeping Hollow, my mate had made it a point to linger near to me. She had all but abandoned the adjacent room to mine and slept at my side almost every night. I was revelling in our closeness, in her warmth and her company.
However, it was becoming apparent that part of the reason she clung to me so closely was in a perpetual fear after whatever she had seen in the woods. I had tried to lull her into telling me what had happened only once and she completely refused to acknowledge it. She would become confused and quiet when I asked and eventually change the subject or distract me with a kiss.
I watched her sleep in one of my striped button-down shirts and found I was completely restless- as much as I enjoyed having her near.
'Our mate feels endangered.' Rashir confirmed to me.
I carefully tucked the thick comforter all the way up to her pointed chin and admired her. Pale and glowing in the moonlight, cheeks full and rosy from whatever comforting dreams she was lost in. I smiled to myself, resenting the idea of leaving her side.
'We cannot let it remain this way. Our mate will feel safe.' Rashir commanded.
I was in harmony with him on most things, especially Liana. We were equally in agreement that she could not be made to suffer, that she deserved to be worshipped and protected at all times. I begrudgingly walked out of the bedroom.
The whole pack had lightened up since Rosaura returned. Frankford had almost stopped smoking. This time of night she liked to walk the gardens, she said it reminded her of mom. I made my way out into the night and eyed the many many fields of flowers. Being springtime, the air remained thick with the smell of them all, especially the roses.
I walked the fields towards the old orange tree on the edge of our property. Rosaura had loved the orange tree ever since we were very little. I remembered laying underneath it with her and Liam one evening when Father was away. We were talking about our favorite smells and colors- and Liam asked Rosaura if she had a favorite color.
She was holding an orange in her hands, peeling it and biting away the pieces that irritated her when she scrunched her nose up at his question. I was laying on my back beside the both of them, staring up at all the branches weighed down with fat orange fruits.
"Well what color are oranges?"
Liam and I laughed a little and then I answered her.
"Actually, the color is called orange too."
Rosaura smiled and bit into it, juice spilling down her chin as she nodded.
"What does orange look like?"
Liam and I started thinking hard. He was only five years old but fairly clever and he came to an answer before I had fully thought of one.
"Orange kind of looks the way that it tastes."
His answer gave me an answer too and I exclaimed excitedly after him.
"It looks the way the fireplace feels too!"
Rosaura devoured her orange, satisfied and nodded her head. Then she wiped the juices all over her jeans the way Father hated and laid down beside me so our heads were touching.
"Then if I had to pick a favorite color, it would be orange. Tastes the best."
When I saw her in the darkness, laying underneath the old tree with an orange in her lap I smiled. I moved near to her and took a seat right at her side like old times. We had dinner together almost every night since she came back but no amount of catching up felt like enough, not after so much lost time.
Rosaura rubbed her fingers over the surface of her orange like it was a pet.
"The orange tree probably missed you too."
Rosaura grinned and leaned over so her shoulder touched mine. Her voice sounded so much different now, perhaps because she was much older.
"You feel anxious around me now."
My first impulse was to defend myself and say that wasn't true. Only Rosaura had become something strange and all-seeing now and I realised there was no point in lying for her comfort. Moreover she didn't say it like it was upsetting to her, just like it was a passing leaf whose color she felt the need to comment on.
Finally, I answered her.
"I've felt terrified ever since seeing what happened to those witches. And the chains. Rosaura, how did you manage to escape that place?"
She tucked her head into my shoulder and started the slow process of peeling into her ripe orange. She was thinking. Thinking about something and eventually settled it with herself.
"When the witches dragged me into the hollow in the dead of night, I went kicking and screaming, you know? I fought against them so much that they had to use a spell to bind my mouth closed to avoid being bitten by me."
Her words startled me. She spoke about her night being taken and I felt a great sadness on her behalf. She bit away a piece of the orange peel before continuing.
"They dragged me down into the cellar and chained me up, but not before I managed to realise that I was not the only person trapped there. Someone across from me in chains had flinched and started to cry as soon as the women dragged me over to a wall and chained me to it. The iron doesn't burn me as much as it does most wolves- with my connection to the goddess being so faint as it is. But the boy across from me cried and howled often. He sounded like he couldn't possibly be more than six and he didn't speak our language. When they left the two of us down there, I tried to comfort him. I asked him where he was from and his name and how old he was and I didn't get much of anything back but I think his name had been Umar."
I put an arm around her and listened. She recalled it all with more sadness than I had heard in her since she came back. More emotion in general, like she had been transported back into that time as she explained it to me.
"He was born under the blood moon also, which was why the witches had taken us. One of their ancient scriptures had mentioned the particular potency of the blood of werewolves who were born under a blood moon. We were down in the cellar for an indeterminate amount of time. There were no windows. There were no clocks that I could hear, there was no way to know how long we sat there before they returned. Umar, the little thing that he sounded like in the dark, I would sing to him. Tell him stories about you and Liam."
My eyes were wet. She took a bite of the orange savorfully. Then another. Some drops spilled down onto her white dress. She seemed to be biting back her sobs with the orange expertly, careful not to let a single shaking breath escape her lips.
"When the witches came back, they dragged him to the center of the room while he screamed and cried. I didn't know what they were doing but I knew it was a ritual. And from the sound of things by the end of it, I believe that the ritual killed him."
Rosaura had paused her story to sit upright and fully finish her orange. She set the peels of the orange beside her and wiped all the juice from her face and onto her dress just like before. I felt a dissonance looking at her as she did it, seeing something so familiar from her for the first time since she returned. I took a selfish sort of comfort in knowing that this, at least, would never change.
"When the witches finished they cleaned up their mess and left. The room smelled of blood and I was alone in the cellar for another unknowable time. I sang to Umar for a long while at first before my mind accepted that he wasn't there. When the witches came back, they performed the same ritual on me. They chanted and cut into my collarbone so my blood would spill out without killing me and they forced me to drink something that made all of my insides feel like they were burning and by the end of it I was certain that I would also die. This time, their ritual worked and they got what they wanted… But something else had happened too which they never could have expected."
There was something sadistic about her smile. Something sad about it too. Her pale lashes were fluttering as she continued her tale. I kept my arm around her both for her comfort and for mine. Whatever had happened, whatever crimes she may have committed, she was still my big sister. I knew nothing she told me would change that.
"The ritual- it changed me, Vallory. Whatever they had summoned had to pass through my body to do it and when that happened I became something I hadn't been before."
She looked at me, bottom lip quivering like she feared the truth would get her into trouble. She had turned to face me, fists tight and balled at her side. I wrapped my other arm around her and squeezed her in a hug, pausing for her to continue.
"I can make people do things. Make people feel things, without having to say anything at all."
My stomach felt sick but I kept her wrapped in my arms tightly. I rubbed her hair and held her close and let the images of the six dead witches holding their blades enter my mind.
"I killed the witches. All of them."
I felt calm when I listened to her ghost-like voice. She sounded scared like a child when she admitted it. Rosaura had never been a scared person before the witches took her.
"I made the first one free me first and then I made her bring me the old woman and all the others and I forced them all to die- the way that they forced me to go through ritual after ritual for five years."
When she finished I let go of her and I brushed the tears away from her eyes. My voice was motherly and understanding in the night as I comforted her. The smell of oranges was everywhere.
"It's okay, I promise it's all okay."
Rosaura finished and hiccuped, wiping the rest of her tears herself. After a minute or two her voice returned to its normal state and her breathing had become steady again. I tried to comprehend the person I would become if I had undergone what she had- to imagine her suffering. I couldn't. I couldn't possibly imagine it and I couldn't possibly understand it.
I felt guilty and disgusted with myself for having been afraid. Because truthfully she scared the shit out of me in the woods, standing over Liana like that. I had been irrationally convinced at that moment that she had done something to Liana and it made me untrusting of her. But having listened to the horrific nightmare of her past five years I felt guilt and shame.
"I'm sorry, Rosaura. I didn't know."
"I'm sorry too."
I shook my head and patted her hair and muttered that all of it was okay. Then she turned to me with her fluttering lashes and said something that made my chest feel damp with horror.
"I shouldn't have made Liana forget without asking you first."