Chapter Thirty

Rhodes

I can feel the Offering looking at me with a new interest.

To work for Keiran is one thing, but to be blood-related to the Witches themselves…there is no power on earth more feared in these lands.

Yes, the Offering is looking at me differently. Being connected to witches always makes people look at me differently.

This is exactly why I don’t like telling the Offerings who we are before the ceremony. Especially not this one.

“T-the witches are y-your mothers?”

Gods, she fucking cute when she’s terrified.

But she’s just as terrified as she is cute.

“They are,” I say, untying the shitty nurse job she did around the little boy's cuts and redoing it properly this time.

I don’t have it in me to tell the Offering that the boy has been sullied. He has the markings that signal that his tribe has sent him to bleed out in this forest and die.

That’s why Kal and I couldn’t intervene. Not for that reason, and because the boy went in that fucking forbidden river.

“If they are your mothers, why are you here?”

“I already told you, we were made to ensure you don’t run away.”

Kallias flashes a lazy grin that I know is meant to calm Remi and the young boy. Neither one relaxes.

Remi speaks again, her arm protectively over the shivering boy.

As if she could fight us off, Kallias says in my head.

I shoot him a stab of shadow, flashing him an image of Remi in the river. Kal and I were raised to hunt one thing only. Be careful how you speak of our prophecy. I threaten slowly, and Kallias straightens.

The Offering proposes a smart question. “You serve one purpose?” I nod. “And you weren’t born, you were…m-made?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

I cock my head to the side. “Are you sure you want to know?”

Remi looks about ready to cry. A scared, lost little doe. But her blue eyes hold my intense gaze. So fierce I take it as a chance to obey.

“Have you ever heard of the Cauldron?” I prompt, and the Offering nods.

“My brother and I were born from the mind of all three witches to serve one purpose only.”

The tension between me and the Offering right now could start a fire.
“And that purpose is?” she asks.

Kallias steps forward. “We’ve been bred to know the scent of your blood,” he begins, stalking over the little doe and casting a shadow. Remi crawls away, the boy does too. “To recognize your magic from anywhere in the room.”

I step in from the other side, cornering her. “Born and made to hunt you from anywhere in the world.”

Remi begins to cry. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t turn me on.

“And above all,” Kallias catches the Offerings wrist, pulling her from the ground with no effort. Remi’s tears spill onto his hand, but my twin doesn’t relent. We’re dark evil monsters. Always have been.

And there’s no use in pretending.

I grab a thick chunk of Remi’s hair, pulling her eyes to meet mine. She whimpers at the contact, at the violence in my action, but there’s this spark in her blue eyes that I’ve seen before. The fearlessness. The dare.

Like calls to like.

“Our purpose, Remi darling,” I whisper into her ear. Her knees give out, and I can sense her desire in the air. She’s as easy to read as the back of my brother’s hand. “Is to protect you.”

A soft moan escapes from her lips.

If it wasn’t for this boy, Kal and I would take her right here. And from the feeling Remi is giving off, the intent I can read in her emotion, she doesn’t care, either.

“Get lost, kid,” Kallias says, and just as quickly as he arrives, the sullied warrior disappears into the forest.

But something shifts in Remi, something I couldn’t possibly dread more at this moment.

“Wait a second,” she says, and Kallias thinks she is stopping for the boy.

“He belongs to the forest–”

“No, stop,” Remi says. She steps three feet back. Then six. Her eyes lock onto ours, filled with a mixture of horror and disbelief. “Does this mean you’re my cousins?”

Kallias and I exchange smirks. It isn’t an uncommon question from the Offerings once we tell them the truth.

I’m bored and tired of the talk, so I lean back into a tree and size the Offering up while lighting a smoke. She watches it pool before my mouth into a cloud, then I suck it back into my lips in a way that makes her knees tremble.

Good.

“We’re not traditionally born,” Kallias explains.

Remi’s eyes widen even more, her breath coming in shallow gasps. The story always does this to the Offerings. Makes them think we are gods.

But we’re far from gods. Far from anything divine.

I lean back against the rough bark of the tree, the smoke curling lazily from my lips. The shaded forest air Is cool and still, the only sound is the distant rush of the river. I watch Remi closely, her eyes darting between Kallias and me, wide with a mix of fear and curiosity.

Something shifts in Remi then. Something I can’t quite place, but I know it isn’t good. It’s a look of realization, a dawning understanding that made my gut twist with dread.

“We’re Cauldron Made,” he eventually finishes.

“What’s Cauldron made?” The Offering asks.

I rolled my eyes and took another drag of my cigarette, the ember glowing brightly in the darkness. Then I cut in, my irritation clear. “It means we’re not blood-related,” I reply, my tone quick and sharp.

“We’re not traditionally born,” Kallias explains patiently as if he hasn’t done it a thousand times before.

Bored. Bored. Bored.

My mind is elsewhere from the explanation Kallias gives. The Offering parted the river that flows from the Lands Once Lost. She parted the river. We were told by the Witches for centuries we could never touch it. Once Keiran finds out….someone is going to die.

Kallias continues, his patience seemingly endless. “A long time ago, when our mother birthed us, she did so in a pool of water. A lagoon.”

The Offering looks just as desperate and wide-eyed as all the rest. I’m more hesitant to take advantage of it than the others.

Remi takes a step forward. Her eyes narrow, and her fear is replaced by a fierce determination. “If you’re not my cousins, then what are you?”

I push off the tree, flicking my cigarette into the dirt. The embers glow like tiny, dying stars. “We’re something else entirely,” I said, my voice a low growl.

She doesn’t back down. Same as when she’s taking a punishment. “Tell me.”

Kallias sighs, his patience wearing thin. “We were created, Remi. By the Cauldron itself. Our mothers were witches who sacrificed everything to bring us into this world. We’re not born of flesh and blood. We’re born of magic and darkness.”

I could see the gears turning in her head, the questions forming. Kallias and I give her a second to process everything. Finally, she draws breath. “You’re Cauldron Born…Divinity?”

“We’re the furthest things from gods,” I cut in, my voice low and edged with bitterness. “We’re hell-born.”

“Our power was created to hunt you,” Kallias adds, “it’s a sixth sense we can’t ignore.”

The Offering looks like she may cry. “And this…power? What did I do to the river? Is it the same as you? Twisted and wicked?”

My twin and I exchange a look.

“I’m not sure what you did,” I admit, “but whatever magic you displayed…no other Offering in a thousand years has shown it.”

The Offering begins to shake. Her eyes dart around the forest, entering that all too human state of fight or flight.

As much as I hope this one was different, this Offering is the same. She is the ancestor of someone who stole something from us. Someone who is scared and terrified and not self-sacrificial.

She’s the reason we were born into pain. The reason we're beaten to near death as children is to become the most valuable hunters.

*Get ready for her to run.* Kallias says to me through our bond.

It will be an easy chase. A fun one for me and my brother.

But suddenly, the air around Remi begins to undulate.

*Will she try to fight us with her newborn powers? How dumb would she have to be to challenge us? *My brother muses, something like admiration across his face.

I crack my knuckles, approaching the tiny little thing. Even with her magic, Remi is untrained and useless. I could break her with one hand. *Do you think we should use ropes or chains to secure her in the bath, brother? *

*Definitely chains.*

Kallias snorts, and I join him in laughter, our cruel amusement filling up the darkened space.

We laugh until a third, equally powerful voice claws through my mind. Breaks through both Kallias and my mind in such an unyielding and powerful way, that I’m convinced either Kieran or the Witches have flown down from the castle and are right behind our shoulder.

So my brother and I kneel and signal for the Offering to as well.

But it is Remi herself, her blood aglow within her veins, who stands before me and my bowing brother and issues the words, not with her lips, not with her breath, but into our minds.

*Take me to the Witches, unbound. *

I hear Kallias swallow. In four hundred years, we’ve never been invaded. Not even Kieran has entered our minds.
*
Now. *

The Midnight King
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