“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.’”
She rolled her eyes—hard.
“Is that what they told you?” I frowned. I couldn’t imagine her being in such a situation, but then again, what did any woman in that situation look like? It could be anyone.
“Luckily, no.” She smiled. “My husband was very sickly. He was decent but very dull—very dull. I was grateful at least we could find one thing a day to talk about. He passed naturally, though.”
It occurred to me at that moment if he was sickly, he was human. However, she was a witch who practiced healing? She didn’t save him? No, maybe he was too sick for her to heal. Magic can’t fix everything, right?
“I let him die,” she said bluntly, blowing the previous thought out of my mind. Seeing my face, she shrugged. “I could see you putting the dots together. I could have saved him with magic. However, great magic always costs something. I didn’t want to pay it—not for him. I didn’t want to get married. I was fourteen when my parents arranged everything. I had dreams, things I wanted to do and see. I wanted to be free. I had been Bayezid’s daughter. Then Orhan’s wife for fifteen long years. I just wanted to be Mahidevran. And the only way I would be allowed to be so is if I were a widow, so I let him die.”
“I bet your parents were not happy,” I replied.
“They had died the year before.” The way she said it—like, oh well—was a bit shocking.
She laughed. “Your face says a lot even when you are quiet.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s all right. I was one of thirteen children. I was not very close to my parents. They wanted me out as fast as possible. When my husband died, I was a widow with no children, and I had some business. So I was okay.”
“What happened to you?”
“Someone tipped off the local magistrate to my poisons. They stormed into my home and dragged me out, accusing me of witchcraft. But of course, I lied, and of course, they did not believe me, so I was found guilty.” She chuckled.
“Did they put you on trial?”
“Women did not get trials. We were given judgment,” she scoffed, annoyance in her eyes. “They told me they would be lenient if I confessed, but I did not believe them. And I was not going to be judged by them. So, I planned my escape. With a little bit of magic and help from some in my small coven, I managed to get out of the dungeons. I cut my hair and pretended to be a man in order to get on the next ship out of the city, and I almost made it, too. However, when I arrived at the port, I was seized.”
“How did they find you?”
“My coven leader, who helped me escape, told them.”
“Why in the world would she do that? Aren’t covens supposed to protect one another?”
“In theory.” Melora laughed, spinning her legs back and forth. “But a lot of things are supposed to happen in theory. Parents should always love and protect their children, yet some harm theirs. There is more than enough food for mortals, yet many are starving. In theory, everything should work out. But this was not theory, this was reality, and in reality, mortal—even immortals—are greedy and selfish and self-preserving. I did not understand, not until later, that my coven leader had betrayed me. She stood in the crowd as they tied my hands and feet, stuffed me into a bag, then threw me into the ocean because the rest of the coven wanted to replace her with me.”
“She sent you to your death to hold her position in the coven?”
“Witch politics are severe. I knew some of the other witches wanted me to fight for the position, but I didn’t want the reasonability. I blew it off. I told her I wasn’t interested. Still, she wanted to be rid of me. And the best way to make a Wiccan abandon you is to have you labeled as a witch to the human world. They drowned me, truly medieval. If I survived, it was proof without a doubt that I was a witch. If I died, well, I had broken out of prison and cut my hair against tradition and was a criminal anyway. If not for my maker, a woman who hated my coven leader and simply wished to spite her, I wouldn’t have made it out. This world is insane, Druella. Now that I am immortal, I find it amusing, though. It is all like a play.”