Chapter 9: Death of Ruelle Holt

I sat in the back seat of a black car bearing the Ashcroft family crest.

Three vehicles followed behind us, carrying the belongings my parents had decided I would need in Crescent City. Around a dozen guards surrounded the convoy, with some driving ahead and behind us, while others rode motorcycles along both sides.

Half belonged to the Holt family, the rest had come with the Ashcrofts.

I stared through the tinted window and clutched the skirt of my dress until my knuckles turned white.

The sky had been clear when we left the estate, but heavy gray clouds had gathered overhead. The sunlight disappeared behind them, leaving the world outside cold and gloomy.

This was the first time I had ever traveled beyond the gates of the Holt estate without my parents accompanying me.

I should have been excited.

For years, I had wondered what Estia’s lands looked like outside the view from my bedroom windows. I had read about the towns, buildings, forests, rivers, and roads belonging to our clan, yet I had never been allowed to see any of them for myself.

Now that the gates were finally behind me, I could barely appreciate the freedom.

The family who raised me intended to kill me.

And the family I was married to had used the truth about my birth to blackmail them.

Did the witch goddess curse me? What kind of sin had I committed in my past life to deserve a life like this?

The convoy continued along the private highway leading toward Crescent City. Thick forests rose on both sides of the road, broken occasionally by small towns and wide fields where farms were cultivated beneath protective barriers.

I recognized several landmarks from the maps I had studied over the years.

My mother had controlled almost every part of my education, but she had never considered maps dangerous. Perhaps she had assumed I would never have a reason to use them.

She had been wrong.

To reach Crescent City, the convoy had to cross a long concrete bridge over the Avren River. The water marked part of the boundary between Estia’s lands and Blackthorn territory.

It was the best place to disappear.

I had studied the route until I could picture every curve of the road. The river moved south through several uninhabited forests before passing near the outer districts of Crescent City. There were no settlements directly beneath the bridge, and the steep banks would make it difficult for the guards to follow me immediately.

The plan was dangerous.

But I’d decided I had no choice but to bet on my luck.

As the bridge came into view, my heartbeat grew louder. The driver and the guard sitting beside him had barely spoken since we left the estate. Both wore black uniforms marked with the silver wolf emblem of the Blackthorn Pack.

Hidden beneath the long sleeves of my dress, black ink covered the inside of my wrists. I had copied the symbols from the forbidden book before leaving my room, carefully drawing each line exactly as it appeared on the page.

One mistake could cause the curse to fail, or turn against me.

I tried not to think about that possibility.

The SUV rolled onto the bridge. Concrete barriers lined both sides, and tall lights stood at even intervals along the road. Far below, the river flowed between rocky banks, dark beneath the clouded sky.

My throat tightened.

There was no turning back now.

I closed my eyes and brought my hands together near my chest. My fingers formed the triangular shape shown in the book, each fingertip pressing against the next.

Then I began whispering the incantation.

The words felt unnatural on my tongue.

They did not belong to any modern dialect spoken in Estia’s lands. The language was ancient, rough, and filled with sounds that seemed to scrape against the inside of my throat.

I spoke faster.

A cold sensation spread from the mark beneath my collarbone. It traveled down my arms and gathered in the symbols drawn across my wrists.

The driver stiffenedm, and the guard beside him suddenly grabbed his head.

“What the—”

The SUV swerved.

I braced myself against the seat as the tires screeched against the road. The driver managed to slam on the brakes before we struck the concrete barrier.

Behind us, horns blared. Engines roared, followed by the sound of metal crashing into metal as the rest of the convoy stopped. The driver turned toward the passenger beside him whose eyes had become completely white. So had the guard’s.

Outside, shouting erupted.

“Ambush!”

“Get down!”

“They’re coming from the trees!”

There were no trees on the bridge, no attackers either, but the guards could no longer see what was truly around them.

The curse had dragged their minds into an illusion, replacing the bridge and the convoy with whatever danger I had created for them. In their eyes, armed men surrounded the vehicles. They heard gunfire that did not exist and saw enemies charging toward them from every direction.

A guard outside fired his weapon.

Another tackled him before he could shoot again.

Within seconds, the bridge descended into chaos.

The Holt guards and the Ashcroft guards turned against one another, each believing the others had been replaced or controlled by the imaginary attackers. 

I sat frozen for several seconds, stunned that the curse had worked. I had expected it to affect only the two men inside the SUV. Instead, it had reached everyone in the convoy.

The power moving through my body felt cold and heavy. It pulsed beneath my skin like a second heartbeat, answering every frightened and furious thought inside me.

For once, the darkness inside me was useful.

I opened the door and stepped onto the bridge.

Cold wind whipped my ginger hair across my face. I pushed it away and looked at the chaos surrounding me.

None of the guards noticed me. Their pale eyes remained fixed on enemies only they could see. A Holt guard swung at one of the Ashcroft men, while another dragged someone behind a vehicle to protect him from imaginary gunfire.

I had shaped the illusion carefully.

They believed they were under attack, but the curse prevented them from seeing one another as mortal threats. The Ashcroft werewolves wouldn’t think of shifting to their wolf forms, and the Holt witchers wouldn’t think of casting spells. They would fight with their fists, panic, and suffer injuries, but they would avoid deliberately killing anyone. 

This way, they wouldn’t die and the damage would make the attack appear more convincing.

I hurried toward the back of the SUV and pulled out the small satchel I had hidden beneath one of the seats before we left.

The coldness beneath my skin was already beginning to fade. According to the book, a curse of illusion could last only as long as the caster’s body could sustain it.

Since I had never performed anything this powerful before, I had no idea how much time I had.

I ran toward the edge of the bridge and looked down.

My stomach dropped.

The river appeared much farther away than it had on the maps!

I had learned to swim in the lake behind the Holt estate. On a few nights, when the guards changed shifts and the servants were asleep, I had secretly slipped outside and gone into the water alone.

But the lake had been calm. This was a river, and I would be jumping from a bridge.

If I remained there, the curse would soon break. I had no other choice.

Closing my eyes, I took one deep breath and climbed over the concrete barrier.

Then I jumped.

The impact knocked the air from my lungs. Freezing water closed over my head, and the weight of my dress immediately pulled me downward.

The current was stronger than it had appeared from above, but it wasn’t powerful enough to carry me away. I struggled toward the nearest bank, keeping one arm wrapped around the satchel.

By the time I reached the rocks, every muscle in my body burned.

I dragged myself out of the river and collapsed on the wet ground, coughing water from my lungs. My clothes clung heavily to my skin, and my hair covered my face in dripping strands..

I crawled farther behind a formation of rocks where I could no longer be seen from the bridge. Then I opened the satchel.

Inside were the materials I had prepared earlier that day.

A small vial of my blood. Three strands of my ginger-red hair. And a strip of fabric cut from one of my dresses.

My hands shook as I placed them together on my palm.

The second curse was far more complicated than the illusion. I had read the instructions repeatedly until I knew every word, but knowing how to perform it was not the same as succeeding.

I closed my eyes and began the incantation.

Dark mist seeped from the mark beneath my collarbone. It traveled down my arm and curled around the objects in my hand. The vial cracked, releasing the blood into the air, yet not a single drop fell to the ground.

The blood, hair, and fabric rose above my palm. They twisted together inside the black mist.

My vision blurred, and pain stabbed through my head. The curse pulled more power from me than I had expected, draining the strength from my limbs.

Still, I refused to stop.

The mass floating before me slowly began to change.

Bones formed first. Then muscle, skin, and long ginger hair. The shape expanded until it became the body of a young woman. My body. The replica dropped onto the rocks with a heavy thud.

I stumbled backward.

For a moment, I could only stare.

The woman lying in front of me looked exactly like me. The same face. The same pale skin. The same ginger-red hair plastered against her cheeks.

Even Veyra’s crescent-flame mark curved beneath her left collarbone.

But she was nothing more than an empty body created from my blood and magic, but the resemblance was so perfect that looking at her made my skin crawl.

No ordinary witch could create life through spellcraft, but somehow there was a curse that could create a corpse, and I was capable of casting it.

I reached inside the satchel and pulled out the dagger I had hidden there.

My fingers tightened around the handle.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, though I wasn’t certain whether I was apologizing to the replica or to the version of myself I was about to leave behind.

I drove the blade into her heart.

Blood spread across the fabric covering her chest as though she were truly alive. I pulled the dagger free and added several more wounds to make it appear that I had been attacked after falling into the river.

When I was finished, I wiped the handle clean with a strip of cloth and threw the dagger into the water.

It disappeared beneath the dark surface.