From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 102
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
To her astonishment, Ivy took it.
"Yes, you survived. And surviving changes all of us. Come here," Ivy said, and put her arm around Pretoria's shoulder the way Aunt Agatha never had. "You survived, Pretoria. And now you're safe."
At those words, the dam within Pretoria broke and she threw herself into Ivy's embrace. For everything that had happened, for all she had been through, for the loss of her only family, for the mother she never knew, Pretoria cried.
As her shoulders heaved and she ran short of breath, Ivy held her close. She sang a wordless song of comfort as she rocked Pretoria like a child, reassuring her it was going to be all right.
It couldn't be, she knew. As long as she looked like this, she would be reminded why. If a Manifested witch was a tested witch, Pretoria had failed.
She had been shattered, and killed the ones responsible.
They had broken her, and as she sobbed uncontrollably, it felt like she was breaking all over again. She would never feel whole, she would be scarred forever.
Tortured, executed, altered, and forced to re-live it all over again in a new place in front of strangers, she felt more than ever that she had been cursed.
Ivy was kind, and so had Millie been. Niamh had very literally saved her life.
But Pretoria was broken, emotionally and magically, and that made her dangerous. EVE, the idea, may have been the ultimate impetus for her suffering, but the women who made it up deserved better.
Ivy's voice was soft as she sang, so much so that it didn't echo into the dreams that followed.
Katya couldn't even cry anymore. Her eyes were swollen and red, but the tears wouldn't come; she was simply too exhausted. Holed up in her hotel room with Sveta, neither of them had the energy to even sit, and were curled up together in Sveta's bed on top of the covers in a kind of paralysis. Even Sveta's Manifest was cooperating, letting them be close together without shouting into Sveta's mind. Though as Katya shivered and shook, holding onto Sveta like she would be torn away if she let go, it didn't need to.
"Stupid Vita," Katya moaned. "Stupid! How could she even… she hesitated. Hesitated! She would have done it again."
"It's not all her fault," Sveta said, gently stroking Katya's hair in little soothing motions. "She is very driven."
"Off of a cliff," Katya spat.
From the door came the sudden rap of their coded knock, and Katya disentangled herself from Sveta before straightening herself up as best she could in the time it took to get to the door. The knock sounded again as she reached for the knob.
It opened to reveal Selene accompanied by Elise, and Katya waved them both in.
"What is it? Where's Vita?" Katya asked.
"Asleep," Elise said. "She will be until tomorrow."
"Is she all right?" Sveta asked, having managed to partially sit up. It was only when Katya looked back at her from afar that she saw how utterly exhausted she looked. The bags under her eyes were more like bruises, the lids over them hooded, leaving her looking punch-drunk and stupefied.
"There was no haemorrhaging or lasting damage. I checked again before putting her to sleep. She would not otherwise." Elise looked almost as tired as Sveta, and seemed grateful when Selene took over.
"And she is why I am here. I am… concerned… about Victoria."
"We all are," Katya said, a touch too defensively.
"I know. But there is something deeper that worries me. What happened this afternoon is… disquieting," Selene said. "Please sit, all of you."
They did, all in a row, leaning on one another to keep themselves upright. Katya, to her own amazement, somehow had the most energy of the three, and wound up in the middle. But with the warmth and presence of her sisters pressed against her, she was more than happy to serve as a lodestone.
"Before we go to the Council and you meet the Crones, along with everyone else that will be there, I must make clear to you my concerns about Victoria." Selene looked between them deliberately, one by one. "Concerns I have kept to myself for the longest time, but now I feel I must share with you. I didn't think it would be necessary, but today has provided too great a compulsion for me to ignore them anymore.
"Whatever you think of other witches, of the other Manifests that you may be imagining will be at the Council, or if you think there will be witches even more powerful than you've yet met…" she shook her head. "In the few months that Victoria has had her Manifest, she is already quite possibly the most powerful witch who has ever lived."
Selene let the words sit, the truth in them rising over the three of them like they were being submerged in it.
"I, nor anyone else, have never heard of a Manifest even remotely close to Victoria's," Selene said quietly. "Whether it even has an upper limit, no-one can say. The only check on its expansion is Victoria's desire to learn. Every new scientific breakthrough is a potential avenue for her power to grow into. Every new rule discovered, she can learn. Every new rule she learns, she can break. Her Manifest is utterly unique in its expandability and adaptability. Witches don't… do… what Victoria does. The asylum, the Circus, this afternoon…" Selene took a deep breath. "I will confide in you three, and you three alone, that she terrifies me. I see her walk through walls, know that she can stop bullets…and I understand in my bones that that is but a fraction of her potential. When I would send my reports to the Council concerning her development, I will admit that it was not only to satisfy my obligation as a record of our history, but to articulate my fears about her. I worry about the reaction she will receive when we arrive. As I never received a response, I don't know how they will view her. They may already see her as a threat; when they take a closer measure of her Manifest and realise for themselves how strong she is…"
Selene took a deep breath, clenching and un-clenching her scarred fingers. "That makes you very important," she said, her eyes falling on each of them leaden with the weight of her words. "Yekaterina, you have gotten through to her in a way that I, quite honestly, didn't think was possible. To get her to even acknowledge her feelings is a gift that I am truly grateful you possess, let alone everything else you have done to help her deal with them. Svetlana, you can see her true feelings, and yet she has taken to you faster than almost anyone I have seen her with. And Elise… you are her Coven. You've saved her life twice, and she trusts you implicitly.
"We must be here for her. That she ever got to the point of attempting suicide is the most shameful thing that I have ever allowed to happen. But I fear that she will, in the end, end up taking her own life, albeit unintentionally. Yekaterina, you were right to confront her, and excoriate her as you did. She must remember that she is a human being, and not merely a conduit for that Manifest of hers."
"Selene," Katya began quietly. She was so tired. Was she about to spout nonsense, or perfect clarity brought on by her brain misfiring? She forged ahead. "You feel it too, don't you? That… thing inside her."
"I feel something within her, Yekaterina, but I will not subscribe to the idea that it is anything other than Victoria. Svetlana?"
"There is only Victoria," Sveta said. "There is no 'thing' within her."
"But it feels… coiled, or tensed, within her all the time."
"Her magic is different," Elise said. "The same, but different. I cannot explain the feeling well. I feel her life energy, her magic as it runs through her body… but that is all there is. I agree with Svetlana."
"Then what is it that we feel?" Katya asked. "I feel that it's what's going to get her killed."
"Her ambition, perhaps. The desires she laid out to you run very strong within her. She must remain anchored so they do not carry her away," Selene said. "Elise, Yekaterina, Svetlana, do you love her?"
"Of course," Katya said first, the others echoing on top of her.
"Then she must know that. She needs a reason to be here, with you."
"I told her as much," Katya said.
"Yes, but she must feel it. She is rational and intelligent, and receptive to rhetoric, but her heart, for all she tries to present it as hard, is fragile. She, more than any of us, needs to feel how much you care about her. Her logic often overrides her feelings, and she is very good at hiding them."
"Unless she is provoked," Elise said.
"Yes," Selene said. "We've seen what she is capable of when she is angry. Do you know what she's like when she's happy? As happy as you've seen her unhappy?"
None of the three witches arrayed on the bed had an answer.
"Neither to I," Selene said.
The EVE residence was dark and quiet, save for the whisper of Pretoria's bare feet across the wooden floor and the thoughts racing in her mind. She hadn't a clue what time it was, she just knew she'd woken up from a fitful sleep famished, so she followed her stomach's growls down the stairs into the kitchen.
It was the biggest one she'd ever seen.
It had four burners (four!) on the stove, cupboards galore, along with two breadboxes and a strange object on the wall she couldn't imagine using to cook anything, especially the twin bells on the front. The black wire might have been for cutting cheese, but it was so alien to her that she had no choice but to ignore it for fear of her brain catching fire.
Striding across the kitchen in her pool of white witchlight, she opened one of the breadboxes and tore off a hunk of what she found inside.
Soft and brown, it was the most delicious bread she had ever tasted. It made her jaw ache in happiness as she savoured every chew until she had sucked every drop of flavour out of it. There were notes of honey and oats in it, making it slightly sweet, but perfect for fresh butter, which she wasn't courageous enough to try pilfering.
Bread, in her experience, was hard and filling, not something she would ever have called enjoyable. But this? She could hardly call it bread at all.
Swallowing the last of it, she searched for a water glass in the shifting shadows cast by her witchlight. Learning how to make it fly was still inconceivable to her, even if she'd seen it done, so she used hers as she always had, perched on top of her head.
Retrieving a glass, she held it in her hand and stared at it.
She looked from it to the taps and back again.
She wasn't thirsty.
Come to think of it, she hadn't been thirsty since she'd climbed out of the river. How could that be? She was shedding water with every movement (or even without moving at all), where was it coming from?
If she wasn't thirsty, why had she reached for the glass in the first place? she wondered before she realised the answer: habit. Bread for her had always been so dry, she had needed water afterwards every time she ate it.
Now? Not only was the bread moist and delicious, she didn't need water at all. For anything.
Except as a tool.
Setting the glass down on the counter, she shuffled away from that thought and pushed into the dining room.
Before a great window was a great table, with twelve chairs arrayed around it. She'd never seen a table with twelve chairs around it before, and it was beginning to dawn on her just how little she'd actually experienced in her life.
Scared to death by an aeroplane; electric lights, indoor running water, soft bread, big tables, she felt like someone in a fairy story who'd accidentally been transported into the future.
It was the future in that she'd traveled several hours by train to get here, but how could that account for how different things were? And not only was it the same time, it was the same country. She spoke the same language as everyone else in this house, but it felt like she'd been deposited here from some far-away land.
But, of course, she had been.
Grasping the nearest chair, she pulled it out silently on the plush carpet and sat down heavily to stare into the blackness of night. Her witchlight flickered to nothing to make it total. She knew it was so dark because The Shed was right there, but she still took some comfort in pretending that night looked the same here as it did at home. There may not have been any stars, nor rush of water nor the wind singing through the trees, but it was dark and quiet.
And she was alone.
But not really. The pressure of other Manifests was there, so she knew she wasn't, but sitting by herself in the dark, they were surprisingly easy to ignore. As long as her thoughts were elsewhere, the pressure went away and she could feel alone again.
Did she want to, though?
Ivy had let her cry herself to sleep, tucking her into bed without waking her. Millie had reached out as so few had: to be a friend. But she'd said something else, hadn't she?
Honesty with yourself.
But every time Pretoria tried, the same two words came up: broken and dangerous.
Why should these people be forced to live with that?
If she left this place they wouldn't have to, and Pretoria would be alone. All alone. A bizarre freak with the deaths of five people on her conscience and no idea how her own body worked anymore. Where would she go? What would she do?
She had no idea.
Ivy's warmth still radiated within her, she could still feel where their hands had been clasped. EVE had been welcoming and kind to her, but something in her rebelled at the idea that she had to stay here because of it. Was that really a choice? Did she want to be here or did she just lack for options?
Do you want to see the disappointment on their faces when you fail your next test? How will you do it this time, give up or kill someone?
Water dripped onto the table in the quiet marking of time as she thought.
Half of EVE wasn't even here—the half she had been told to resent. What would happen when they came back? She would have to look Miss Ravenwood and that Russian in the eye and have this conversation with herself all over again.
Would that be so bad? She didn't know. She knew how she felt, but that didn't make it right. She'd been wrong about Millie, and Niamh had saved her life. Ivy was wise—even more so than Aunt Agatha, Pretoria was forced to admit, and had shown her nothing but kindness.
There was every reason to stay, but that very kindness was also the reason she should leave. She could hurt them, or worse. Those kind souls would be forced to share a house with a murderer because she was too dangerous to be let loose on the world.
Why should they? What did Pretoria have to offer? She couldn't read, she didn't know how her Manifest worked, she dripped water everywhere, soaked the sheets every night, mistrusted everyone she met, had cried like a child into Ivy's shoulder until she passed out… why would they want someone like that? Even if she accepted herself, which she didn't, why would they trust her? They wouldn't want to share a house with someone who had killed five people without meaning to or even knowing for sure how she did it. What would keep her from doing it again? It would disrupt whatever sense of community or family they had to allow someone like her in the middle of it.
She'll drown you in your bathtub if you cross her.
She looks like that because her soul drowned first.
She's probably a kelpie, but this one won't even leave your guts behind.
Looking down at the table, Pretoria's ghostly white hands were visible even in the near-total darkness, what little ambient light coming in from outside enough to reveal her fingers splayed apart, flat against the dark, rich wood.
At least they aren't webbed, she thought. You're enough of a freak as it is.
It was stupid. All of her soul-searching was pointless, wasn't it? They weren't going to want to keep her around. They were being kind to her so she wouldn't be dangerous to anyone when she left, that's all. Keep her around long enough to find out why she was broken, fix it, then be done with her. Sensible.
Niamh brought you here because she didn't know what else to do with you, not because you have any value to EVE, Pretoria thought. Your Manifest is all wrong; dangerous. A curse. It saved your life to see what you did with it. Now you'll have centuries of living with the answer, walking the earth as a murderer, a confessed kinslayer; twisted and evil.
This isn't a respite; you weren't saved, it's the start of your penance.
The darkest forces within Pretoria were pulling her in every direction at once, and it felt like she was going to tear herself apart. So much had happened, things were so different since Aunt Agatha had died, but she hadn't even been allowed time to grieve. Every choice she'd made had been the wrong one. She shouldn't have trusted Gloria, she shouldn't have trusted herself. She wanted to trust Ivy so badly, but how could she? How could she trust anyone anymore, least of all herself to make a decision like this?
But; stay or leave, it was the only choice she had.
The sound of Ivy's voice.
The feel of Millie's Manifest saving Pretoria from herself.
That assumes we want you.
You're not welcome here… leave this place.
From the stairs came the creaking sound of someone descending them, and Pretoria became aware of the pressure of a Manifest coming along with it. She didn't turn to look, keeping her eyes focused on her hands as she tried to keep them from shaking.
"Can't sleep?" said the voice of the 'ghost.'
Fat fingers clenched into balled fists, and Pretoria pushed herself to her feet. "I know how you feel about me, Alexandra," she said. "So I won't bother you anymore."
Without looking at the Russian witch, Pretoria made her way to the other door, through the kitchen and out the back door into the night.
For all that fire could no longer harm Katya, hot coffee was still perfectly capable of scalding her tongue and she cursed, spitting it back into her cup with as much dignity as she could manage, which wasn't much first thing in the morning. Especially this morning.
She'd tossed and turned all night, everything about the previous day repeating over and over in her mind with no helpful conclusion to show for it. As a result, she would need to get as much coffee into her as quickly as possible if she was going to face the trip east that still loomed ahead of them like a thundercloud.
Already having run out of wits to rub together, she tried very hard to forget they were only halfway through this misadventure, and Vita had almost died already. Again.
