Minerva

Chapter One: Meeting Part 2

Minnie was not any of the names he had on record, but he would not argue. It was quite befitting of the small witch. "Minnie then. Alright. Minnie, King Ezraldin wishes to-"

"I don't actually care what your king wants," her voice was back to calm, reclaiming that lilting musical quality that made Darin's heart wiggle beneath his ribs. "I only humored you by allowing you inside, because I know you cannot hurt me here, and my family raised me with manners." Her voice implied that she didn't believe Darin to have been raised the same. "But I am not an idiot. I will not follow a stranger, King's pet or not, to a place I have never been before, with no assurances and no information. I am not an animal to be led blindly." Again her tone held such negative implications toward his own life.

He was happy he had been cleared to fill the girl in on at least some of the work King Ezraldin had recruited her for, because if her words were anything to go by, she was not budging without a sound explanation.

"Your mother, as I'm sure you are aware, did not have a very...pleasant relationship with my king."

Her laugh was ice. "That is the understatement of the millennium."

The witch Beth Harlow, as she had publicly chosen to go by, had always lived as an untamed soul, mainly ignored by her family as she grew through her adolescent years. Her older brother was expected to take on the family legacy and lead the Harlows when the time came, so her parents focused on his magical and political training, and threw large piles of cash at Beth to keep her preoccupied and out from underfoot. But in a major turn of events, the brother, Gregory Benedict Calum Harlow, had cast off his magic and went into exile, leaving the younger girl to take over. Beth was a horrible leader by all accounts, dodging responsibility, only sticking around long enough to have a single offspring with her betrothed before leaving to be with the supposed love of her life, Samuel Kim, a representative on the Vampire Council.

She had hardly been the first witch to have a relationship with a vampire, but she was the first head of house to do so, at least openly. The king had been furious. The people had urged him to do something, anything, fearing that the other witches would pledge their allegiance in suit with the Harlows. Ezraldin had refused to act, trying all manners of diplomacy to keep the wolves' relationship with the witches peaceful, as it had always been in the past. Those manners went out the window the moment several eyewitnesses stood in the throne room in Castle Storvin and recounted Beth alongside her lover Samuel and a small army of vampires attacking their pack in Southern California. Two hundred and sixteen wolves died. She was captured shortly thereafter and executed in Ireland, making her the only witch a werewolf monarch had ever sentenced to death.

"Her blood still festers in the ground in Ireland," Darin wished there was a softer way to explain, but he did not know enough about witch magic to be able to do so.

"I imagine the ground where her body bled to death will be scarred for a few centuries to come." It wasn't uncommon for even less powerful witches to leave the places of their death barren. As it had been less than a decade since Beth's passing the ground there was still ripe with magic. "I only hope your king didn't think to unbind her before doing it. A witch's magic is never more powerful than when facing death, or shortly thereafter."

Minnie seemed to understand Darin's silence immediately.

"He unbound her." She nodded slowly, the few curls that were loose bouncing around her face. Her pouty lips were parted slightly in disbelief. "And what kind of spell did she cast? Turn your king into a toad? Cursed with bad breath?"

Darin grimaced. If only it were that simple. "It is something you will have to see for yourself." His permissions did not allow him to reveal such sensitive information. "We have had countless magic wielders to the castle in the hopes that the spells could be broken but alas, the only consensus they have come to over the past decade is that it would take a witch of the same line to undo what Beth did."