The Strix Pirate | Rebekah Mikaelson

Chapter 13

Rebekah wanted to slap her.

Odile was just staring at her, not sure what to say. Not sure how she should start to explain.

"Well?" demanded the blonde. "Say something!"

"Aya told you, didn't she?" murmured Odile. "She sent you that note."

"Good thing she did, otherwise, you never would have told me the truth."

"I didn't want to tell you this soon, I—"

"Spare me your excuses! You had the one thing I want and you hid it from me. Is this revenge, for me having abandoned you?"

"No!" cried Odile. "Rebekah, let me explain."

Rebekah gritted her teeth. "Best get on with it, then."

"I've worked with witches for centuries," began Odile. "I've known about the legend of Silas ever since I joined The Strix. The witches spoke so much of him, so fearfully, that I made it my business to know. I learned about the Cure, and the Brotherhood of the Five. I sent a few witches to find them, but they were already dead. Your brother had killed them.

"They brought me one of the bodies, charred and rotten, but they were able to reverse the damage just enough to find some snippets of the map. In that time, I knew some Aramaic, and I was able to learn where he was buried. I went there, but I realized that the only way to obtain the Cure was wake him. He'd already been desiccated for a thousand years at that point. I couldn't pry it out of his hands. I knew what I had to do to wake him, but I also knew that it would bring only chaos.

"So I gave up. Kept up with any whispers of him, to see if anyone had managed to obtain the cure. I made the foolish mistake of telling Tristan and Aya that it was one of my many missions. They encouraged it. Having a Cure for Immortality sounded like a good plan... something we could use against our enemies if we were to have it in our possession it. In their eyes, it could be used against your family. In mine, it could be used against Aya. I wanted to kill her, but I didn't have the strength to. The Cure would have granted me power over her.

"As the years went on, I heard less and less about it. It wasn't until Sebastian that I started to search for ways to wake Silas and kill him without using the Cure on him. I knew Sebastian wanted to be turned, and I wanted there to be an option for him to reverse it, if need be. When he disappeared, and I heard about how he'd been tearing through villages, I wished more than anything to use the Cure on him and stop him. Because usually, when someone I've turned ends up being a vicious killer for no reason, I kill them. But I didn't want to kill him. So I thought I could take away the gift I gave him and have my little boy back.

"When I was trying to locate him, and found that The Strix Coven wasn't doing a good job of finding him, I started to communicate with other Covens around the world. I came to know of the Gemini Coven, who I didn't have a lot of faith in because they'd been hunting Traveler witches and failing for many years. But I knew they were mighty, and I figured they could help me. In exchange for my help, they wanted me to help them kill a few of their enemies.

"Their Locator Spells were useless. They weren't any better at finding Sebastian. I'd been more than efficient in eliminating many of the supposed threats that plagued him. It was the early 1800s, and they were creating prison worlds like crazy and collapsing them a few years later. So I asked instead if I could go into one and get supplies. It granted me the ability to get multiple copies of mystical objects I needed for my witches. Anything that existed before the prison world's creation would be there, and I was able to stock up on items that would come in handy.

"I only managed to enter two prison worlds. In each, I traveled to Nova Scotia, and found the Cure by itself. Silas wasn't there, he couldn't be. So... I got my two copies and I kept it a secret, at first. I knew that someone would try to take them from me if they learned about it. I imagined that I'd find Sebastian and we both could take the Cure to just live at peace, without worrying about The Strix anymore.