The Vixen & the Fox II

Chapter 261

Stefan groaned as he came to, he tried to look around, but a he found himself constricted. Twisting he tried to break free; for the first time in seven years he cursed being mortal, as he didn't want to be a tool.

"Sh," a voice soothed and a beautiful woman with sable hair filled his vision. She was very beautiful, almost unreal in beauty, he could see that, which had him blinking rapidly as he tried to pull away from her.

"Where's Elena?" he rasped as he tried to pull away from her touch, which was tracing over his brow. She frowned.

"Why do you love her?" she asked him gently. "I understand the doppelgänger curse, but what compels you to love her? She's so weak, pathetic really."

"Elena," he rasped. "She's kind, gentle, generous, compassionate, alive," he rattled off as he watched the woman in his line of sight.

"It is amusing, even thousands of years later those are the reasons, they were the very reasons from your ancestor," she said softly.

"Who are you?" he asked, fear was slithering down his spine and crawling under his skin. The woman was so calm, so very, eerily calm, it was unsettling as he looked at her.

"I'm Qetsiyah," she answered.

"You... you created the curse?" he muttered. "Immortality..." he rasped as he watched her.

"I created it," she agreed. "I created the monster of my own undoing, the blight of this world, and the imbalance of Nature. I will break it," she decided levelly.

"Why?" he asked.

"Why what?"

"Why all of this?" he asked.

"Because he betrayed me," she answered softly. "Witches of my power, they were rare, and I loved him, he opened my world, my magic, he did not fear my powers as many of my own Coven did. Fire, it's so wild, so powerful, so dangerous, only gods are ever truly ever entrusted with such a power, so such a power is... feared in mortal witches. But he did not fear me," she whispered. "I loved him."

"Then why do this?" Stefan demanded.

"He shared my hearth, by bed, my power, he built a world with me, a life, and we were happy. Our union would bring prosperous trades between Rome and Jerusalem, for my family were merchants and we were powerful, and Silas, Silas had the ear of senators and emperors. Together we would have ruled over the witches, and we would've given magic to all who needed it. Our people, our Coven we built, they were ordinary people with need of power against monsters," she explained. "The more we gathered, the more we cultivated, the more powerful our people, the Zotts were thankful for our ways as we accumulated them.

"Silas agreed to marry me, but to do so he had asked impossible tasks for me to prove my devotion to him. Immortality, a divinity which only his gods granted to those worthy, I needed to unlock this secret. Then we would both drink the gift of immortality, and we would rule our empire for millenniums to come."

"But that didn't happen," Stefan muttered. He remembered Kol and Davina's ramblings about Silas and he vaguely remembered Bonnie explaining the story once.

"To my humiliation he had no intentions of ever marrying me," she muttered sourly. "He had sowed his seeds, both within me and within Amara," she sneered sourly. "My humiliation was not enough for him, he needed my disgrace. Amara bore his son, and in my disgrace, I bore him a daughter after I had fled with what remained of my heart."

"I'm sorry," he murmured gently. He could only imagine how painful that could've been for Qetsiyah and Silas and Amara really.

"Do not be," she waved off. "My daughter found sanctuary in those of similar power, and eventually I met my child's decedent; I must admit Bonnie was not what I was expecting, it is all the more humiliating she would entangle herself with the decedents of Silas' and Amara's offspring. It is unsurprising though would find the descendants of the Norns, I did swear my blood to theirs," she murmured.