The Heir Of Dreams And Curses

Where I am finally ready to meet my fate

I almost felt pity for Jake.

He was serioulsy outnumbered, and his only valuable ally had just been killed.

Speaking of which, I wondered what the other tricks up his sleeve could be. Not that he wasn't holding his own --- it was almost impossible to kill him, if anything because of his stubborness.

But I meant what I said before. I was stubborn too. If I had decided Jake would never leave the room with Set's power in his body, then it wasn't happening. Period.

As far as I could understand, I could guess Alice and Elinor had already left the place. They looked nowhere to be found, even with the walls crumpled to the ground, exposing everything in the house.

Jake seemed to notice it for the first time too, and got very angry. "I can't believe you destroyed my house!" he said. "You've brought nothing but a great deal of trouble ever since you started living with us in the Aether Realm! Tell him, Mister Winter. No, tell me. Why are you fighting on his side? I thought you didn't like him much."

My grandfather lowered his head, which probably meant that it was true.

"It doesn't matter if I do," he replied. "I've lived long enough to be able to tell right from wrong. I'm simply trying to stop you, Jake, the way I should have stopped my son."

"Oh," Jake laughed. "I'm not worried, then."

Mister Winter's eyes flashed angrily. "I didn't give it my all back then," he said. "And it's always been my greatest regret. The reason why I could never get along with my grandchildren the way I should have had. And don't take me for a fool. Even if I die stopping you, I would have still fullfilled my greatest wish. And that is true for everyone else who's fighting against you."

"Am I that important?" Jake asked. "Why didn't you show me before, if that was the case? You always made me feel unimportant, like the lowest scum. Worth a little more than Jeff, but Jeff is Jeff."

"You too," Mister Winter added. "Would probably die for your cause. I just don't think it's worth it."

"Who are you to decide? You've never liked power," Jake spat. "You've never even been curious as to what power does. You don't believe anything, all of your curiosity was sucked out of you at birth."

"It wasn't," my grandfather replied. "It was sucked out of me the moment his son started putting himself in trouble and following the path of the dark magic."

"Well," Jake tried to say. "Than why aren't you angry with Ryan? Aren't we two sides of the same coin? One and the same? Despised by our mothers, with fathers too weak to impose their will? Both of us dark Enchanters, and who desire the power of the curse?"

"Wrong," I felt the need to say. "I like dark magic. Everyone knows. It's interesting, and the world must be both black and white, dark and light to survive. Besides, the element of my family is the darkness. But I've never desired to be curse, and it took me by force in a time when I was weak. If it had asked, I would have never said yes."

"Give it to me, then!" Jake said incoherently.

"You can see very well that I won't," I replied. "And you know why. People do the worst things when they're possessed. Set feeds himself on blood. So far I've been giving him mine. But I won't be able to hold him back much longer, and you wouldn't be able to hold him off for a minute."

It wasn't the wisest choice of words. Jake hated to appear weak or incompetent. That was a thing I did not relate to. If I was incompetent at something I knew, and I tried my very best not to be. It had been that way with magic.

And while there are some things I simply couldn't do, like most practical things, well, I was an Enchanter, not a champion for the Olympic games, right? Jake thinking he could host the power of the curse efficiently was like me signing up for a difficult sports competition.