Lily
I turned the page, and something shifted. The diary felt alive beneath my fingers, like it had been waiting for me to reach this moment. The air around me grew warmer, tighter. The words on the page were darker, heavier. It was as if my grandmother had poured more than ink here…like her very soul lived in these lines.
"I was sixteen when I first felt the stirrings of something unnatural within me. At first, it was a whisper, a knowing before it happened, a flicker of light where there was none. But I ignored it. I was my father's daughter, and my place was among my people."
I leaned closer, my pulse quickening. "I was not born in Marlick. I came from Ravinia, a kingdom where men ruled with steel and beasts with strength. My father, Dorian, was a man of war, a leader among warriors. My mother… She was everything he wasn't. Soft-spoken. Wise. And burdened with a power she dared not name."
I froze. Miriam's mother…my great-grandmother…had been like me. "She never spoke of it outright, but I saw it. The way she would whisper to the wind and it would carry her voice farther than it should. The way the fire in our hearth never died unless she willed it. The way her hands, so delicate and warm, could ease pain with just a touch."
I swallowed hard. Magic wasn't some distant thing, it ran in my veins. In hers. In ours. "She hid it well. But magic has a way of demanding to be known." Gods. "On my eighteenth birthday, it awoke fully. A fire in my blood, a pulse in my bones. The night was quiet, but I felt the air shift. The land itself breathed with me. And when I reached out… truly reached out… it answered."
I could feel it as I read; her fear, her wonder. The same things I'd felt in the forest when everything had begun to unravel. "My father was terrified. Magic was tolerated in whispers, but never in the bloodline of warriors. He called me cursed. Unworthy. My mother begged him to reconsider, but tradition was stronger than love."
I pressed my hand to my chest. My heart ached with something old, inherited. "I was given a choice: suppress what I was… or leave my home forever." Tears welled in my eyes. "I left." I closed the book for a moment, breathing through the ache in my ribs. She had walked away from everything she knew. And somehow… I was walking the same path. But I wouldn't run. Not like she had to. Not now. I opened the diary again, my fingers moving faster across the pages.
"The road was unkind, but I survived. I learned. I sought those who could teach me. And in the shadows of the world, among those who lived unseen, I found my truth."
"Magic is neither light nor dark. It is a force, as natural as the moon in the sky and the tides in the sea. But those who fear it will always seek to destroy it." Yes. The fear wasn't mine. It belonged to them. To the ones who burned what they didn't understand.
For days, I stayed locked away with her words. I didn't eat. I barely slept. The candlelight burned low, the wax thick as blood. But I read on. I let her memories bury themselves inside me.And then I reached the section. The one that changed everything.
"I came to Marlick alone, with nothing but my name and the power I dared not speak of. And then, I met him." My breath caught. "Jim Marlick." No. "Jim was a great man, a strong and noble werewolf. He was the first to look at me and not see an outcast. He took me in…not as a sorceress, but as a maid. A place to belong. A home. I should have been grateful, and I was. But gratitude was not all I felt."
She loved him. She had loved Marlick. I clutched the page, my fingers trembling. "Jim had a mate. A good woman. A kind woman. But I was content to serve, to protect. And just be near him. That was enough. Or at least, I thought it was." A lump rose in my throat. Her heartbreak bled through the page. And then, I saw the name. "And then Zal entered my life." A chill rippled down my spine.
"Zal was like me, born with magic in his veins. He saw me, truly saw me, and he wanted me. He spoke of marriage, of joining forces. But I did not love him. There was a darkness in him. A hunger I could never accept." Darkness. My pulse quickened.
"He did not take my rejection well. He became relentless. He said he would prove himself to me. That I would see his power and know he was meant to be mine. I begged him to stop. But Zal… Zal was not a man who stopped." I could feel it now. The shape of the storm gathering around me. Around Elis.
"He grew reckless. He used his magic to kill. To maim. To destroy. And the one he hated most… was Jim." No. No, no, no.
"Zal's hatred for Jim Marlick knew no bounds. And when he realized I would never choose him, he sought vengeance the only way he knew how. He cursed the Marlick bloodline." I couldn't breathe.
"No Marlick descendant would shift. No Marlick would procreate. He would destroy them, not with claws or steel but with something far worse. A fate written in magic, woven into their very existence."
The words blurred before my eyes. Elis. The curse, the one he had hidden from the world. The shame he carried. The thing he thought no one could ever explain. It was this. Zal had done this. The attack in Elis' chambers. The assassin cloaked in darkness. The Alpha who aged into dust the moment he died. These weren't accidents. They were spells. Black magic. Zal's legacy wasn't buried. It was waking up.
And now…Now it was reaching for Elis.I slammed the book shut, my breath ragged. Miriam had survived him. But I would have to stop him. Or I would lose the man I…The man I couldn't stop loving.