FAMILY SECRETS

Sophia didn't tell Selene what she actually said to Victoria, but when Selene showed up to her room, Victoria was tied to a chair and looked unnaturally pale.

Despite how scared Victoria looked, she kept her mouth firmly shut, which was why Selene was here now.

"Fingers?" Selene asked Sophia.

Sophia considered it a moment, before nodding.

With a sick smile, Selene stepped forward, staring down at Victoria's fingers for a long moment before grabbing her pinky finger tightly and twisting.

Victoria didn't cry out even as Selene broke her pinky, which she commended her for, because Selene had done it on much bigger men before and they all screamed.

"Now, now, Auntie, you shouldn't be so uncooperative. You'll be dead if you don't talk."

Victoria only glared viciously, stubbornly keeping her mouth shut.

Selene broke six more fingers before Victoria finally started whimpering. Reluctantly, Selene found herself admiring Victoria's endurance. She didn't know if it was because Victoria had been tortured before or if she simply had a strong will, but whatever it was it was commendable.

"Okay fine, this clearly isn't working." Sophia sighed. "We should just get rid of her now and then ransack her house to see if we can find any clues."

Victoria was exhausted at this point, panting from exertion and the pain, and at Sophia's words, she finally reacted.

It took a bit more poking and prodding, but at this point Sophia knew she had Victoria where she wanted her.

Rather than a straight explanation, Victoria started telling this strange, long tale.

A long time ago, the world was rife with magic. Not everybody could access the magic, however. In fact, only two bloodlines were able to use magic. The Boyd family, and the Harrison family. Back then the magic using descendants from those families were called sorcerers, and the magic they used was called sorcery. While those families were never royalty, they worked closely with the royal family, and were technically ranked higher than even a ducal house. For a while the sorcerers lived in harmony with the royal family, and magic was seen everywhere, sometimes in nature, other times in strange beasts, until one day, when it all went away.

Some legends say that the sorcerers had twisted magic into something dark, something malevolent, and they had to pay the price by having that magic ripped away from them. Others say that they were simply oversaturated with sorcerers and they sapped up all the magic there was to offer, until eventually there was nothing left. The truth was very different. There was a very strong sorcerer, a Boyd sorcerer, named Elena, who was widely known for her magical prowess and strength. She was known for inventing a type of sorcery that was darker than any other sorcerer had ever seen. She made sorcery that could kill, sorcery that could resurrect the dead, and sorcery that could curse whole bloodlines. While she was revered for her skills at the start, people began to become afraid, they began to worry at all the power she had, and so they did what people did best, they tried to snuff out the threat.

Only, Elena was much stronger than they could even imagine. Even stood up against twenty sorcerers, she was able to overpower them. She was so angry, so hurt, so betrayed, and using the sorcery that she created, she cursed not just a bloodline, but the entire kingdom. She cursed the magic out of the earth, out of the nature, and out of the Boyd and Harrison blood.

So Astrum had to adapt to living without magic, and while they struggled at first, they eventually prevailed, until magic was long forgotten. There were no more magical beasts, no more sorcery and no more sorcerers.

"After Elena cursed Astrum and its people, she left the kingdom forever. But before she left, she left behind journals for her family to read, for her descendants to find. Her family didn't read her journals, too angry over what she'd done to magic to care, so they put it away, and forgot about it, until... me. I was cleaning up one of the Boyd ancestral homes when I came across them. It turned out Elena left behind a means to break the curse in her journals, but only for her family, for the Boyd family, because she was still loyal to them even as she cursed them and everyone in Astrum." She took a deep breath then, and stared straight into Sophia's eyes as she said the next part. "The way to break the curse was simple, it needed a young female descendant of the bloodline, and it needed a blood murder. It needed family to kill family. By the time I found out about it I was already too old for it to work, but you two, you two were still young and would've been perfect. So I was trying to drive you into despising each other, until one of you snapped and killed the other one."

Victoria's story was beyond anything Sophia could've thought of. To begin with, the book had never mentioned a plot like this, so why did this kind of story exist? It seemed entirely too important not to have been a plot line in the book, so why was it only the Boyd family and the Harrison family, why wasn't it the family of any of the main leads?

"I had to bring sorcery back to the Boyds. Can you imagine the power we would have? The influence? People would fear us, cower before us!"

Personally, Selene thought they were doing a fine job of it without any magic whatsoever.

"It needs family to kill family, huh?"

There was a calculating look in Sophia's eyes, one that had Victoria on edge, before she turned and rifled through her desk drawers, eventually pulling out an ornate dagger.

She held up against the light, admiring it. "You're family, aren't you, Auntie Victoria?"

Victoria gasped, understanding what she was implying. Rather than being scared, however, she looked excited, elated. She was shaking with a manic kind of glee. Sorcery was finally being restored to the Boyd line, and while she would not be able to witness it happening, it was still exactly what she wanted.

Sophia looked to Selene expectantly. For a moment, Selene hesitated, thinking the whole magic and sorcery business was a bit shady, but the hard look in Sophia's eyes convinced Selene to trust her.

Selene closed her hand over Sophia's, and then they both plunged the dagger into Victoria's chest.

Victoria died mid laugh, living up to her name, for she was victorious in the end.