“Hiro?”
I turned toward the voice, and when I saw Basil standing in the doorway, a shuddered breath fell from my lips.
He slowly moved into the room, coming up to stand beside me. When he reached out to grab my shoulder, I turned to him, stepped into his space, and pressed my forehead to his neck. He wrapped his arms around me immediately, and as soon as that small comfort registered, a loud sob fell from my chest.
As I fisted his shirt in my hands, he tightened his hold, rubbing my back and whispering, “She’s going to be okay. We’re going to figure this out.” Even though I knew he couldn’t know if that was true or not, I still appreciated the sentiment.
He let me cry on him for a few minutes. I probably should’ve been pissed that he was seeing me fall apart, but anger took too much energy, and I already had all my energy focused on worrying about Rasha.
Taking a shaky breath, I stepped out of his arms and turned back to my daughter without meeting his eyes. Basil stepped closer and put his arm across my back, squeezed my shoulder, and kissed the side of my head. I understood his silent message. He was telling me it was okay that I’d fallen apart in front of him, that he wasn’t going to use it against me—not that I truly thought he would—and he was proving to me that I could lean on him.
“Can you tell me what happened?” he finally whispered.
“She collapsed in class and wasn’t breathing on her own… it’s never gotten this bad before, not to where she’s been unconscious for so long.”
He hesitated before asking, “Do you know what caused it?”
“She’s hexed.”
He stilled, his body going taut against me. “What?”
“A witch hexed her.”
“What the hell kind of witch hexes a child?” He sounded pissed, angrier than I’d ever heard him, and hearing that finally made me look at him. He was staring at Rasha, so tense he could probably cut diamonds. “What happened, Hiro? Please tell me how this happened.” His eyes were blazing, lightning bolts shooting across them, and I could tell he was having trouble keeping his energy in check. If he cared this much, maybe it was time to finally tell him what happened.
With a sigh, I said, “Let’s sit first.”
Without looking away from me, Basil moved his hand toward a chair against the wall and it looked like his shadow magic wrapped around it a moment before the thing went sliding across the floor, stopping beside my chair. He pulled us down into our seats, and I took Rasha’s hand in mine, but Basil grasped onto my other hand, and I let him.
“My wife was a hunter, too. When Millie got pregnant, she insisted on continuing to work even though I protested it on a daily basis. She was very stubborn and independent. Really, it was a small miracle that I’d gotten her to agree to marry me in the first place.” I smiled sadly and waved that away. “We’d been hunting this coven for weeks, but we always seemed to be one step behind. Their pattern of sacrifices was hard to follow—”
“Sacrifices?”
I met his eyes. “The witches from my home country are nothing like the ones here. They… they travel in covens, leaving destruction in their path. This coven had a bounty on them for over a year by the time Millie and I picked it up. They were making human sacrifices all over the country, so we followed their trail of bodies and finally caught up to them when Millie was seven months pregnant.”
I sucked in a harsh breath and closed my eyes for a moment. “They must’ve sensed us on their tail because they came for us in the middle of the night. Ripped us from our bed at the hotel, dragged us by the hair…” I took a moment to get the picture of Millie’s pregnant body being dragged down a staircase out of my head.
Once I locked that image inside a box I never planned to open again, I continued, “I took out four of them before they managed to bind me in their spelled rope. Mills, she, she took out six, I think. She was always a better fighter than me.” I smiled a bit, and Basil squeezed my hand. “But they captured us and took us to a witches circle. They… I showed you some of my runes, yeah?” He nodded. “They couldn’t hex me, but Mills didn’t have any protection runes—she didn’t want them. Since the witches figured out pretty quick that they couldn’t hex me, they tied me to a tree and forced me to watch.”
Basil released my hand and grabbed the back of my neck, massaging the muscles there. “You don’t have to keep going if you don’t want to.”
I shook my head. “Nah, I wanna tell you.”
“Okay.” He kept rubbing my neck and grabbed my hand again with his free one.
“They started the ceremony, the one to sacrifice Millie, and I used their distraction to get free of my binds, but it took me so long to get out of them since they were spelled. They… they cut her up, bled her for their ritual, and—” I cut myself off as I remembered them lapping up her blood and—I shook my head to free myself of that memory. It was tucked down hidden inside that box in my mind for a reason. No good would come of thinkin’ about that. With another shuddered breath, I continued, “When I got loose, three of the witches found it… amusin’ to keep torturing Millie while I fought off the others. They hexed her, over and over again, and I couldn’t reach her, I couldn’t—” A few tears leaked over my eyes, and I wiped them away, trying to ignore the heaviness in my chest, the remembered pain of watching the woman I loved slowly dying only feet from me.
“I killed them—all of them. But it didn’t matter. The hexes were too strong and too complicated. She was gray, her skin cracking as if it was made of glass, and when I touched her hand, it… it crumbled, like it was made of dust, like she was made of dust.”
I stared over at Rasha for a few seconds, then whispered, “So I did the only thing I could think of, the only thing Millie wanted in that moment. I saved our daughter. I… I pulled her out of Millie’s belly and rushed her to the hospital while my wife slowly disintegrated, and you know what she said to me before I left her there?” He shook his head, his big, black eyes staring at me, and a few tears fell. “She thanked me for saving Rasha. She thanked me for leavin’ her there.”
He squeezed the back of my neck, but said nothing.
“She died alone… I left her there because I couldn’t touch her without breakin’ her further, and she… she died alone.”
“No, Hiro,” Basil said, squeezing my hand. “She died at peace, knowing you saved her baby and that you’d take care of her and keep her safe. She died at peace.”
A few more tears fell as I stared at him. I knew that, I knew he was right, but somehow hearing those words from someone else helped settle something in my heart… enough that maybe we could duct tape all the pieces together one day.
He wiped the tears from my cheeks with one hand, and I took a deep breath, nodded at him, then turned back to my baby girl.
“Rasha wasn’t fully developed when she was born, and even though the hexes weren’t made directly at her, she’d still been connected to Millie, so some of that seeped through.”
His eyes flicked back and forth, pain and understanding in them. “I’m so sorry, Hiro. I… I know that doesn’t mean anything, but… I’m sorry.” He stood up and stepped in front of me, pulling my head against his stomach, hugging me. “You did the right thing. You did the right thing, Hiro.”