Prologue - The State of Sin
Prologue - The State of Sin
Books, old spells and a dewy forest fresh from a new dawn—that’s what Mari Orvaine smells like to Sana. A witch with a bloodline so thick that legends were passed down from student to student that anyone else would think to be fiction. It’s a knowledge deep within the blood to let those who were near know that the Orv line was not to be touched.
The blood itself was a warning. Once spilled it was far too late.
Mari came to her like a cool breeze to ease the burning embers inside her body.
“You’re going to burn yourself out,” Mari comments on the fire ball in Sana’s palm hovering beneath a letter that she was intent on forgetting its existence.
“Perhaps, I need a fuel to keep going,” Sana said.
The witch approached. Her steps certain and unbothered. A striking confidence that draws Sana’s attention. Not just Sana but her inner hell-hound.
“A fire always need something to consume.”
Sana inhaled then. That was enough. The right answer at the wrong time. It led her astray within that one moment.
Mari became hers. For twelve years they were together and for twelve years Sana learned what it mean to be careful with something. Not gentle. Never gentle she could not be that. But, careful. She could learn.
Like placing wood in a fire place stoking it to ensure it never burned out. To take care not to have it jump out engulf the house. She was careful. Like an artist pressing down on a canvas.
And she was rewarded with understanding.
Mari knew everything Sana was. All three of her natures. The quintessential hybrid that she was. She found the hell-hound fascinating, the succubus invigoratingly exhausting and the wolf—that sad dormant creature heartbreaking.
“She’s in there you know,” Mari would say when they rested in bed naked bodies flush together. “She just doesn’t know if you’ll allow her out.”
And Sana would say, “she shouldn’t be so stubborn.”
“A wolf no different than its container.”
“You love this container’s stubbornness,” Sana said.
“Mmm that I do.”
Sana did not know it then but that would be their final night together.
Days later on an autumn night where the world would open boundaries that humans always feared a man named Brandt came to collect a debt. A debt not owed to anyone. A fictional one that he created out of arrogance.
He killed her. Mari was gone. Killing her with a spell that bound her spirit and heart. That was meant to control her to make Sana weak. To make Sana pliable.
Sana was never pliable. She was a loaded gun when calm and force of nature when activated. And he activated her. Made her full of fury. Full of hate. Emotions she had never truly felt to this extent.
She felt her rage overcoming her. The Hellhound rising with fury. Death in its gaze. Self recramation from the Succubae who failed to tie her to her in all the ways it mattered. And the wolf was nothing even now.
Because, she was late. Late by five minutes. She knew because she counted. She has counted them a thousand times since.
What happens next is not recorded on any official council document. Sana did not say anything when struck. Did not let them know what moves she made. They found him eventually or what remained of him and of course ruled it a justified execution.
Gerard. His father. Her political enemy was quiet. He did not react in grief. His eyes. Glinting in the same way his son’s did. Imagining the same debt his son did. The same debt he wanted to cash in on.
Sana knew to prepare. However, at the time she did not want to.
She sat in the dark for a long time. The hellhound howled in grief. The succubae was silent for the first time in centuries. And the wolf—the wolf that Mari said was always there went so far down inside Sana that she stopped feeling her entirely.
She told herself it was a mercy. You could not lose what you never had in the first place.
She spent the next fifty years proving herself right. Keeping herself in that bubble that ensured self recrimination for a sin that was not even hers to bear.
