Luna Rising: The Prophecy

Chapter 6: On the Brink

Meanwhile, elsewhere

“From Night Star, mistress,” the messenger quavered, a sealed note in hand.

Cecelia held out her hand. “Getting a little needy, are we?”

The werewolf looked nervously around the hovel. “I don’t know, I don’t know what it says.”

“Trust me,” Cecelia said. “Your kind only reaches out to me when they need something.”

She broke the seal on the parchment and unfolded it, skimming its contents. “Your Gamma is dead these two months, I see,” she mused as she read. “Seeking revenge?”

“It was Blue Moon, mistress!” the messenger burst out. “They ambushed us when we were clearly in unclaimed territory!”

“My my, how dreadful,” Cecelia said with a chilling smile. She was glad her sister was out gathering herbs. She didn’t like to conduct her business in front of her. Really, she only lived with her some of the time, preferring to travel. It made her more difficult to find, and people were less likely to seek her out here, where they would come across her sister Ruya and be tempted by her prophetic offerings. But there were a few exceptions, the Night Star pack being one of them, where there was a long-standing relationship that went back generations.

She looked up at the trembling werewolf and raised an eyebrow. He was fairly new to the job, and she had thoroughly terrified him last time he was here. Walking in on a ritual that involved bathing naked in blood was bound to be startling, she supposed. But she preferred her customers to have a healthy dose of fear. It made them much easier to deal with than the arrogant ones. "Well?" she asked expectantly.

"Uhh...what, mistress?" he replied in a quavering voice.

“What does your Alpha want me to do?” Cecelia asked.

“Um…the message…doesn’t…say?” The wolf trailed off.

“It says your Gamma will do your pack’s magical dealings from now on,” Cecelia said impatiently. “And that we’re to meet soon.” She eyed him imperiously. “I do not meet anybody unless I wish to do so. I do not take orders from your Alpha. In fact, I resent the implication that just because your previous Gamma was careless enough to get himself killed, I should rearrange my life to suit your pack’s needs.”

“I…I…”

Cecelia smirked to herself. She could practically smell the fear rolling off of him. Perfect. “Tell your master the cabin. Three days time.”

“Yes, mistress,” the werewolf said eagerly, relieved he would soon be gone from that spooky place. He all but ran to the door, yanking it open in his haste to leave.

“Excuse me?” Cecelia said innocently, stopping him in his tracks.

“Y-yes mistress?” the messenger asked miserably.

Cecelia stood up and glided over to him. “I require payment for disturbing my peace,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, starting to rummage in the pockets of his cloak. “I have some money—“

No,” she said dismissively, summoning a small empty jar off the shelf to her hand, “that won’t be necessary.”

Cecelia stood on her tiptoes, her face inches from his. He trembled. “Wh-what are you going to do?”

“Relax,” Cecelia cooed. “This won’t hurt a bit.” She pressed the lip of the jar to the young man’s temple, holding it there until a drop of his nervous sweat trickled into it. “There!” she said with satisfaction, corking the jar and slipping it in her pocket. “You may go.”

The werewolf ran so fast that he tripped over his feet in his haste to leave the witch’s hovel, landing flat on his face. He scrabbled back up again and took off in a sprint, wanting to get to the boundary where he could shift as quickly as possible.

Cecelia returned to the table where she had been working when the Night Star messenger wolf showed up. Her journal was open, but not much was written on the page yet. She took Night Star’s latest request and tucked it in the back for safekeeping. Caspar. A bit of a precious name. She would see what this new Night Star Gamma was like soon enough.

She returned to her open page and continued making her list. Her accord with Night Star was a convenient relationship that she took full advantage of when her sister Ruya made that prophecy about the werewolf war’s end all those years ago. A war Cecelia enjoyed watching. A war she had fostered over the years.

A war she had helped to start.

But that prophecy would ruin it all. And the time was near. She knew there were no real dates attached to her sister’s visions, but she knew how werewolf mating worked. The girl would turn eighteen very soon. The boy already had. And, when the first part of the prophecy came true, the second was sure to follow. Everything was on the brink of tipping directly into Fate’s plan.

She made another entry on her list, one of her last efforts she made many years ago to circumvent the prophecy. Since then, she had played the waiting game, biding her time until the clock started ticking again, counting down to the prophecy's supposed fruition.

Had she done enough? She wasn’t sure. Her mother had, over a century ago, cast a binding spell that prevented Cecelia from meddling in her sister’s visions the way she desired. That was after she had killed someone she thought was the subject of one of Ruya’s prophecies, only to find that she was wrong. Ever since then, she was forced to work from the shadows, to find indirect ways to try to thwart them.

For thwarting her sister had become an obsession. She had lived for over three centuries, her sister for almost four, and she had not known her to ever be wrong. Not once. The gifted, perfect child their mother had cherished so. If she could just prove that she wasn’t quite perfect. That would be enough.

She had dabbled mischievously from the shadows, trying and failing to prevent one of Ruya’s prophecies from coming true. Even with her mother’s spell, she was powerful enough to have an influence of her own. But it was never enough. Somehow, some way, they always found a way to come to pass. But now, more than ever, she needed her efforts to be enough.

Ruya returned from hunting herbs, interrupting her thoughts. Cecelia closed her journal. “Did you find what you needed?” She asked in a bored tone.

“Yes,” Ruya replied. “And how was your visitor?”

“Like you need to ask,” Cecelia muttered. Ruya had, as the decades went on, delved deeper and deeper into her connection with Fate, until she was hardly a witch anymore, hardly even a seer, but just a vessel of prophecy, knowing anything and everything about the future.

“He will get over his fear,” Ruya said, setting her basket on the floor next to the small cauldron by the hearth. "He will grow accustomed to you in time."

“I know,” Cecelia said irritably. “I just like to have fun with them. They’re like little babies at this age.”

Ruya stared at her, and Cecelia clamped her mouth shut, realizing just what she said. “It’s nothing to do with him,” she said quickly.

Her sister continued to stare impassively.

“So, all-knowing sister of mine,” Cecelia said. “Do you have anything else to say, or are you, as always, helpful to everyone except me?”

Ruya didn’t answer, but kept her eyes downcast, focusing on levitating her collected herbs into the air and stripping their leaves from them, which fluttered into the cauldron.

“Whatever,” Cecelia replied, getting to her feet, annoyed. “I’m going out.”

“It will not help,” Ruya said flatly. “Your next efforts. You only delay the inevitable.”

“Fate has many threads,” Cecelia retorted. “Even you cannot tug on them all.”

“They will be mated, and it will end,” Ruya said in a dreamy voice.

“That’s what you think,” Cecelia snapped, ducking out of the hovel with her cloak pulled around her shoulders.

Ruya looked at the place her sister had occupied mere seconds before. “We will end, too,” she said softly. “When the war ends, so will we.”

---

Cecelia stomped through the woods, disturbing a flock of sparrows in the trees. They chattered in alarm and took flight seeking a more peaceful roost.

She hated it when Ruya said anything about the fruitlessness of her attempts to change something foreseen as Fate’s design. Especially when it came to this particular prophecy. If Ruya’s prediction came to fruition and ended the werewolf war, then everything Cecelia had worked for would be lost. The thousand years of revenge she had promised would be cut short after only half a century. It would be a complete waste.

She needed the war between the werewolves to go on. After all, she was the one that had started it in the first place.