CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: SHAHAR
A/N: Warning! Character death.
There was a long, awkward silence as we all tried to take in what we'd just been told. I was deeply shocked but not entirely surprised. I'd always known that Tara was bitter as well as sweet. She'd been less guarded with me, I'd been only a kid back then. A horrible suspicion came to me.
"There's a copy of Y Gwynt a'r Glaw in the library at Kyme*. I've seen that spell. It needs the blood of an innocent to work. Did you, did you kill someone, Kez?"
"Miss Kitty Fantastico."
Could this day get even worse? "I never did see the body. I believed you when you said the crossbow killed her. Did she suffer?"
Kerith looked up towards the forest canopy, away from our collective gaze. She said without inflection "I boiled her alive in the cauldron. She died in agony."
Emunah went white and vomited his meal into the fire. Told him it was a hare. Bethany's face turned cold. Aravah's expression was neutral but there was a flicker of understanding and a glimmer of compassion in his eyes.
I was empty and numb inside. Tears flowed down my cheeks. "Why? Why her?"
Kerith kept her gaze upward. "Because I needed to destroy something Willow and I both loved. To focus my ill intent upon her. Miss Kitty was the next best thing we had to a daughter of our own." She looked at me suddenly. "You were the obvious choice but I could never have done that to you Dawnie."
I touched her cheek gently. "I love you Kerith but right now I do not like you."
I turned my back on her and retrieved my urchins from the fire. The hedgehogs had baked to char.
* A city of Alba Sulh in the north of the former England.