Author's Note: I definitely cut this update close. The whole point of setting myself a deadline is that I'm trying to find ways to out smart my own procrastination. So far, the procrastination is winning. Also, sorry for the typos, there are always typos no matter how many times I try to root them out. Stubborn buggers.
Into the Darkness: Part III
The clouds threatened rain, casting a dismal pall over the village. Sofia gazed out the window, watching the slow trail of wagons heading to the town square. People milled about, doing brisk business, if perhaps in a less joyful mood than years past. She sighed, feeling a keen loss of the wild, childish joy she used to take in the holiday. Twenty-three felt a lifetime away from seventeen.
A polite knock broke into her thoughts. Baileywick bowed stiffly, his back bothering him on damp days like this. "Prince Liam here to see you, Princess."
She tried her best to smile. "Thank you. Send him in, please."
The prince entered, tall and gleaming with his fair-hair, quilted doublet and high polished boots.
"My dearest." His smile was radiant as her lifted her hand to his mouth for a brief kiss. "How are you today?"
He wouldn't begin to understand, so she did not bother to explain how the bedraggled little fair in the village broke her heart, even as it called to her to come and rejoice. "I'm well," she said instead. It was true enough. "What brings you so early? I did not expect you until dinner."
"Today is a special day. I thought we should spend it together."
A genuine smile touched her lips for the first time that day. "Really?"
"Come," he said, "your mother and father are waiting for us to join them at the chapel."
Her smile faltered. "We're going to church? But it is not Sunday."
"Sofia," he admonished gently, "God is not only God on Sunday. This is a holy day. We should offer our thanks and our obedience for the harvest He has provided."
She turned to walk with him, unwilling to let the subject go as she had so many times in the past. Her stomach pinched painfully. "I agree, today is a holy day. But is it not best to offer our thanks by enjoying the feast of the harvest?"
"The scriptures are clear, All Hallow's Eve should be observed with prayers and fasting, in preparation for All Saint's Day."
"But you've never seen an Enchancia Samhain," she wheedled. "Come to the festival with me. I just know you'd love it if you let yourself."
He did not reply, but his mouth set downward. Sofia felt the building tension of another argument. As her intended, Liam had not proposed yet, but it was expected any day, and Sofia was expected to accepted. She wanted to accept. Or rather, she wanted to want to accept.
"I thought you understood," she tried, not for the first time to put it into words he could accept. "This is part of me. It is a part of who I am. These things are real, they have meaning. Magic is real. I've seen it. I've grown up with it."
He made an impatient gesture, sweeping aside her words. "Just because it is real does not make it good. It is blasphemy. A tool of the Demon to lure good people to do evil."
Sofia's mouth opened on a heated rebuttal, but the sound of raised voices echoing down the corridor made her pause. Father Humbert's thundering tones were easy to recognize and unremarkable; he often stormed on about sin and damnation, adopting the full-voice volume of the pulpit in every day speech. The man seemed to think sheer volume could win any argument. What surprised her was the other voice shouting back at him.
Rounding the corner, she saw Cedric red-faced and furious, clutching a crumpled piece of parchment which he brandished at the priest and the king. Sofia had never seen him so angry.
"You have gone too far," he barked, "You can mark me, Roland, the people will not stand for this persecution. And I cannot believe that you would sanction such blatant prejudice."
"Do not listen to this serpent's tongue," Father Humbert lowered his tone with limited abeyance to the king's authority, "He is corrupted by the Demon's own magic."
"A serpent, am I?" Cedric rasped, his wand appearing in his hand with a thought. "Perhaps I should change you into the odious toad that you are."
Sofia dropped Liam's arm quickly, leaving him behind to step between the arguing men. Father Humbert often contradicted Cedric's counsel to the king, but he'd never been so bold as to outright insult a fellow adviser.
"What is going on here?" she demanded, throwing a confused look to her father, who was being uncharacteristically quiet during the heated exchange.
He did not answer her, but Cedric thrust the crumpled bit of parchment into her hands. She smoothed it out to see it was an official notice, much like the ones she'd seen posted in the village square and around town. This one declared a newly enacted law banning all bonfires of any kind of "All Hallows Eve" and enacting a curfew at sundown to curtail any "unlawful behavior". Guards, it said, would patrol Dunwhitty after dark and take into custody for questioning anyone found out of doors. It did not expressly say but Sofia felt the subtle threat of imprisonment implied.
"Oh, Dad, no!" When she looked to him, dismay written plainly on her face, he had the decency to look away, ashamed.
"Father Humbert thinks it is long past time that we curtail the heathen practices," Roland tried to school his voice with authority, but he could not meet his daughter's eye. "I was reluctant, but it was Liam's council that convinced me it was for the best."
Sofia turned on the prince, her mouth open in astonished outrage. "Your counsel? You encouraged my father to do this?"
He opened his mouth to reply but Sofia's furious glance made him hesitate. She dismissed him, turning away. "Does my mother know about this?"
At this Roland's bland face colored noticeably. "Your mother is … greatly displeased, yes."
Cedric's disgusted snort brought her eyes to him. These men who claimed to worship a god of mercy ringed around her, each one looking down on her with weighty eyes. Father Humbert frowned thunderously, clearly impatient with her inability to fall in line. Liam's brow furrowed with thoughts of his own, a slight disappointment in his blue eyes. Roland finally glance at her, weary and imploring. Only Cedric stood apart. His back straight and arms folded, he spared a look of utter contempt for each man that stood around her, his aristocratic nose high in the air. When his eyes met her, though, they softened in understanding. She gazed back, the pain of this betrayal shared silently between them in that moment. Sofia felt the imprudent urge to go to him, to offer apologies— for what she was not entirely clear, but his regard was the only one she cared for of the lot.
Her gaze was torn away when Father Humbert lowered his voice in that conciliatory air that set her teeth on edge.
"Come, Highnesses, let us go into the house of the One God and pray on this matter." His heavy, judging eyes fell solely on Sofia. "I know you will come to accept the clarity and will of His judgement."
Liam visibly sagged with relief, all too eager to throw off his troubles for the panacea of the church. Roland looked less convinced, but did not object.
"Roland," Cedric made a last attempt, his ire cooled by quiet desperation, "You cannot pray this problem away, and ignoring it will only cause it to grow. Your people need their king to guide them, not force them on a narrow, slippery trail. There only lies downfall. You are losing your people's trust. Repealing this absurd ban will not solve the problem completely, but it is at least a start."
"Please, dad," Sofia urged.
Roland seemed to soften. His mouth opened to speak, but the meaty hand of Father Humbert, bedecked with rings, landed heavily upon his shoulder. "While Mister Cedric," he said the sorcerer's name as one might spit out an obscenity, "makes an eloquent speech, he knows not of our Lord's ways. Of His mercy and forgiveness. Let us pray upon it and seek true guidance on the matter."
Cedric's lips thinned to a bloodless line, his head already shaking in sad disappointment.
"I will consider it," Roland said to them earnestly, but even Sofia's dependable penchant for hope recognized the cause as lost.
"I have said all I can," Cedric said simply. "But you are making a costly mistake."
He turned in an angry swirl of robes, stalking away. Sofia wished she could follow him, but they did not have that kind of relationship anymore. She startled when Liam's warm hand grasped her own.
"Come, dearest, let us join Father Humbert and the king. You will see this is for the best."
She glowered at the yawning maw of the chapel doors. Carved cherubs leered down, their plump baby faces beckoning with sinister zeal. Gently she took her hand from his. "No thank you," she sniffed. She turned in a flounce of skirts dismissing all three men with the proud angle of her shoulders as she walked away in the direction opposite of the one Cedric had gone. "I am not in a praying mood."
Sofia knelt on the thick carpet. A large wooden trunk, the kind usually reserved for children's toys or a young woman's dowry sat at the foot of her bed with its lid open and its illicit contents on display. Aunt Tilly had given her this trunk on her eighteenth birthday. It held the remarkable feature of a secret drawer hidden just beneath a false catch in the lid. On this shallow tray she kept the instruments of her craft.
A gilt pentacle inlaid the wood, surrounded by a circle of salt. At each of the star's five points sat a stubby candle of varying color. They represented the elements: air, water, earth, fire, and spirit. In the center she placed shallow bowl of offering. Not much more than symbols, it held a slice of apple, a curl of cinnamon bark, a small pool of honey, and a crust of bread studded with clove. Double checking the locked door, she closed her eyes, casting a circle of protection in her mind and drew together the power for her spell.
The veil between worlds was said to be thinnest on this night of the pagan new year. Samhain was a day to honor the dead, to celebrate the living, but also to peer through the veil of prophecy and glimpse the future. The long murmuring reservations of Liam's stubborn piety had finally risen to full throated doubts. Now she lit the candles with a taper from the fire, opening her mind and heart to the will of the Goddess, hoping for guidance. The castle walls felt cold and lifeless around her and she longed for the living spirit of the wind and woods. Darkness was falling fast with the setting sun. Clouds gathered out the window, but the impending rain had not yet begun to fall.
Quietly, reverently, she chanted:
The veil grows thin at the time of the dead,
As we honor our long-gone ancestors
In whose footsteps we tread.
Life retreats into the bulbs and the roots,
The time has passed for flowers and fruits.
As leaves fall thick to carpet the ground,
The Dark Mother waits in silence profound.
Now is the time for harvest and feast,
Time stands still for human and beast.
Seek the wisdom of days gone by,
To deal with the past and let it lie.
Face your shadow and see your faults,
Look now to the future and accept the results. (*)
A thin stream of smoke rose from each burning candle. The five streams began to rise and mingle in the air, twisting together to form one thick current. Sofia watched it, entranced, feeling the subtle tingle of magic brush softly on her skin. The smoke drifted towards the bay windows with an intelligent purpose. She rose, carried, not against her will, but strongly compelled to follow. Below the castle, Dunwhitty lay quiet; not with the repose of a sleepy autumn night, but with the mournful hush of the bereaved. Her heart pulled painfully to see it, the houses lit, but no soul out of doors. No children in costumes enjoying the naughty delight of staying out past bedtime. No neighbors sharing a toast of congratulations to another successful harvest and their continued good health. No trail of revelers meandering up to the top of Carver's Hill to witness the lighting of the bonfire. No lovers sneaking kisses in the moonlight. No life, only the cold, empty darkness.
Smoke ringed around her, reminding her of the spell's purpose. A scent drifted through: apple, cinnamon, honey and clove. It reminded her strongly of something but she couldn't immediately attach a memory to the strong yearning it rose in her heart. She glanced down at the quiet town, unsure what the Goddess meant for her to understand. A spark caught her eye, small in the distance, but she could tell it was the beginning of something larger. A tiny light went up on the top of Carver's Hill and her heart leapt into her throat to see it. It grew quickly, becoming a towering conflagration. A bonfire burning defiantly for all to see.
Come.
No more than a half-imagined whisper, but no less compelling than a command. She felt the same pull that had led her to the window, and knew she must follow. She whirled away, running to the closet to gather her cloak. A sharp knock upon the chamber doors quickened her blood, making her eyes leap to the illicit alter and the smoke still lingering in the air.
"Sofia?" Liam's voice called. "Are you in there? I wanted to speak with you before departing."
"Just a minute," she called, blowing out the candles and waving to disburse the smoke. As quickly as was seemly she said a quick prayer of banishment, blessing, and gratitude. Then she shut her little alter away, twitching the old quit over the trunk lid to render it unremarkable.
She opened the door, but blocked the entryway, trying to hide the room from his sight. He did not seem to find this odd or amiss.
"Dearest," he sighed, "There are some things I feel we must discuss."
"Now?" She tried to give him her attention, but the call of the bonfire still lured her, unbroken in intensity.
"Yes, the sooner the better," he cringed as if suffering some internal pain. "I have courted you knowing full well your proclivities for the eccentric, but I thought with my guidance and your father's good judgement that you'd outgrow this misguided nonsense by now."
"Nonsense?" She bristled. "My faith is not nonsense. I do not impugn your beliefs, so why must you do so to mine?"
"Because they are wrong!" he shouted, losing his careful composure.
She stepped back, blinking. Liam had shown some negative traits over their six-month courtship: occasional arrogance, haughtiness and snobbery, but those were not unusual in the royal class, even if she did find them tedious. Some of his expositions on religion could boarder on pedantic condescension, but he'd never raised his voice to her, nor been so blatantly scornful. She was momentarily struck speechless.
He seemed to sense his error, visibly dampening his sudden temper, though a high flush suffused his pale cheeks.
"My apologies," he said, sounding not a bit sorry for what he said, only that he'd said it aloud. "I simply meant to impress upon you the seriousness of the matter. If you are to be a member of Anglia's royalty, you must put aside these … these …" his hand waved vaguely, searching. "Dabblings in the occult."
"Dabblings?" she hissed dangerously, but he took no note.
"There is only one path, one faith, dearest, the faith of the One God. I have indulged your child-like curiosity— it is one of the things I adore about you— but I simply cannot permit it any longer."
The room darkened, like clouds passed over the sun on a summer's day. Flames sputtered on their candle wicks. She stood ram rod straight, fists clenched at her sides.
"Are you threatening me?" she asked quietly.
"Threatening, my gracious, no!"
But he was, she realized, in his own way, dangling the loss of his courtship and his crown over her head, as if those things mattered to her. A dozen spells and hexes flashed through her mind, her fingers itching to draw her wand. Marla's guidance had taught her ritual and spellwork, but years of Cedric's tutelage had taught her sorcery— a more direct and less measured kind of magic. She concentrated very hard on not casting either. Cursing a prince, deserving or no, would win her no favors, nor would it sooth the outrageous wound growing in her chest. Liam had not hurt her so bad as her own feelings of foolishness; that she'd allowed him close enough to her heart wo wound it.
The Samhain blessing still wend its way through her veins, whispering in her ear from the direction of that distant bonfire.
Come, it said. Come, let the past go. It is time to seek your future.
Her fists unfurled, shoulders relaxing as she marshaled her temper. Her chin rose high.
"I am sorry to be such a disappointment to you, Liam. It is fortunate that we were never properly engaged at all, so you need not concern yourself with tarnishing the purity of Anglia's royal line with my, what was it, childish nonsense." She over rode him when he would have spoken. "Farewell to you, Liam. Go well and with the blessing of the Goddess. If you'll excuse me, I have somewhere I should be."
She left him standing struck dumb, gaping like a landed fish as she gathered her cloak and swept from the room and into the hall. He followed after a pace, dogging her steps down to the entryway.
"But it is after sunset." His voice went high and insistent like that of a child on the verge of a tantrum. "Just where could you possibly be going?"
"That is my business."
"There is a curfew. The law—" he sputtered, trying to forestall her but she kept moving in a straight line for the door.
Come …
Come …
"I'm a princess, the law doesn't affect me." That was a lie. She was still subject to the king's law, but someone had to show her father the folly of these new decrees. Who better than someone in a position of power? Her heart still fluttered at the thought of his disapproving face, but she pressed on.
Liam stopped at the bottom of the stairs as she continued on to open the main door. Outside a light rain had finally begun to fall.
"Sofia," he cried with enough wounded authority to make her pause and turn, "You cannot leave this castle. As your future husband I forbid it."
Laughter bubbled up her throat, falling from her lips in a great peal of mirth and pity, leaving her unable to dignify his decree with an articulate response. How could she have ever seriously considered marrying him? It seemed the utmost lunacy.
His eyes flicked away, realizing he'd played his hand and lost. Still, his chin lifted stubbornly. "If you go I shall, of course, have to report it to your father."
"You do that," she tossed back as she stepped into the night and shut the door on his astonished face.
Slipping past the guards proved easy enough. She'd long since mastered the small charm for making herself, not invisible exactly, but inconsequential to the eye. Each guard suddenly and inextricably found something of better interest as she passed boldly down the center of the bridge and into town. Carver's Hill winked in and out of sight between the houses as she passed down the main road. Though every door was closed, she heartened to hear sounds of merrymaking inside most as she passed. Windows glowed bright from hearth and candle, the old ways not forgotten, nor easily smothered under a stifling decree.
She kept her eyes to the crest of the hill where one brave soul looked to defy the king's law openly, with a blazing bonfire high enough for all of Dunwhitty to see. Heads peeked out of windows and poked over lintels, some even stepped boldly into the street for a better look.
"Back inside, back inside," the guards muttered, but with little conviction.
Some villagers listened, others did not, lingering in their doorways with looks of sullen disobedience. Sofia pulled up her hood and walked on, a lone figure climbing the hill.
The rain began to fall in earnest, weighing down her cape, chilling her skin beneath. The bonfire beckoned, full of defiant life. Magic, she realized abruptly. It had to be fed by magic to withstand the increasing downpour. Some bright guard must have devised the same conclusion as she heard distant footsteps, accompanied by clanking metal. They cursed as their heavy boots slipped in the mud. Sofia outpaced them easily, her steps as light as the slender hooves of a doe on the slick grass.
She found him at the crest of the hill, just where the high priest and priestess had once stood all those years ago when she had witnessed her first Samhain blessing. She knew it was him even before he turned around, perhaps knew it back at the castle. A hint of smoke wafted beneath her nose, carrying aromas of apples and cinnamon, honey and cloves, before vanishing. What is meant, she couldn't say, except that it felt right to be here, in this place, on this night, with him.
"You going to get yourself sacked, if not arrested, you know," she called above the pelting rain and roar of crackling wood.
Cedric whirled on her, his face open and alive with surprise. "Princess? Sofia, what on earth are you doing out here?"
She could not answer succinctly, too much deserving explanation. In reply, she told him, "There are guards coming this way. You'll be in a great deal of trouble if they find you."
"Not so much as you," he hissed, looking past her to listen for the sound of approaching voices. He took her by the wrist, leading them both quickly into a yawning niche of the woods. The shadows swallowed them in an instant despite the towering conflagration. Magic had a certain relation to will; Cedric must be very angry indeed, she realized, to feed a fire of such size and intensity. A pair of guards entered the clearing and Cedric laid a finger across his lips in an unnecessary warning for silence.
The guards inched close to the tree line, hesitant to follow their quarry inside its dark depths.
"Well," one guard looked to the other, both shifting about nervously, "you first."
"No, you go first," the second demanded.
"I would, but … but …"
"But, what?"
"But, me grandmother used to always tell us tales of this night. Wise woman she was. Said that ghosts come back to roam the earth on All Hallow's. Steal the breath right from your lungs, they will."
"That's nursery school nonsense, that is," the second said, the gruffness of his voice belayed by a slight quiver.
"All the same," the first puffed up his chest, "they're probably half way home by now. Can't say I take much pleasure in enforcing this new law. Let's stamp out this fire and get the bloody hell out of here. Spooky this forest."
The second nodded, offering, Sofia noticed, no defense of the king's new law.
Only when the guards went away, unable to quench the burning pyre and forced to leave it blazing, did they dared to speak.
"We should stick to the forest," Cedric said, "to make our way back to the castle."
"I don't want to go back," she told him quietly. "Not yet at least."
She hadn't told him why she'd left or what she was doing out here. The unanswered question hung heavily in the silence between them. Around them sound of the night awoke: tree frogs chirping their last songs of the season, crickets rising a chorus in the grass, the long, low hoot of a solitary owl. Once this hill had been filled with music and laughter, even the low husky moans of lovers in the thickets. Tonight it was only them and the night.
"Come on," he said after a pause. "I think I remember some old woodcutter's cottage nearby. Been abandoned for years, but at least we can get out of the rain."
She followed him, grateful that he hadn't tried to pry out her secrets, and relieved to be with him again on some kind of friendly footing. It had been far too long since they'd said more than a polite, "good day", or "how about that weather?" to one another.
The cottage when they found it was indeed abandoned and in sorry condition for the neglect. Inside was dusty and damp from end to end, part of the roof had rotted away allowing in the weather. She hesitated to go inside.
Cedric drew out his wand. "This was one of the properties your father wanted me to fix up with magic. Planned on having a new woodcutter move in. Been on my to-do list forever, but things kept coming up."
At an elegant wave of his arm the ceiling appeared to move back through time. The dust and broken beams rose from the floor, reforming themselves in midair. The damp thatch lifted up through the hole, sealing the roof tight against the continuing rain. With another flick and a string of murmured words the dust lifted off each dingy surface, collected together into a swirling cloud that floated itself out the door. Sofia stepped aside to let it pass. When she did cautiously enter, a fire crackled in the hearth. The few remaining candles flickered warmly in their lanterns casting a rosy glow about the clean and shining room.
"Not too bad, all things considered," Cedric said, shrugging off his sorcerer's robes, the velvet dark and heavy with dampness.
She removed her own cloak and spread it before the fire, across the floor. The cottage boasted very little furniture. Tucked into the far corner was a rope and frame bed holding a straw tick mattress of dubious cleanliness. Vermin had probably taken up residence long ago. There was a small table but no chairs. Sofia made herself as comfortable as she could on the floor, holding her chilled hands out to warm by the fire. Cedric sat beside her a little way off. When she removed her shoes to dry them, he did likewise. Something about the absurd intimacy of his stocking feet made her smile genuinely for the first time all day.
"What?" he asked a little self-consciously.
She bit her lip, thinking a quick and easy lie. Instead she told him the truth. "I've missed this. I've missed you."
She worried that she might be treading dangerous ground. They'd certainly seen each other often since that last disastrous Samhain so many years ago, but their conversations were always perfunctory. Something had been lost that day, when she'd stolen that unwanted kiss from his lips. Neither of them had mentioned it ever since.
"I can't say I miss being half drown, taking shelter in a drafty hut," he said with only mild annoyance. She thought he'd say no more, her heart sinking slightly, even as she reminded herself that he was probably long over their quarrel. Probably never thought of it at all. "But," he said after a quiet pause, "I have missed you as well."
Her smile could have lighted a Wasallia tree and she couldn't pretend to be anything but completely pleased.
"So," he cleared his throat to cover over the awkward silence, "what are you doing out here? Not exactly weather for an evening stroll."
"I suppose I'm here for the same reason you are."
His right brow arched. "Which is?"
A deep sigh filled her lungs, coming out long and low. Her eyes searched the rough beams of the ceiling. "Connection," she said at last and was surprised to find her eyes prickle with unshed tears. She held them back. "I hate it," she said in a harsh whisper. "I hate these changes. These laws."
She turned to find him nodding, silently and staring into the flames.
"But," she said, her eyes drying quickly. "I left the castle because I had to get away, if only for a little while. Liam and I had a falling out. I suppose I officially denied him. I won't marry such a close-minded bigot of a man."
"Why did you ever consider it in the first place?" He didn't look at her, but his voice carried an undercurrent of disapproval that made her blink and stare at his profile.
Her courtship had progressed smoothly ever since Liam petitioned for her suit at the spring ball. Ostara she had called it rebelliously and Liam had laughed that bright eyed chuckled that she used to find charming until she realized he was patronizing her. Not one member of her family nor the court had objected to their courtship, and Cedric had never mentioned it at all. She'd long since abandoned imagining he cared.
"I suppose," she said slowly, thinking it out as she said it, "I wanted to please my dad. I think a part of me has never gotten over the feeling that I owe him for the life he gave my mother and me. He and Liam get on fabulously."
"Perhaps he should marry him then." Cedric rolled a bit of crumbled brickwork between his fingers before tossing it sulkily into the fire.
"I think more than any obligation," she continued, "I thought I could affect some kind of change. I knew Liam was pious, but I didn't believe him a zealot." She shrugged, feeling the foolishness of her actions but unable to change the past. "I thought I could … change him."
"People do not much change. If you don't love someone completely and for who they are at the wedding, then I don't suppose there is much hope for a happy marriage. That idiot boy doesn't deserve you. And don't you dare tell me you are upset to be well shot of him."
The angry edge of his voice sliced the air between them. Sofia thought back to the night she'd fled Cedric's tower, how hot tears had rolled down her cheeks and her chest had heaved with the feeling of something precious being torn from her. Running away from Liam had felt a relief.
"I'm not. I don't love him," she said, still looking at the clean lines of his profile.
The rain continued to pour around their small sanctuary. The fire crackled and danced merrily, more subdued than its wild cousin atop the hill. Sofia's stomach gave a tremendous, audible growl. She hugged her middle, laughing. "I'm starving," she whined. "Honestly, who ever heard of fasting on Samhain?"
His lips twitched into something like a smile. "Idiocy, surely." He pulled a wand from the air in a puff of blue smoke and sparkles. "I think we can do something to rectify your hunger, that is if you don't feel too filled with the holy spirit to eat."
Her head tipped onto her shoulder, hair spilling down her back as she leaned back on her arms, relaxing. "If the Demon himself came through that door offering me a spiced cake, I'd eat it at once and risk the damnation for the cost."
"No Demon, Princess—" With a swirl of his wand, he conjured a feast on the carpet of their crossed cloaks. His smile more resembled a smirk, "Only me."
Author's Note: (*) I cannot claim ownership of the "spell" Sofia casts. I saw it on Pinterest and copied it pretty much word for word. The "ritual" she performs is strictly from my imagination. The last chapter should be up in two weeks, unless I get inspired to finish it sooner. After this I have a fun little vampire fic coming in October. :)
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