Thank you for getting me to 61 reviews and I loved the alerts I got for my 25 Chapter! I think most readers are going to love these next chapters. I just love opening my email to reviews and alerts!
Thanks so much to bettingonalice01, bluelove124, xxxFireFlyxxx, (especially to: ThePhantomismyLove and Egyptian Kiss)
-Romanian person-
P.S. I have an authors note in the middle of the chapter, please read it and follow the instructions!
Chapter 26: To Build A Home
Truth lingered on her weak tongue like mint. It numbed her gums till it consumed her tongue, leaving her dumbstruck. The blunt sound of truth was a new sound, clean and pure in its sensation, something Kristina was strangely discomforted by.
In the past, the raven-head had always lied to herself. Never admitting to what she wanted. She had always been unsure, even scared, to face the fact that her life wasn't the one she dreamed of.
Life didn't consist of a big family, loving kids, a white picket fence or a stable foundation of love, like she had once dreamed up. No, it consisted of death and misery, people of disgust and feelings for a man she could never let herself love.
"You ask me what I wanted, I want to be human." The hybrid whispered delicately as if her words would break everything in the poorly lit room. It was like signing her name to the devil in her own blood and that's exactly what Esther craved, blood from her burning hybrid veins.
"Can you deal with the consequences of your decision? Not remembering? Not having the impossible power you contain now?" Esther said her voice rigid as stone and her eyes not leaving her.
Kristina only nodded as her salty tears stuck to her olive skin.
"Can you deal with the fact you would loss your love for my son?" The Original Witch's words hit her like a fired bullet going straight into the heart.
To loss the love she had? Kristina's brows became feathered together. How did Ester know she loved someone when the hybrid didn't even know herself?
"You think I don't know Elijah and Niklaus' feelings for you? Or your feelings for them?" Esther responded with a spat, almost as if making a joke of it. "In my time on the other side, the spirits connected me to my monstrous children and their victims as punishment for creating such a burden. I felt and still feel their emotions for you." She shifted her eyes to the burning flames of the candles around them. Her face mounted still, pondering on what to say next. "How you struck Elijah's heart with your decision to not forgive or how you play the strings to Niklaus' heart and mind, someone I thought once to never be capable of love." Conflict swimming in her rabbling mind.
"The spirits aren't very fond of you. " The Original witch started bluntly, dropping gaze to her fiddling fingers. "They don't forgive easily."
"My faults aren't meant to be judged by dead spirits. It's not my fault my mother chose to have a child of two natural beings." Kristina said sourly, narrowing her grey eyes. "I was thought everything had a balance. You tilted nature's balance when Niklaus was turned. I was a response to your action. I am meant to be in the equation balance. I occupy the fully natural hybrid while he keeps the hybrid vampire." Kristina said softly, trying to explain what she had learned years ago from an elder Bennett witch and what she had digested from Esther's answers. "But I can't keep the balance. I am full of hate and destruction." She paused again thinking on the main influence of her younger years. "I learned from the best." The hybrid witch-werewolf said while she watched Esther's face finally shift at the mentioning of her husband, Mikeal.
"What I want is to rewrite my past from the point that changed me for forever. That is what I need in return for my blood." Kristina said standing up with her wrist out stretched and a knife in the other.
"Kristina, if you think I possess the power to take you back to the day you were born, you are wrong." Esther said hesitating; keeping her cold pale eyes on the creature's pulsing vain.
"Not the day I was born, just the night that made me who I am today, a hybrid. I was meant to die a human. To never have my hybrid side awakened." Kristina stated with dry tears sticking to her olive skin and her grip on the silver blade tightened.
"We can do the spell. It's the second full moon of the month. You do my request tonight and you kill your children tomorrow." The Hybrid said bluntly. Finn bared his fangs while Esther's ice eyes held the look of death. "In a sense, you would kill me tomorrow anyway." Kristina added remembering what Esther had said about her connection to Niklaus.
"Remember I am a witch, Esther." Kristina said slitting her wrist with the sharp knife. The glass underneath her bleeding wrist filled a good amount before her skin came together, healing itself.
"I knew the minute I walked into the room what you were planning but it doesn't change the fact that I want to be human. Call me selfish, I would. Neither Elijah nor Niklaus need me like this." The werewolf-witch confessed her globes a strong grey instead of the watery clouds they had been minutes ago.
Essence of fire and melting wax overtook the scent of the room. The shadows once dark as night were consumed by the lit candle flames. The fire stood perfectly straight once the voices repeated the words needed in the magic Latin language. The witches sat on the floor, their voices just a whispered but harmonizing perfectly, welcoming the magic they both stored within hidden walls.
Kristina hadn't felt a magical presence as strong as Esther in all her life as a hybrid. It was strange how threatened but empowered her mind and magic felt connected to the Original Witch. It was unnatural how much power Kristina held when she called upon her magic but combined with the blonde woman's magic. It was exhilarating how far edge they were. And the hybrid knew, Esther felt the same way.
The moment the beginning of the end of the spell came, the flames to the twenty candles shot up almost touching the high ceiling of the closed off den. Kristina's body had fought itself the whole spell. It was as if her werewolf side was eating its way out or clawing itself out of her already vulnerable state. Topaz sparked lively in her pure silver eyes that were locked into the witch's artic one's. This moment was inevitable; her werewolf side would never stop fighting her witch aspect.
The affect it took on her already drained body was overwhelming and almost paralyzing. The full moon had almost risen to its peak, making the transition pressed itself on her corpse with ten times its normal strength. Her bones felt had caught fire and her weak mind felt itself welcome the wolf inside. It was easy to let go of her magic. Her witch powers had always been the underdog.
"Kristina focus. We are almost done. "Esther growled tightening her grip on the raven-head shaky hands. Blood trickled down Kristina's nose as her insides tried to rip themselves apart.
Esther left the wolf presence more then the magic Kristina was casting. With the ultimate magic words of the spell a white light over took both women's vision.
When Kristina's vision came back to her, Esther was still sitting in the same position. Her blue eyes were sealed shut for a stretched painful minute before Esther's eyelids shooting up making her jump slightly
"You have till your transition, which is exactly in 10 minutes." Niklaus' mother said her voice stern but her eyes caring.
"Thank you. I hope it's worth it, killing your children." Kristina said stand up, careful to find her legs steady before bolting.
Picking up her black lace dress, she found her way to the door in an elegant but rushed matter.
"You won't remember any of this when you're human." Esther called quickly. Kristina only nodded selfish with the start of tears stinging her throat and heaving chest.
The hybrid slipped out the door feeling the boiling in her inside increase every second. Before she could get out of ear reach Esther said one last thing at burned itself to the back of her brain.
"Whether my sons will remember depends on how much their hearts belongs to you." With Esther last heart wrenching words, Kristina blurred out of sight.
(Author's note: Listen to- To Build A Home by Cinematic Orchestra; its Niklaus and Kristina's song for part one of Forgiveness Is A Gift)
The werewolf-witch hybrid whipped the teardrops from her face and examined the celebratory room cautiously. She had precisely 7 minutes till her body would rip itself apart to proclamation the wolf.
People smiling and laughing flashed past her as she narrowed her vision to a specific face. A face of an angel, some would say but she knew his evil and still cared for him.
"Love, where have you been-" a deep accented voice played in the deepest parts of her intelligence. She savored the sound like it would be her last because there was a possibility it would be. And if the possibility was true then she would never forgive herself for what she was about to do to the man she loved.
"Dance with me?" Kristina hesitated at the sight of his divine oceanic eyes and devilish smirk. Not giving any verbal form of acceptance, Nik delicately wrapped his arms around her waist, letting her rest her head on his chest.
"Love, why the tears?" He questioned, letting her scent fill his nose and clear his mind of all worries and complications. The vampire-werewolf original loved the feeling even though it was certainly a foreign concept.
"No words, please. This is enough for me." Kristina whispered her voice trembling but he didn't push as he swayed her to the riffle of the piano.
It hurt. Not the hurt that you acknowledge and understand it will pass in time. But the hurt that constantly eats away at your soul and heart, the hurt that cripples, a hurt that never truly heals. Though the worst hurt she knew she would face was the hurt that was definite to be left behind. Kristina knew it would be this hurt would consume her.
Tears built up once gain but these only sat at her storm cloud eyes as she sat listening to the soft thud of Niklaus' dead heart and the beautiful melody playing along. Selfishness had taken her over at the time of choice. The hybrid recognized it's blinding capabilities. But still, even at the every moment of Nik's hands millimeters away from her exposed skin and his loving eyes looking down on her, she wouldn't have changed her decision.
The pain tugging at her sorrow-filled heart would subside after her transition; this was clear but his pain, a pain soon to come, and a pain soon to consume an already fragile unstable man. Niklaus' pain would never extinguish. Kristina would hate herself for the rest of the unbearable 5 minutes left.
"Love makes us do hateful and hurtful things." Kristina whispered into the fabric of his white button up blouse as he softly stroked the base of her back. He enjoyed the touch of her, the presents of her but the sadness she radiated was becoming uncomfortable.
"Niklaus-" she stumbled to find her words as the pain inside her physically and mentally paralyzed her speech.
"Dear, this can wait till tomorrow. We have time." He assured her with a kind voice, one that she wasn't used to and one she didn't want at the moment. One she knew don't excite in Niklaus outer shield. Kristina wanted him to yell, push her against the wall with all his hybrid strength, break every bone in her body, stake her in the heart, make her bleed the blood that his soon to be broken heart would. Guilt wasn't easy.
"It can't wait. I-" Kristina murmured, tears making their way down her rose cheeks. Her next words she wanted to speak would break her and eventually break him.
"I know you danced with Elijah." He said his eyes not shifting to her as she stared dumbfounded at the vampire hybrid. "It's alright, love." He chuckled faintly at her childish thought.
The raven-head could feel eyes pierce through her back. She could name them off: Kol, Stefan, Elijah. They all stared with different but all hurt faces.
"No, Nik." She replied seeing the confusion in his blue eyes. "I love you and that's why I have to let you go." The words made his grip on her back tighten slightly in discomfort.
"Nik, I just hope you forgive me and find someone that truly deserves you." She confessed clearly as tears streamed down her face like a creek now.
Her movement was swift but elegant as she let her hot red lips gently rest in his full pink lips.
Time seemed to freeze as Kristina lost herself in the small sign of passion. It was enough, a small peak. Nothing more was needed and anything more would have destroyed the man of all his humanity.
The dark-haired woman pulled back first whispering her finally words. "Goodbye, Nik."
Kristina's time was up. She could feel wolf in her scorching bones and the need to shift beings as she blurred away from the heart broken man.
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