Chapter Two

A switch in PoV, let's hear things from Cedric's side

When did I finally give up my quest to obtain the Amulet of Avalor? Well, I hadn't serious tried to steal it since Sofia was ten or eleven. I hadn't really even had a good plotting session while trying to fall asleep. But I never officially vowed to give up my plans at world domination and just turn into a noble fool.

Not until I realized what Sofia really was to me. And the burden the Amulet had set on her slight shoulders, far before she could have understood what it meant.

Forget the debacle with Princess Ivy (I didn't forget it for long enough) and all the other troubles I had seen that damned Amulet cause. For years I assured myself that I could make the thing bend to my will, and someday I would make everyone see what a great sorcerer I was, how powerful I had become despite my inadequacies. I was a bloody selfish buffoon.

Then I saw the responsibility of that Amulet, resting on such an achingly young girl - I knew that I would be torn apart by the thing. I could never be as good, as brave, as true as Sofia.

She was a thorn in my side, a chatterbox, an annoying if accomplished apprentice….and my best friend.

She was also a lusus naturae, though there was nothing distorted or unnatural about her. She was an Honored One. A lycanthrope. A werewolf like me, though I spent years completely oblivious to the fact.

When she wept in my arms after her first moon night, I was shocked. The scent of her was clear - how had I missed it? Me, with my enormous nose and my supposed sensitivity had missed that the only known female werewolf in a thousand miles had been my own apprentice for six years. I held her in my arms and realized that all my improvements, my magic finally stabilizing, the contentment I felt with my life - I had dared to think that I was maturing into what I was always meant to be.

After all, I was still very young for a werewolf. Thirty was still practically a child. My father told every human who needed to know that he was sixty seven, but he was closer to two hundred and sixty seven. He treated me like a young child who needed to be constantly corrected because to him, I was a mere babe. My vaunted sister who was so perfect and so very good at magic - she was ninety two. Though she was not a werewolf - girls born with the ability to shift most often died in infancy, magic had lengthened her life considerably, but not as much as for a lycanthrope. If I was careful, I could see half a millennia. But I was often inept with my magic, unstable - my control ironclad but my execution faulty, as though some part of my magic was locked away from me. I thought I had freed it myself.

But it was Sofia. A female werewolf is so coveted, so desired, because she brings balance and harmony to the magic which makes us lycanthropes who we are. Sofia, even as a young child, had done that for me unconsciously, automatically. She could command me as naturally as breathing because of who and what she was, and she needed me to be better - so I was. For a brief flash, I held that crying girl in my arms and I hated her, hated that she had taken my accomplishment from me - and I loved her, because she had made me a better man. I wanted to keep her, I wanted her to be mine. One day, my mate. She would make me into a great sorcerer, a great Wolf. Truly an Honored One.

I told you I was a selfish idiot.

Part of my plan was to protect her, keep her away from the hint of any other wolves - and my territory had been set out by my father decades ago, and I had guarded it viciously ever since with every crafty trick I knew. I was a poor magician much of the time, but I was comfortable as a wolf. I would slowly teach her what she was - because she had no idea. And when the time was right, I would tell her that she had to be mated to another wolf, and I was more than available.

If she happened to bring the Amulet into the marriage as her dowry, all the better.

This went on for months and months. I have to admit I enjoyed the time I spent with the girl. She was intelligent and charming and needed someone to talk to. I had been her friend. I knew I would continue to be that friend, and that I could offer her protection in a world that could potentially be very violent toward her if she was discovered before she was fully in charge of her powers. I was an idiot, but I wasn't completely without a soul. No one could be Sofia's friend and remain truly evil.

But I was fooling everyone, myself most of all.

To know Sofia is to love Sofia. Myself most of all.