Little Red (Twisted Dark, #4)

Chapter Sixteen: Reverence

I walked through the trees, my hands in my pockets. The sunlight bouncing off the snow was enough to give me a killer headache. I had overexerted myself yesterday and despite the amount of potions and magick Bam had hit me with to boost me up, I was still feeling it slightly. There was a reason witches usually kept a back up reserve that they didn't use. It was better that then dealing with the horrendous after effects of dealing with a complete depletion.

However I was back out into the Forest because I wanted to make sure Violet and her babies were safe.

Damned blood magick.

I scowled at myself slightly. If the damn thing wasn't so instinctive and seemed to be bred into every single magick user that existed, I wouldn't have done it. Blood magick was easy to use, very easy to use. There was a reason there were rules about using tools and purified tools in order to work magick. A lot of previous magick had all been blood magick and that had caused a lot of issues. Plus there was the whole idea of blood magick that I had liked so I actually paid attention when we were learning about it.

However the new blood bond I made between Violet and I had me wanting to check on her to see if she was okay and if she was alright. I grimaced slightly at that. It was great fun having another sister I was super protective over like I was with Tia. I couldn't blame anyone but myself though, so I had to simply deal. I shook my head and trudged through the snow, at leas the good thing about the blood magick was it acted like a honing beacon. I knew exactly where Violet was, my blood was in her veins and hers was in mine. I knew that if she wanted to find me, it would be just as easy for her as it was for me.

Not that I was ever actively hiding from anyone. I wasn't exactly on the scale of secretive that some witches could be. I lived over a bar with two roommates who had seen me naked more times than we could count. I wasn't hiding from anyone but still. If she ever needed help, she could use the blood bond between us to pinpoint my location and come find me. Which I figured was a good thing. If BamBam decided to continue to bother her, she could find me to let me know so I could go break my older sister's face just to get her to stop being so fucking childish.

Which I had continually told her even after she had drug me into her interdimensional plane and continued to bitch about Violet. I had finally snapped and told her to take it up with mother if she was going to throw a tantrum because I didn't deal with grown women throwing tantrums like toddlers when they didn't get their way. I just hoped my mother discarded her 'need to be neutral' stance and actually gave BamBam all the information rather than locking us in together in some sort of sick desensitization therapy chamber like she had last night.

Which I was still super fucking pissed off about.

I had told her I didn't want to play peace keeper between Violet and Bam, that I didn't want to be the sole person ending a blood feud but then she had to be heinous and lock us together in the middle of a blizzard with Violet nearly dying. Which was fucked up in it's own right, who the fuck did that just to end a blood feud? My mother apparently. I made a slight noise of disgust. I didn't even want to think of her at the moment. I would give her a piece of my mind, but later, once I had left the 'I'm going to fucking throat punch you on sight the next time I see you' stage of my current anger.

I really did want to hurt her for that. Not just for ignoring my wishes and forcing me to go head to head with Bam but for playing with Violet's life like that. She could have easily died and that didn't sit right with me. Even without the blood bond alerting me to how fucked up it was that she had done that. Before that I had been horrified. There was a reason necromancy was illegal, playing with life and death never ended well for anyone. It didn't matter that Bam and I had delivered the twins alright and Violet was still alive, the fact we had been put into that place at all was supremely fucked up. It might not have been necromancy but it was still playing with life and death.