MARBLE & SALT (Lesbian)

Chapter 24 (Part 5) HAPPY BIRTHDAY, VELIA

Hebe smiled, putting her hands on my shoulders as if she was going to slow dance with me. I was about to smile back at her, but something distracted me. It felt like I heard a familiar voice in a noisy crowd in the street (it was too disturbing not to notice it). Unfortunately, I could not understand who was speaking. Hebe noticed that something alarmed me, and she also stopped smiling, peering at the thick foliage.

"There are fewer blue lights in here," she remarked.

Indeed, they, like frightened sparrows, hid in the branches of the trees becoming almost invisible.

I heard someone screaming. Hebe and I gave a start at the same time. My witch growled like a lioness, then a squelching sound followed. Everything happened in a fraction of a second. I didn't even have time to understand when she managed to draw her epee. A man was standing less than a meter away from us. He did not keep standing any longer, as the epee stuck out in his neck. I started to feel sick when Hebe gripped the epee handle tighter and kicked his body off it. Blood dripped from the epee.

A bustle reigned around. I could not concentrate my gaze on anything, because everywhere I looked, the battle was raging; I didn't even know where to hide, and I kept on standing like a lamp post. The mother of the boy who gave me red flowers was lying in the steam. The stream was red. Nobody approached her. I have to come to her... Slowly, as if in a dream, I moved towards her. Her eyes seemed open.

I felt like someone squeezed my wrist very painfully and pulled me with all their strength in the opposite direction from the witch in the water.

"Come to your senses, Velia! They will kill you!" I didn't immediately understand that my witch was yelling at me; she was pulling me somewhere from the garden. "Here! Bend your head," the Princess commanded. I didn't even understand where we were. Perhaps, it was the stone railings that fenced off the open-air garden patio and the hallway.

"Are you hurt?" she whispered, examining and feeling me from head to toe. "Can you hear me? Do you understand what's going on?"

"Mages?" I replied in a whisper too, trying not to think about the terrible sounds that were coming from the garden. We were separated from the battlefield only by a low stone railing that was softly entwined with delicate bindweed flowers.

Hebe gently put her epee on my lap. She slowly raised her head to look around. We had a good position with a good view. I did the same thing. I shouldn't have done that, because the picture will forever remain in my memory: the witches were taken by surprise, thus they did not have time to react right away... but every cloud has a silver lining, the women were clearly winning. The grass was smashed by those corpses of men that attacked us so terribly. The problem was that there were more of them than battle witches. Mages used their quantity, not the quality of their magic.

"Someone gave them the access to the residence. They themselves would never have been able to get inside. There is a traitor among us, and I will kill her..."

I looked into the garden, instead I saw a dark hall behind our backs and a man who was slowly and imperceptibly walking towards us. He was about forty years old; he had a pleasant face and beautiful kind eyes, how ironic. He believed that we did not hear him. Three meters, two meters...

I saw him as if I had eyes on the back of my head. "Hebe, trust me. Kill the one who is a meter behind us with your magic, just do it quietly," I whispered in English, knowing that we had a few seconds left until he realised that we were aware of his presence. I knew that Hebe didn't always use cold steel (only so as not to waste her magical reserve during the battle; it was also useless when fighting with stregas), moreover, I knew that she could kill using different methods.