A raven-haired worshiper of the Titans--Hekate and Nyx--is determined to save her lover from an ancient curse, she must prove to him that life is worth living and that being a werewolf has its perks.
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Moss had sprouted around the edges of the pit, the silver light of the moon colouring it a greyish blue. I was intimidated by its force, it was a weighted feeling against my conscious, like the pressure of water when you first dive in. All remnants of honey, garlic, and blood were swallowed down into the earth; if it wasn't accepted, the garlic would be growing into a proper plant. I had to be more patient which felt rather unfair in my free time. A day had passed since my date with Lycius, and we hadn't been able to see much of each other between his mother's long goodbye brunch, lunch, and dinner, and then there was Calix's insistence on checking in on his health via multiple tests—that neither would describe to me. The night after our date, Lycius had fallen dead asleep in my bed mid-conversation. I didn't have the heart to wake him, he was too at peace, so I studied some magic and strolled the grounds around the manor. It was an invigorating experience as well as a frustrating one, not because of the pit alone. It was my mother's work that added to the beating in my brain.
Today, Lycius was worn out by Calix's examinations therefore my plot was simple. I baited him to my bed in the evening and let him glide into a peaceful slumber in my arms. I knew he would force himself to stay awake if we were anywhere else if I wasn't coaxing him into a deep sleep. After ten minutes of his gentle snoring, I crept out to the gardens and studied my mother's journals by the ritual pit. I had a full bag of her diaries next to me and began my usual process of taking notes of my own. As a mini break, I sketched the moss-rimmed pit with three barking hounds running around it. A connection between Hekate's symbols and mythology and Lycius' children. Every few minutes my eyes would flicker over the book at the pit. I was left disappointedly bereft every time. The rich soil had greyed and the feeling of it was dry and frail in my hand. The breeze was chilling my bones through my coat and in a moment of immaturity I was about to give up on the goddess altogether. Through my night vision, I thought I could spot something glittering in the earth, but it was nothing. It was just one big depressing pit of nothing and since there was nothing, I expected some whispers of guidance, something glaring me in the face that was the answer. The only thing that did glare at me was Calix and if he was the only sign, I was going to get, then I might as well have been truly abandoned by the Gods.
I explored my mother's notes and filled in my own experiences between them. Nothing in her notes hinted at a lack of control, sure there were accidents, but I had yet to read any big breakdowns of power. I guess that was a thing we wouldn't have in common. She was much more graceful than I ever was, maybe that was why she stopped taking me to her rituals. I put out that thought in my mind and turned the page to my mother's last journal. I was engrossed by a passage that didn't make sense, mostly because there was an opaque smear of paint rubbed across the text that distorted her writing. I folded the book back to hold the lone page by itself against the flashlight from my phone. I squinted at the words and tried to untangle them in my mind from the dark paint. I raised the page to my nose and discovered there was a coppery stench minced with the smell of old paper and the dust from the attic it had been kept in. Was this blood? I flipped to the page afterwards and found the rest of the journal blank. This was my mother's last entry and it was signed a week before she died.
