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   “I understand now,” Riley told him.

Hart opened his eyes to look down at Riley, who also had his eyes closed while he hovered over the table. Hart was healing him by infusing Riley with his own energy and magic. His healing was an ability he earned at birth, just like Seraphina who acquired the opposite of his gift – poison. It was more complex than how he described it, but nevertheless they were exactly what they seemed.

“What do you understand?” Hart asked him.

“Why you have no emotions, why I never see you smile or act happy. It's not because you're incapable of feeling them, but because you suppress them out of fear.”

Hart thought it was unnecessary to respond, so his eyes closed again and he returned to healing Riley's broken soul. He felt every part of Riley's body at his finger tips, his magic was connected to every nerve in his body. So long Hart was healing him, Riley was his puppet. He could make him do whatever he wanted. Hart was in full control.

“In a few moments, you'll be completely healed. Do you still want me to help you with your teleporting problem?” Hart asked him.

“Do you want me to die?” Riley said.

“No,” Hart responded dryly, “but the spell requires time.”

“How long?”

“A couple of days. But you'll be unconscious, so it will feel like a few minutes.”

“As long as you fix it, I don't care,” Riley said.

Hart withdrew his energy after repairing Riley's soul, it felt like cold air as it returned to his own body. Riley slowly descended, but Hart stopped him right before he touched the table and lifted him back in the air, pushing the table away so that there was nothing underneath him.

“What are you doing?” Riley asked, a hint of panic in his voice.

“I'm doing the spell, isn't that what you wanted?” Hart said, blinking at the floating man.

“It's not gonna hurt, right?”

Riley's body floated on its own like it was in zero gravity, it shifted around until he was hovering straight up with his eyes looking down at Hart. There was an uncertainty in the way Riley's eyes skimmed over Hart's face, but it was gone as fast as it came.

“I promise it won't hurt, but I can't promise you'll forgive me after it's complete. So it's better that I say it now. Riley, I'm sorry,” Hart said softly.

Riley looked like he was about to say something, but Hart waved his hand over the man's face and he instantly fell asleep without a chance to speak his mind. Hart chanted words and made gestures with his hands over Riley's chest, then the sleeping man burst into black flames. The fire wasn't harmful, instead of heat, they gave out a sense of coldness.

With the same black fire, Hart drew a ring under Riley and two more inside. They were slowly, very gently, growing and expanding. In a few days, they would touch the walls and be sucked back to the middle, where they would disappear along with the flames enveloping Riley's body, and the spell would be complete.

Hart's blue eyes sparkled as they looked at Riley's peaceful face.

“I'm truly sorry,” he whispered.

Hart left the dark room, locking it so that no one would disturb. He heard Seraphina's thought in his mind, she was talking to Nicholas in her old bedroom. Hart angrily walked up the steps, making sure they were loud enough to be heard from upstairs. He went straight to her bedroom, opening the door without knocking.

“Nicholas, give my brother and I a minute,” Sera told her boyfriend, who was laying on her bed, sprawled out comfortably. Not saying a word, Nicholas nodded and went for the door but Hart stopped him, grabbing his shoulder and forcing him to sit down back on the bed.

“No, everyone is staying here,” Hart told them.

“No one is going to harm him, Hart,” Sera said.

“This is your fault!” Hart shouted at his sister. “Absolutely all of it.”

Sera stood up from her bed, delicately straightening her back and watching her brother.

Now why would you say that? Sera thought.

“Whatever you have to say you can say it out loud,” Hart said through his teeth.

Sera rolled her eyes, dropping the elegant pose. She stepped towards her dresser and smiled at the sight of her old clothes and jewelry from when she was little. She took out a pendant her mother had given her and tossed it behind her, landing next to Nicholas.

“Nice throw,” Nicholas whispered, his eyes widening with fear when Hart cracked his neck.

“Exactly what is my fault?” she asked, turning to face her brother once more.

“The reason the spell failed – TWICE!”

“No need to shout,” she patted him on the chest, “wouldn't want you to turn again.”

Hart grabbed her hand and swung her, tossing her through the open window where she fell on their mother's dead garden.

“Dude!” Nicholas gaped at him. “Was that necessary?”

A second later Nicholas joined Sera, groaning when he landed on a rotten pumpkin. Sera jumped up in the air and climbed up the side of the house, pulling herself over the window and entering her room again. She dusted the dirt on her clothes and glared darkly at Hart, but let it go.

“Alright, now that you threw me out of the window, are you feeling better?” She said.

“I am being serious, Sera. Why did you do it? You only had one job and you acted like it was a game. First Michelle, who wasn't even a witch in the first place, and now you bring me someone who was perfect for the spell but his sister wasn't even blood related to him?”

“Maybe I didn't know they weren't related.” She shrugged nonchalantly.

“But you did, and you still sent him to me even though you knew the spell would fail. Do you have any idea what you have done because of that? The risk that I put myself through just to make sure it was successful?”

“Yet you still feel like you should thank me, because you found the love of your life and now you're going to spend eternity together,” she said.

“Of course I don't regret it, but this isn't about me, this is about our mother.”

Nicholas showed up, covered in pieces of orange vegetables. He was about to enter the room when Hart magically closed the door on his face before he could take one step in. This was what they were arguing about before Riley woke up, and Hart was going to make sure they were going to finish their conversation this time.

“You don't get it, do you?” Sera said, squinting her eyes at him. “You're naive, Hart. You don't think, you just act on whatever mother tells you.”

“She's our mother, of course I would do whatever she says.”

“She's dead, Hart! She's been dead ever since we were born! She needs to stay dead!”

“Why are you so against her? What did she ever do to you?”

Sera touched Hart's cheek and their minds connected. Sera showed him all over again the pain he had gone through as a child. Their mother was always the one torturing them, hurting them to the point that they were an inch from death.

Don't you ever ask me that again, her voice echoed sadly in his head.

Hart pushed her away, shuddering at the cold in his chest. He looked down at the floor, avoiding the hard stare she was giving him. He shook his head, his jaw going hard as he looked up again, the anger returning.

“She did it to protect us, she did it so that we could control our emotions so that we wouldn't turn and harm people,” Hart told her.

She laughed, then her face went serious. “Are you fucking stupid? She made you afraid of your emotions, Hart. She made you more vulnerable to turning, because even a little emotion can set you up in flames. But look at me, I stopped feeling the pain because I learned to block you out. I feel emotions every single day, and do I turn? No, I turn on command because I am in control, not my emotions. She was just as stupid as our father, who isn't even our real father. How dare he have the audacity to hurt us when we weren't his, but I took care of it, so there's nothing else to it. He is forgotten just as we will forget her.”

“And another thing, you say she did it so that we wouldn't hurt people? Yet she sends us off around the world to kill thousands just so we could take her out of hell, where she rightfully belongs? Who is the real monster now?”

“Mother never liked you,” Hart murmured.

“If she never liked me, then why did she only go after you and not me? Why did she physically harm you and left me in a corner to weep and pretend like I was hurting, too?”

“You know very well why.”

“Yes, because you were killed at birth and they immediately thought you were going to be weaker, so they had to focus all their love on you, so much love it hurt.”

“Doesn't matter,” Hart said coldly. “The spell failed, she isn't coming back.”

“Now why do I feel like this isn't the end?” she asked curiously.

“Because it isn't,” he said. “I'm not giving up.”

Hart's mind was instantly attacked with profanity. He shot Seraphina a look and she returned a disapproving one, shaking her head in disbelief. She left the room and went to search for Nicholas, leaving Hart to stare at the window where he had thrown them out.

He refused to believe that his mother would ever purposely hurt them. He was very aware of the things he had gone through, of all the things his parents put him through, but he understood why. They were born demons, a creature so powerful it could wipe out an entire town. They needed to be able to control that side of them. His mother helped them because she loved them. How could Seraphina not see that?

Quiet days passed, not a single word was exchanged between Hart and Sera, but it didn't stop them from sending strong thoughts to each other from time to time. As Riley's spell drew closer to being complete, the tension between the three members began to build. The same question rolled in their minds; what was Riley going to do when he wakes up? Would he leave, disappear forever and never return?

“I don't think he's going to leave,” Nicholas said one morning as it rained hard outside.

“Why do you think he won't?” Sera asked, holding a cup of tea in front of her.

“From what I've observed, I think he's lonely. He hates the idea of being around people, unless they are people who he has grown to love and care for. That's why he keeps coming back to you,” Nicholas said, looking at Hart over the dinning table. “He keeps trying to force himself to feel bad about loving you, because deep inside he enjoys everything that has happened so far. He wants to feel normal, and still somehow be okay with being with you.”

Hart cocked his head to the side, glaring at Nicholas and Sera. “I'm sorry, but when did you two turn into professional therapists? Why are you so sure you know how Riley feels?” he said.

“Because we aren't numb, we actually feel unlike you,” Nicholas told him.

Sera quickly smacked his chest with her free hand and placed her cup on the table, reading herself for any attack her brother would try to commit. She relaxed against her chair when Hart barely gave Nicholas any attention.

“You're lucky she loves you,” Hart whispered after some time had passed. “It makes it that much harder to kill you.”

“Did he just indirectly tell me he loves me?” Nicholas asked Sera, acting like it was a shocking moment.

Sera chuckled, watching her brother roll his eyes and take a sip of his own tea. The same tea was dropped carelessly on the table a second later as both Hart and Sera stood up immediately. Hart raised his hand and all of the curtains and blinds closed over the windows, trapping them in instant darkness.

“Um, what's going on?” Nicholas asked, confused.

“There's someone outside, someone not human,” Sera informed him as she ran towards the front door and made sure it was locked.

“Since when has that scared any of you?” he asked.

“It's a white witch,” Hart told him.

“Nicholas, go to the end of the house and make sure the door is locked. Then I want you to head down to the basement and keep your eyes on the dark room. Make sure Riley is safe and yell if anything happens,” Sera ordered him.

“Why is there a white witch here?” Hart asked his sister quietly, knowing it was her fault.

“It is not my fault,” she responded to his thoughts. “I don't know why there's a white witch, I haven't seen one in years.”

Hart dragged one of the blinds down with his finger and took a quick glimpse at the outside, watching for any sign of the witch. He had no idea where the witch was, but they both could sense it like the heat of a fire; the fire being their magic. Whoever they were, they had very powerful magic.

“This isn't good,” Hart said out loud, walking away from the windows.

“Nobody knows about us, right?” Sera asked him, eyes glistening like a child.

“Nobody,” he assured her.

Since the beginning of time, there had always been two sides to magic; dark and light. Nature sided with light because it was balanced and it didn't go against the universe. Dark magic was corruption, it betrayed and used nature for selfish reasons. Those who were light were known as white witches, and their darker brothers and sisters were black witches. Because magic came from nature, white witches were generally more powerful.

And the white witch who was outside their home felt even stronger than any witch they had even encountered. But what did it want with Hart and Sera? The witch couldn't possibly have known anything about them, they were invisible to the world. No one knew of their existence, they made sure to keep it that way whether it killed them or not.

“Maybe it sensed the spell?” Sera took a guess, hinting at the fact that Riley was burning in Hart's magic.

“How could it have sensed it? We're in the middle of nowhere,” Hart wondered.

A bright light suddenly appeared behind the closed windows. The siblings looked at each other, then back at the windows as the light dimmed and disappeared. Sera lifted her hand and the blinds unfolded, revealing that the grass had been burned right off and only white flames flickered in their place in the shape of a symbol.

“War,” Sera whispered as her eyes widened at the flames.

The witches' symbol for war kept burning even as rain poured over it. It was a warning, a warning for them that war was coming.

Hart immediately ran from the windows and went straight to the basement. Sera followed him, asking him what he was doing. Hart didn't bother trying to open the door with his code, it was useless now. He blasted the door with his mind and moved it aside, entering the dark room at once.

“Mother didn't tell me something, I can feel it,” Hart said when he was joined by the other two.

“Did you see her when you died?” Sera asked.

“Yes, when Riley killed me I went back to hell and she found me,” Hart admitted, feeling like he had done something wrong, but the only thing he did was not tell his sister the truth.

“Hart, what did you do?” she asked him, feeling what he was feeling. It was a mixture of nerves and fear, something neither of them rarely felt.

“We knew we didn't have much time together, my body was healing fast, so we made a plan.”

“Hart . . . what was the plan.”

Hart looked up at Riley's face, his beautiful sleeping face, and whispered words into the fire. The circle around Riley began to shrink until it was right underneath him. Then the circle ascended, floating around Riley's stomach.

“I'm going to have to speed things up,” Hart said, ignoring his sister who was panicking on the inside.

“Hart! What did you do?!” Sera screamed at him, but it was too late for answers.

The ring enclosed around Riley, then it entered his skin and wrapped itself around his heart like a locket. The dark flames rose higher and higher, eventually they touched the ceiling and began burning it, even when they were harmless. As the flames grew, Riley's body slowly descended until he was standing on the ground.

You couldn't see Riley through the flames anymore, they were too thick and violent at the moment. A voice was suddenly heard coming from the fire, then a victorious laugh came. Sera gasped at the sound of the voice, her eyes watering as she looked at her brother in shock. Two hands slowly appeared out of the fire, stretching forward as a full body followed. A figure in dark robes and a large hood encased over their face walked out, then the fire released a hissing sound and it exploded over their heads, disintegrating into dust as Riley's still body dropped

“Hello, my children,” Jocelyn whispered happily, pulling back the hood. Her hair was long and black, with a streak of white running all the way down to the ends. This was the first time Hart and Sera were seeing their mother as a human. A human who hadn't grown a day old since the time she had died. She was still just as young and beautiful as Sera, they could literally be sisters.

“Is it really you?” Sera asked, skeptically.

“Yes, my dear Seraphina, it's really me,” she said, smiling at her.

Hart looked behind his mother, noticing that Riley was waking up. Jocelyn must have been watching him, because she instantly turned around and used her magic to force Riley to get up and walk towards her. She pulled him in harshly until he was facing her as he opened his eyes.

“Mother, don't hurt him!” Hart said quickly, his hands turning into fists as he bravely stepped forward to make sure she wasn't going to hurt him.

Jocelyn touched Riley's face, examining him closely, especially his eyes. Those eyes looked back at her in full fear as he fully awakened and realized his surroundings. He tried to move, but Jocelyn had power over his body.

“You're very handsome,” she told him. “I can see why my son likes you.”

“Mother, please let him go,” Hart begged.

The very second Jocelyn released Riley, he called his dagger and attempted to thrust it into her heart but she was quicker and blasted him back. The peaceful aura that she had brought in with her was gone. She forced Riley up and called out darkness around her. Black fog surrounded her hand and she commanded it to attack Riley, but Hart jumped in between them to stop it.

“Remember the reason you are here!” Hart screamed at her.

Jocelyn withdrew the darkness and adjusted her robe, smirking at Riley who looked like he was about to pass out.

“Don't try anything funny, Riley. You're only alive because I allow it.” She turned to Seraphina, who had a similar look of expression as Riley. “I forgive you for what you have done, my daughter. I know that you are afraid and you hate me for what I did, but you must know that I only did it to protect you, because I love you and wanted you to be safe from the world.”

“I'm starting to think that love around here isn't exactly what it's supposed to be,” Sera muttered, crossing her arms over her chest.

“There are going to be changes around here now that I have returned, but first, I have to pay a visit to an old friend. I'll be back very soon, and once I am, everyone will pay for what they did to us,” Jocelyn said. She walked towards the darkest part of the room and entered the walls like they weren't even there. For now, Jocelyn was gone, but Hart knew she would be back very soon.

There was scream behind Hart, but by the time his brain processed it, there was already a dagger poking out of his chest. Sera screamed and fell on her knees, touching her chest where Hart had been stabbed. Nicholas tried running towards Riley, who was standing behind Hart holding the dagger in place, but he was pushed back by magic.

“Riley! Stop it!” Nicholas screamed as he got back up on his feet.

“You did it again,” Riley whispered in his ear. “I told you I wouldn't hesitate to do it again.”

“Except you missed my heart,” Hart groaned as Riley wrapped his arm around Hart's neck.

“Oh, I wasn't aiming for it. You can't die, so why would I try to kill you if you're just going to revive somehow? Just another lie to pile up on my desk.”

“I . . . wasn't . . . lying,” Hart stammered.

Riley made a face. “So now you're lying to me about lying? Really?”

“Let . . . me . . . go . . . and I'll tell you,” Hart struggled to speak, Riley was choking him.

“You're a demon, just use your superhuman strength to break my arm or something,” Riley said.

“He's not going to hurt you! Stop it!” Seraphina screamed at Riley, who was also struggling to breathe. Neither of them were doing anything to stop Riley, because they didn't want to hurt him. Only Nicholas was trying to stop him, because he was obligated to do so, since he was Sera's boyfriend after all.

Riley pulled back his dagger, making sure it hurt Hart – which did like hell – and let him go. Hart coughed, but quickly regained his breathing and so did Seraphina.

“I'm hungry,” Riley said, walking towards the door. “Is there anything in this damn house that isn't cereal?”

“You sure know how to pick them,” Nicholas told Hart as he wrapped his hands around Seraphina.

____________________

[Author's Message]: Hellooo, well that was intense wasn't it? Lol. My favorite part was the end, Riley I swear . . . I don't know how he has been able to put up with all of this. How is he still sane?! I'd be crazy in a mental hospital by now! OMG LOL.

Anyway, I hope you guys liked the chapter, it's only going down hill from now lmao.