Zoe

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The anger and hurt I had felt moments ago turned to sadness, regret and guilt as I watched Scarlet walk up to the man and talk to him. I watched as she laughed and flirted and saw the pure happiness radiating from her.

When the memory ended, I was left with just my own feelings and that sickening new knowledge. I had killed Scarlet's mate.

My own memory of his and his daughter's lifeless bodies came to me. The two deaths that had tormented me the most out of all I had caused. He had been Scarlet's mate.

There was no wonder she hated me. No wonder she wanted to forget our friendship. It was honestly more surprising to me she hadn't killed me. If anyone harmed, let alone killed Felix, I knew I wouldn't hesitate to harm them back.

And then her words from right before I had started my wandering through her memories came back to me.

I believe in an eye for an eye.

I couldn't blame her for that, though I would never let her hurt Felix. But I didn't blame her for wanting to take my mate away from me, just like I had taken hers.

I wanted to explain it all to her, though. Wanted her to know that the Priestess had told me he would restart the witch hunts. How I hadn't wanted to kill his daughter, had tried to refuse, but been threatened with my father's life.

It felt like such poor excuses, though, and such a selfish desire. I wanted her to forgive me, but I knew I didn't deserve it.

But I wanted her to at least know how much I regretted it.

And, I slowly realized, I wanted to know how she had found out that I had been responsible and what the Priestess had said to her.

I quickly shifted through a couple of memories. Leaving them and going to the next as soon as I saw it wasn't the one I was looking for. After around ten of them, I found the right one.

The Priestess sat in her chair behind her desk and Scarlet stood on the other side, fury all over her.

"Why!" she yelled. "Why did you have Zoe kill him?!"

"I'm sorry, Scarlet, but I'm not sure I know what you're talking about," the Priestess said in her fake sweet voice.

"My mate! I've seen enough of her victims to know. Why did you order Zoe to kill him!"

"Your mate?" the Priestess said, and she tried to sound surprised, but it didn't convince me. "I didn't know you had found him."

"Cut the crap and just tell me why! And why would she kill his daughter too?" Tears started falling from Scarlet's eyes.

"Well, you must be talking about the latest one. I'd noticed him sneaking around close to us. Taking picture and writing stuff, gathering information by the looks of it. Naturally, it made me fear for our safety." The Priestess' tone was nonchalant and matter-of-factly, an extreme contrast to the emotional storm that was Scarlet.

"And his daughter?" she asked.

"I had no idea he had one," the Priestess answered and sighed. "Seems like Zoe might have started developing a liking for killing if she won't even let children go."

The Priestess got up from the chair and walked around the desk. She placed a hand on Scarlet's shoulder.

"I'm so sorry that you lost your mate. I know it must hurt a lot. But you deserve someone stronger than a mere human anyway, and this way you can pick your own mate. Or maybe the Goddess will grant you a new one."

The Priestess left. Leaving Scarlet standing there with tears still streaming down her face.

My guilt had turned to anger as I had watched the memory play out, and my desire to explain my version of it had intensified. Not because I wanted forgiveness, but because the Priestess had bluntly lied to Scarlet. She had known about the daughter, told me specifically to kill her too. Likely there were more things that the Priestess had lied about, both to me and Scarlet, and I had a suspicion about why.

I had watched Scarlet trying to stop the Priestess from using me in more than one memory and also seen how Scarlet had managed to start to convince other witches in the coven that I was treated unfairly. Scarlet's friendship with me had threatened the Priestess' control over me and what better way to destroy our friendship than to have me kill her mate?

I needed Scarlet to know the truth. Not so she would forgive me, but because it was about her mate and she deserved to know the truth as to why he had died. Problem was, I didn't know how to do it.

I knew Scarlet wouldn't listen if I tried to tell her. She was likely too angry with me to care to listen to a single word of mine. The best would be if I could show her my memories of it all, but I didn't know how.

Though I had very little experience with nymph magic, I doubted I could use it to implant my memory in Scarlet. It only seemed to work to see life energies and to then either heal or break it. All that I had done yet with it had at least been that. With both Alex's and Harry's memories, I had simply helped to bring forth things that were already there. Manipulated the energy, one could say. But that was all it had been.

I knew of some spells that could show her a specific memory of mine, but they wouldn't be effective enough. What they did was simply to create an illusion based on my memory, but I had seen memories like that as well and they were only a shadow compared to how I saw the memories while in a person's life energy. It would show her how I remembered things, but Scarlet had been the one to teach me about it and, as she herself had said, those illusions could be twisted based on the caster's needs. She would not believe it to be true if I cast one of those spells.

A light lit for me, though. What if I cast the spell while being where I was, inside her life energy? If I combined my witchcraft with my nymph magic? Because the main issue with those types of memory spells was that it was shown outside of the mind, but at that moment my mind was inside Scarlet's.

I thought it through a couple of times and each time I did, the more convinced I became it would work.

I took a deep breath and concentrated on the memories I wanted to share with Scarlet, saw them in my mind as vividly as possible, and then I started the chant. Like most spells, it was in an ancient and dead language. It had always sounded a bit eerie to me and as I said the words inside Scarlet's head, it sounded more so than usual.

As I finished the spell, a new thread appeared in front of me. The main colors of it were blue and red, snaking around each other. The thread seemed to just dangle there in Scarlet's mind and instinctively I knew I had to connect it to one of the existing threads. I took hold of it and placed one of its ends towards the memory of Scarlet talking to the Priestess. The two threads vibrated and buzzed and then connected.

"No!" I heard a terrified and painful scream that I knew belonged to Scarlet and next thing I knew, I was being thrown out of her mind.

Author and Zoe wishes you a blessed Yule!

<3

Yule is the celebration of the winter solstice that has developed into Christmas.

What is one of your favorite winter activities? Personally, it's been a long time since I played in the snow, but I did enjoy watching my colleagues act like they were small children as soon as snow came this year XD

What is one of your favorite winter food? So fish is a big thing to eat during all holidays where I live, and I love fish in almost any shape and form, so fish for me