Svala Niklausdöttir

Prologue

Niklaus’ fury was a fearsome thing on the best of days, but even his family would be hard-pressed to name a day in their long, long, immortal life when his rage had come close to what they could feel from him when Steffan Salvatore confessed that the sixth coffin had disappeared soon after he’d gotten his hands on the others and taken them from under the protection of the magic that hid them from other witches.

But even so, none of them feared his wrath this time: they were too busy sharing his anger.

HPTOHPTOHPTO

“I don’t like this.” muttered the youngest of the three gathered women.

“Neither do I, but it’s what the Ancestors want. They must have a reason.” Whispered the other.

“But what if they’re wrong this time?” doubted the first again. “What if he finds us? I’ve heard what happens when people make an enemy out of him…”

“And you know what happens when someone displeases our ancestors.” Cut in the only woman who’d remained silent up till then, watching the dark wooden box… no, coffin, lying in the centre of the room.

“The elders were firm on this: our ancestors demand it. Do you want to go against them and lose their favour? To be punished not to use our heritage?”

The three women exchanged a silent look. No, none of them wanted that. They looked back at the source of so much discord amongst their people.

“What… what do you think it is?” asked the first woman again, curious despite herself and whispering as if she still feared being overheard. “What could a monster like him treasure?”

“Well, since we’ve already risked our lives stealing it…” said the mostly silent one, voice ringing with resolution and hands settling on the edge of the coffin’s lid. “…let us find out.”

HPTOHPTOHPTO

Her whole life, she’d felt like there was something missing, like there was something important that she’d forgotten. She’d even gone so far as to borrow Neville’s remembrall, with his permission of course.

As soon as she touched it, the magical artefact had started to fill up with a dark red cloud that grew and grew filling up all the space until the pressure from the inside made the ball explode. Some of the crystals had embedded in her hands and, although Madame Pomfrey managed to remove them and heal her hands almost effortlessly, there was an echo of the ache that never left her and the palms of her hands started to glow red whenever she used magic. She started to wear gloves on to hide the unusual effect.

The incident only cemented the idea that she had, in fact, forgotten something important, but try as she might she never could remember what it was and started to push the thought to the back of her mind.

Fay Potter had, after all, a large number of other matters to worry about.

So she pushed it back and back, occupying her time with surviving whatever new trial had been sent her way.

Until the trials stopped coming with the end of the war and she was left with nothing but a restlessness that refused to settle.

Even the most mundane of things made those feelings that she’d thought long buried rise to the surface.

She would look in the mirror and see her reflection looking back at her, with red hair and bright green eyes and tanned skin, and a feeling of wrongness would invade her mind.

Other times, someone would call her name and she would not realise they were talking to her, the syllables sounding almost foreign for a moment.

When she was feeling melancholic and brought out her photo album, she’d peruse the faces of her loved ones: her parents James and Lily, her godfather Sirius, her almost-uncle Remus… And she’d feel the emptiness inside her grow and the feeling of wrongness return stronger than ever.

She slowly grew apart from everyone and immersed herself in the one thing that felt right in her life: her magic.

Until one day when she was lounging in the library of the Black House with an essay on experimental uses of Angel’s Trumpet in potions and she suddenly slumped, her eyes rolling to the back of her head and her breath stopping.

Fay Potter died without warning and, in another place far away, someone else opened her eyes.

HPTOHPTOHPTO

She woke up disoriented in an unfamiliar place.

The room was made of grey stone with big holes, some deep and dark, others covered and lit by candles. The place felt old and cold and she soon realised it was a mausoleum.

Her head hurt and she brought a hand up to press against her eyes, but something made her stop.

Her hand was wrong. It was small, delicate even, pale and unscarred. That wasn’t her hand. But it was?

She blinked, trying to make sense of the mess inside her head whilst looking around for her father.

He was always there when she woke up, a calm and reassuring presence that eased her back to the waking world. Her father always made everything better.

But another part of her said that it was just wistful thinking. Her father was dead, had been since she was a baby.

She tried to remember his face ―a flash of messy hair, hazel eyes, a mischievous smile… No, no, that wasn’t it. That was wrong. Why couldn’t she remember? What was going on? Why wasn’t her dad with her? Where was she…?

…

Who was she?

She panicked when she realised she didn’t know. Or more like she suddenly knew too much. Which was it? Which one was her name?

There was a woman, she was trying to get her to calm down and listen to her, but clearly with no success. When the woman suddenly started chanting in a strange language that somehow sounded familiar and understandable her eyes widened in fear.

‘She’s a witch.’ She realised, startled.

A soft pressure built up in the air around her and she felt her mind and body grow sluggish.

‘Wiccan.’ Her mind corrected.

And she was… she was trying to… put her to sleep…

‘NO!’ she shouted inside her mind.

She was in danger, she needed to think, she couldn’t sleep now, she needed… she needed her to stop…

Her own power surged up around her, pure instinctive raw magic that threw the woman across the room, her body hitting the wall hard before falling motionless to the floor with a disgusting crunching sound.

For all of a second, the confused girl looked at her raised hands ―the glow in them fast receding― with horror. Until the sound of shouting and fast approaching footsteps reached her.

But that all took no more than a second, for suddenly a sharp agonising pain in her stomach made her double over, a cry leaving her lips as she fell to the floor, feeling as if her insides were boiling and her bones starting to break.

This time, when she felt the magic washing over her, she didn’t have the strength to fight it and welcomed back the darkness and oblivion of sleep.

HPTOHPTOHPTO

The next time she woke up, she wasn’t in the crypt and there wasn’t just the one witch with her, but a whole Wiccan coven.

She barely paid any attention to her surroundings, barely surmising that they were still in a cemetery and that they were gathered around a ritual altar. There were more girls there, dressed in a simple white dress and ostensibly there out of their own free will.

She fought.

She fought tooth and nail to free herself from their grip with her weakened body. She wanted to flee.

She didn’t know what the ritual they were attempting was, but it wasn’t a hard leap of logic to deduce it was the reason they had woken her, and she wanted no part on it.

She only wanted her family! Was that too much to ask for?

In the distance, she could see dark shapes moving, unnaturally fast. And then they arrived: the fluid grace of a predator in every one of their movements, the moonlight that lit up their handsome features… the dark veins that sprung up around their blackening eyes.

‘Vampires.’ Whispered that suddenly hopeful voice in his head.

The witches screamed as their brethren from the outer edges of the ritual circle started to fall to the vampires. They were clearly outmatched and they knew it too. They were getting desperate; so was she.

But no matter how much she struggled; the Wiccans held her down. And then she felt the biting pain of metal on her neck before they finally released her.

She fell to her knees, her hands shooting up to her throat where the pain was pulsing. The wound was jagged under the palms of her hands and something wet and warm ―her blood, supplied her mind― trickled down.

She sobbed, the pain increasing as the move jarred her wound and she choked on a gurgle.

She opened her eyes, unaware that she’d even closed them, and looked up at the deep night sky with its beautiful twinkling stars and wondered where her dad was, whether she’d ever see him again and if he’d ever find her.

Her eyes closed and her breathing ceased a mere second before her heart stopped beating.

HPTOHPTOHPTO

“…Now you’re going to sleep, my sweet. Sleep and dream a wonderful dream… There, you will fly amongst the stars and bind the sun and moon to your smile, you will explore the depths of the ocean and play on white-sanded shores. You will run through forests and glades and befriend wolves and birds and you will see magic unlike any that has graced this world. And all the while, you will do so knowing that your family loves you, adores you, and is always waiting for you, no matter how long that wait. But one day, you’ll join us again and be as loved and happy as you deserve to be. There’ll be no more pain because you will be free then, free to be whom you were always meant to be and to be whoever you wish to be; and you’ll be safe too, safe from anyone who could ever wish you harm. When you wake up, you’ll be the princess of the greatest and most extraordinary kingdom anyone’s ever seen. Any enemy will have been crushed and you’ll have a home, one where our family won’t have to fear or flee from ever again. I promise you, love, you’ll have all that and more. Daddy will make it so.”

Slowly, with every word, every promise, that was lovingly whispered to her, the girl’s eyes fell closed until she laid peacefully on the soft bed, her porcelain skin a stark contrast against the dark bedding, and a small sweet smile lifting the edges of her lips.

The man sitting on the chair right next to her brushed a hand over the young girl’s blond mane and leaned forward to press a lingering kiss to her forehead, his own eyes pressing shut and his brow furrowing as his anguish bled through his calm façade for a second.

Breathing deeply and taking in a lungful of his child’s scent, the man visibly drew on every ounce of his control to regain his composure, pulling slightly apart so his blue-green eyes could roam over the girl’s face as if trying to memorise her features whilst she was steadily eased into a deeper sleep by the pull of the magic of the ritual.

“I love you, my little girl.” were the last words that reached her fading consciousness.

The warmth of the room and the loving atmosphere of the scene were like a balm to her frayed soul as she stood there, watching, letting the memory comfort her and the warmth and love and peace seep into her very being.

It helped, pushing back the memories that danced through her mind, sometimes tantalisingly close, others just barely out of reach; some promising good things like the memory she was hiding in, others promising coldness and despair that was still hers.

But she paid those memories no mind, focusing instead on the sitting man that felt so much pain and sadness and love. She wanted to change that, she wanted to see him happy and smiling. And yet this was just a memory. She had no power here.

And then the memory started to shake, the edges becoming frayed as some kind of blinding light extended through the memory, blurring and even erasing the details in some places.

The light that hunted her.

Light that touched her and made her scream.

Pain! She felt so much pain! It was like that was the only thing that existed there, that excruciating pain!

She kept screaming, her voice higher that the thousands whispering voices she could now feel surrounding her, hurting her, tugging, demanding. Angry.

She fought them, her power surging from within her and surrounding her protectively, trying to keep her and her core as far away from their attackers as possible.

A few tendrils of darkness surged around her then, the only spot of colour in a world that had gone white, and the pain started to recede. The angry mutters increased in strength. Suddenly they sounded desperate, but also as if they came from further away.

The whispers lowered and lowered until they were no more and only silence enveloped her. Silence and darkness and a distinct lack of pain.

She looked around, only to ascertain that there was nothing to look at.

‘Where am I? What is this place? What were those voices? Why did they want to hurt me?’

“They are the Wiccan witches of the Other Side and they wanted to devour your magic so that their own power would grow; but I won’t allow it.”

She startled at the deep voice that answered her and looked around again, but she still found no one.

And, she realised, neither had she voiced those words aloud.

‘Hello?’ she ventured to say.

“Hello, my mistress.”

HPTOHPTOHPTO

Niklaus stood next to the window, looking out but not seeing the outside. His mind was far away, lost in a different place and time.

Unconsciously, his hand went to his neck in a familiar gesture, wrapping around the leather necklaces that hung there, preserved by magic from time itself.

He felt reassured by their presence. Lately, it seemed like the only remaining link he held to her and so they comforted him.

He could still remember each and every occasion that she’d made them on, for him. Only for him. And he could remember happily putting them on and promising never to take them off.

Even now, they sat next to his mother’s pendant.

With one last caress to a roughly carved wolf and raven hanging from his neck, he turned from the window and his face changed from wistful to annoyed.

He had work to do, going by the rumours that had just reached him.

It was time to go back to New Orleans.