Chapter 43 The War Council pt 2
Duncan
She took a drink of her tea as she waited for that information to sink in. After a moment, she continued. "My parents are considered some of our best scholars. My sister and I grew up hearing the stories and theories of the prophecy, and probably know it better than anyone else in our coven. As we started coming into our own power—a process that starts in our teens, much like you and your wolves—it was clear that my powers were strong. My predecessor came to our family when she felt the rise of my power and began to mentor me. As a result, my sister began to feel…left behind. She began to resent the time that I spent training with the High Priestess, and she started leaving the coven for trips into the nearby cities, looking for what, I don't know. Ultimately, she ended up with a group of witches who dabbled in black magic. My parents and I tried to step in, but she turned on us. She ran from the coven after I tried to get her to stop working with the circle she had joined. We searched for years. Witches age slowly, you see. Similar to shifters, but we actually age much slower. I may look like I'm in my mid-twenties, but I'm actually 230 years old. My sister is 235."
"We finally tracked her circle, the Circle of Astaroth, down six years ago. They had taken sanctuary within a vampire coven. We lured her out. I used myself as bait. I suspected, with my rise to High Priestess and her years of resentment building and being nurtured by her circle, that she wouldn't be able to resist the chance to kill me if I looked vulnerable, and I was correct. My coven captured her, and we've held her prisoner for the last few years. Over that time, we've tried to interrogate her and determine what atrocities she's committed so that we can work to put as many of them right as we can. She's proven to be a difficult prisoner to break, but we recently found out that she's been working towards the prophecy's end. She has convinced herself to believe that she has a place as part of the great evil and a role in helping it rise. As a result, when she heard about the royal twins being born, she naturally assumed that they would be the ones in the prophecy."
"She bribed a nurse at the royal hospital. She requested that the nurse simply notify her when the twins were born by utilizing an obsidian communication stone. The nurse did so, and my sister waited until she saw an opening. She killed the nurse and kidnapped one of the children. In her mind, as long as the twins were split up, they would no longer be a threat to her new master. She placed a spell on the infant that cloaked her from the world. Trackers would not be able to find her, blood relations would not be able to tell she was near, no matter what. The spell would expire on her eighteenth birthday, so she placed her in a pack that had ties to the vampire coven she worked out of."
"She was friends with the Luna and was aware of how orphans and omegas were treated there. Blood Moon Pack, she knew, would keep her oppressed even after she turned eighteen. If she got word that you were getting too close to finding her, she'd plant a false lead elsewhere, confusing the trail. She regularly returned to check up on the princess, at least until we caught her. She finally gave us the name of the pack two days ago. I immediately went there to search for the princess, but they are in total disarray. The alpha is missing, and the beta is barely holding things together. I heard chatter from the warriors that Crescent Moon pack caused the chaos, and so, following the rumors, I found the princess with you in the hospital this morning. I removed the last traces of my sister's magic while I was healing Seren's remaining injuries." She fell silent.