He nodded tightly. Eve tilted her head to the side and smiled nicely at him, and Violette wondered if someone looked at him with such warmth as this girl before.
As they were walking, the girls moved a little forward.
Eve leaned closer, almost whispering, “What is the scarf on his face?”
“Oh…um,” Violette stammered, “he gets cold very easily. He grew up in the south and all this winter weather just makes him feel sick.”
The made-up story came into her head as she nervously tried to remind herself why she was doing this.
“Oh, well, then North Forest is definitely a trial for him,” Eve shortly giggled.
Violette pretended to laugh. She wanted to tell her to run so bad but she was selfish enough to keep masquerading.
After some time they stopped on the spot in the forest, amid its frozen kingdom.
“Can you hold the book, please?” the witch asked nicely, and Violette quickly opened the book to the right page.
Eve put her fingers on the pages, her eyes closed. The symbols and the letters beganto glow with gold light under the witch's fingers – a pure sign of breathtaking magic. It was hard to believe these symbols belonged to the ancient evil sorcerers who were tied up with dark magic and lethal spells.
Nobody actually knew what Heggas were doing and what type of magic they possessed, as well as their purpose. It wasn't clear if it was pure dark magic or if it was completely new spells, not bad but not good either. Everyone had believed they were daughters of night, and this night lacked stars and any light, existing in the presence of the moon in a red eclipse. But even Dante was wary of these creatures, which led Violette to think that Heggas were an absolute evil that you can't hide from once you met it.
She knew about them from the books, they were witches as old as time, who were depicted in pictures as scary and crooked old crones. The picture vividly lived in Violette's mind: a wrinkled old woman in a black cloak with fingers curved in the shape of tree branches, ready to grab and drag you into the depths of a dark forest.
It was believed that most of them had disappeared, while others were hiding in such wilds that they couldn't be found. And it's been said these witches were not even sorceresses of some kind. Sorcerers were considered wizards and wizardlings whose parents or ancestors turned to black magic, and thereby the magic cursed their children for their misdeeds. Sorcerers were prone to dark magic much more than ordinary wizardslike Violette; they could be kind, but the darkness always had called to them in the most difficult times and not all of them were able to fight it. But the heritage of Heggas remained unknown. What exactly these magical beings were doing, besides cursing people and casting terrible curses, remained a mystery. They and their actions became a kind of legend, what was true and what was a lie was difficult to say. Everything written in books could be compared to fairytales – exaggeration and fiction, just as Dante said.
The pages of the old book continued to emit a soft light and every word that Eve ran over with her thin finger turned golden. It looked as if she wasn't just reading them, but was absorbing the words into herself, or, on the contrary, giving her own piece of magic to read this one. This is probably why she kept her eyes closed and never once had lowered her gaze to the pages: she did not read the words, she wasfeelingthem.
The creaked line formed between Eve’s brows and then she opened her eyes, her fingers numbed above the pages. She looked at Violette, and suddenly her voice no longer seemed as sweet and friendly as it'd been.
“Why do you need this spell?” she asked timidly.
“Is something wrong?” Violette’s pulse began to pound faster.
“It doesn't say anything about vampires. This spell removes curses, break them.”
Violette answered immediately without hesitation like a cup overflowing with a lie, poisoning her mouth. “Well, that's right, you yourself said vampires are a curse. We'd thought this spell would help us get rid of him.”
Eve bit her lip, as if something inside her was tugging an unseen string, telling her that something was off.
“I don't know…” She dropped her eyes to the pages. “Heggas don't write about spells to help people, unless…it's a spell that will release something terrible…” Her consciousness seemed to wake up from a dream. “What kind of a spell are you going to remove? What are you going to release?”
For a split second, it seemed as if she wanted to say,Or who?
“We…” Violette balked, feeling caged.
Dante was staying silent. He stood steadfast and it didn't seem as if he was worried about the girl's sudden suspicion.
Eve raised her gaze to him. “This thing on his face, not because of the cold, right?”
“I would not say the cold is something that bothers me,” finally Dante spoke and his voice turned weirdly sweet and derisive, feeling she was very close to the truth and it almost faced her. Oddly enough, he wasn't sad about this fact, and the strangest of it all – he looked like he felt himself a winner.
Eve's eyes darkened, her face didn't seem as soft as it was a minute ago.
“Who is your friend?” she roughly asked Violette, keeping her eyes at Dante.
“Eve, I…You shouldn't be scared, it's just–” Violette tried to explain but the witch quickly interrupted her.
“You lied to me…” She finally turned her gaze to Violette, looking like a kid whose dreams were crushed by the cruelty of this world.
