“I still don’t understand one part… how was this scheme to trick Wrath and Pride supposed to work? I know Envy said no spies ever made it to our circle. But didn’t the demons know of us, even if they’d never been to our House?”
Vittoria uttered a spell, then drew a map in the space between us. It glowed a soft lavender as it hovered before me. My twin pointed to the almost familiar continent. “The underworld bears many similarities to the mortal land of Italy. The upper region, corresponding to Piemonte, is where lesser demons and ice dragons roam.” She moved her hand, and a different area, roughly the location of Tuscany, glowed. “This region is where the princes of Hell reside.” She swept the magic along the southern border, approximately in the same location as the region of Campania. “And this is where House Vengeance is. There is a treacherous mountain range here that serves as a nearly impassable barrier to our domain—even for immortals. Within the mountains is a veil of sorts, one that erases memories. Except for ours, our mother’s, and anyone we choose to gift with true Sight.” My twin pointed out another section. “The vampire court is near the very tip, where Calabria is for humans. And the island of Sicily is nearly identical to the location of the Shifting Isles.”
The map faded into the shadows. At least I now understood how the princes—who seemed to know much about everything—were in the dark about us. “I don’t understand why we kept ourselves mysterious. For what, centuries? Is there a reason we didn’t comingle with the princes?”
Vittoria’s expression shifted. It wasn’t quite hatred, but there was a coldness about her features that surfaced each time I brought up the princes of Hell. “Demons—especially princes of Hell—cannot be trusted. And are beneath us. We had enough to occupy us in the southern region and had no cause to get involved in their squabbles.”
“We were here shortly after the underworld was created,” I recalled suddenly.
“And the princes came centuries later, when they were cast from their own realm.”
I sensed there was much more to that particular part of our history but left it be for now. Above all else, I needed to understand our current predicament—the curse and how it came to be—if I had any hope of breaking it.
My twin was in a rather giving mood, freely offering information without any magical restraints. I might not have many other opportunities to gather this much information, so I took advantage. “If I was torn away from Wrath, how did you get cursed?”
“Like I said, I came for you.” My sister’s gaze turned darker than the shadows that slunk into the chamber. She flung a hex at our grandmother, knocking her unconscious. “I hunted you down, and the Star Witches were ready. They set a trap. You were lying on an altar, blood dripping from your chest.”
She allowed that punch to land squarely in my gut. It was the exact way I’d found her body in the monastery in Sicily. Now I knew her pose had been by design. It hadn’t been a message to me, it had been a warning to Nonna and the witches.
The goddess of death remembered.
“I rushed to you, not noticing the circle of salt and herbs,” she went on. “Uncaring about the spell candles or the arcane symbols glowing all over the walls. Once I crossed the circle, their magic locked me in. It overtook my power, essentially making me mortal for brief moments. Which was all the time they needed to perform their ritual. They chained me down and gave me my own spell-locked heart.”
We stared at each other for a few tense beats. Despite her betrayal, despite the months of anger and torment I felt, I needed my twin. In this moment. I needed our connection. But Vittoria wasn’t mortal. She didn’t fold me in her arms. There were no words of comfort or shared tears. There was only one promise shining in her eyes. Vengeance. A vow to set right a terrible wrong.
“That’s when they made us wear the Horn of Hades, further blocking our memories,” I guessed. “And I imagine also hiding us from any of our mother’s tracking spells.”
“Precisely. The spell-lock and amulets both prevented the Crone from locating us. Something the witches also feared.”
Which was why they took extra pains to hide us. Having the Crone, one of the three original goddesses, as an enemy would have posed an even greater threat to their world. I exhaled. Wrath and I hadn’t been sure if that was true about the amulets, but it had been a theory we’d batted around. We wore those amulets to not hide ourselves from the devil, but to hide from our true selves. “And when we’d taken them off, that night… our magic struggled to rise.”