章節 294: Broken Trust
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3rd March 2013, Hogwarts
(Jasmine Sayre POV)
I turned and teleported away to the department, ignoring the transfiguration mistress's questions. She must be scared out of her wits to see someone teleporting away from Hogwarts.
I walk past the magical maze that made up the department. It was night and there wasn't anyone left. I walked towards the room that was usually used to maintain bodies under statis and looked for the newest one. It was a gentleman by the name of 'Jean Delacour'. He was probably related to the young woman I competed against in the tournament, but that didn't matter.
A single glance at the body told me that my fears were true. This man, probably a former member of the Court of Shadows, was drained entirely. He was barely more than skin and bones, but there was more to it. His entire life force was drained in seconds. And there is only one person I know who is capable of this, one person who has the knowledge to apply it to such a scale. Selene, my wife, had massacred the Court of Shadows.
I didn't how long I just stood there, staring at the wizard's body, hoping that I was wrong, that there was another explanation as to who killed the Court of Shadows in such a manner.
I stood frozen, my mind racing. This couldn't be real. This couldn't be my wife. Selene couldn't have done this. No, she definitely had the capability and the mentality to do it, but she wouldn't destroy my relationship with Rose like this. I have loved this woman for countless years, and she knew very well how much this meant to me.
Truthfully, I have never seen anything like Selene's curse. According to her, she was born during a ritual that ended up killing all the participants and allowed her to literally suck the life out of people. She was the reason vampires even existed in the first place. An old wizard in Ancient Rome found out about her immortality and tried to replicate it using alchemy. He succeeded, in a way. He ended up becoming an ageless creature, but one that became mindless over time and hungered for blood instead of life force.
What I have discovered over the years was that Selene's soul was odd. My wife had always thought that her soul had burst lightly because of the power of the ritual and the inherited flexibility of souls during birth. She liked to call herself the first mutant, but given the fact that she can use magic, she cannot be considered a mutant. After all, they are technically mages that can cast only one spell, while Selene can cast many.
A soul was theoretically infinite, but it can be split, put back together, and can break, but it wouldn't show like this. No, I believe that Selene's soul was not leaking, nor was it damaged at all, in fact, it was her body that was damaged. Any living being needs something to tie the soul to the body. Its energy differs for each species and its life expectancy depends on how much energy is left. I call this energy the life force. There are ways to make it denser, and more durable. Monks have done so while meditating, and the Atlanteans were able to do so using my physical magics. It was why they were so long lived, after all.
Selene did not absorb the souls of her victims. No, she stole their life force, technically killing them with old age. It's why their bodies look like old cadavers whenever she's through with them. But somehow, her own life force was leaking at an alarming rate. This, coupled with the impact of the ritual on her young soul, turned her into the woman she was today.
Selene's ability was a spell that she had developed instinctively as a child to survive the leakage. Her magic reacted to ensure her continuing survival, and with her special circumstances, she was able to steal other people's life force. I have tried to recreate the spell for centuries, but I was unable to do it. The ritual's impact on Selene's soul played a vital part in the spell somehow, which is something I am still researching to this day.
It was nice, in a way, to have a problem to preoccupy myself with during the boring decades. People often assume that I have had a life with nothing but excitement and adventure, but I lived most of it waiting for something to happen. Boredom can be as dangerous a weapon as a curse, especially to an immortal.
Back to the situation at hand, it had to be Selene because there was literally not a drop of life force left in the body. Jean Delacour was drained of everything. It wasn't natural, obviously. When someone dies, even of old age, there still remains a drop of life force left in them. People often die because of disease and illnesses. Their bodies fail, but I have never, in my five thousand year lifetime, seen any living dying naturally without a drop of life force left. The only time I saw anything similar, was at Selene's hand.
But this didn't make any sense. Why would my wife do this? Outside of the betrayal towards me, no one can use that much life force at once. Selene couldn't have possibly absorbed it all. There were far more efficient ways, and I had made her a pendant that slowed down her life force leak to manageable levels. She barely needed to feed once a century and there were always despicable men that were better off dead anyway.
So, why would Selene feel the need on killing this many people at once and wasting all that energy she would have gathered? Selene didn't care enough about the magical world to bother about the chaos that killing the Court of Shadows could have caused.
But she did know that the Court would have been Rose's crown jewel. I confided in her whenever she doubted Rose's value as an heir. She wasn't convinced but was willing to let things go my way since it meant that I would leave this world behind after she takes over. Her choosing to target the Court had nothing to do with the magical world in any way. It was to do with making sure my former sister fails in her responsibilities, which would have inevitably destroyed our relationship.
Did Selene want to sabotage my relationship with Rose for some reason? Did she think I didn't pay her enough attention? Was it some kind of cry for help? I didn't think so. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more to all of this. Selene had always been selfish, but she had never gone to such lengths to hurt me before. And while she had always condemned my relationships with mortals over the years, it wouldn't have been enough for her to do something this drastic.
Personally, I was starting to see her point in the matter. What was the reason for getting attached to such small creatures? Their lifespans were so short that they would disappear in a blink of an eye, becoming old and grey. I don't quite understand why I was drawn to these humans. While they were so full of life and passion, and they had a resilience that I thought was inspiring, it all seems empty to me now. Despite their short lifespans, they were able to accomplish so much in their time on this earth, but in the end, it was all meaningless. In a century barely a dozen humans out of the billions alive will have a legacy worth remembering, and in a thousand years, no one will be remembered at all.
Selene and I were living proof of that. The tribulations of my friends were turned into legends and myths, nothing more than stories that a few historians studied for a semester in college at best. Human life was fleeting, meaningless, and empty.
I loved Selene but there was one undeniable truth in the matter. My wife was without a doubt the one responsible for the massacre this morning, that killed thousands of people around the globe. And she did so because of Rose. The sad thing was that she succeeded. Rose was now officially out of my life and that will never change. I had made sure of that.
I didn't even know if Selene planned the deaths of Rose's parents. It was too messy to be her, too unpredictable. Unless she mind controlled them to go to the exact street a riot was about to go violent, which was very unlikely. Selene was powerful, but she didn't have the patience for useless plots like that. If she wanted someone dead, she killed them and that's it. Yes, I know, she's a businesswoman who dislikes overly clever plans. Don't misunderstand, she could be incredibly cunning, but she prefers the use of simplicity and directness.
Perhaps, she just wanted Rose to blame me for the massacre? Or maybe there was a purer explanation. Perhaps, in an unusual way, Selene wanted me to be safe from the Court of Shadows. They did suspect that I was still alive and that I was involved in the disappearance of the British branch.
No, that was very unlikely. Selene knew that even if the entire Court had banded together to go against me, I could've killed them with a snap of my finger. Sure, I was still experimenting with my cosmic core, but I have committed genocides with a wave of my hand in my service to Death. It's not the deaths that bother me, really. I don't care about some pompous rich fools with heads filled with delusions of power, kicking the bucket. But it was the fact she did it behind my back and was done to hurt me deeply.
This was a breach of trust that she has never done to me. Sure, we clashed a few times, and we competed against each other, but this was different. She used information that I told her in confidence. She used my plans and hopes, for some obscure goal that ended up destroying my relationship with my sister.
I didn't even know how to feel about it. I loved Selene with all my heart, but what she's done is too much, even for me. I still love her, but I don't know if I can trust her anymore and, in a way, that was worse. She was always my confidante, as I was hers. She often offered me her suggestions and insights, and now I couldn't trust any of them, in fear of her using that information to her advantage again.
I needed to talk to her, to confront her. I needed to know the truth. This wasn't even about Rose anymore. Her loss from my life, while regrettable, can be dealt with. But Selene betraying me is simply unacceptable.
My thoughts were interrupted by noise from outside the door, and I realized that I had stayed staring at this husk of a body for hours without moving. Immediately, I wave my hand, and everything returned to the way it was, and I teleport home.
My mind was reeling with possibilities and justifications, but there was nothing concrete. I knew that there was something. That I was close. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I'm just blanking.
I made my way to our bedroom. Selene was sitting on our balcony, sipping her tea. I steeled myself and entered the balcony for our inevitable confrontation. I just hope that I wouldn't lose her by the end of it as well. The moment I entered; Selene looked at me.
She must have seen that something was wrong because she looked worried suddenly, "my love, what's wrong?"
I gave her a serious look, "We need to talk."
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