Chapter 5 The Witch's Training

The years blurred together like watercolors in rain.

Morganna's cave became my home, my prison, my sanctuary. She was a harsh teacher, quick to criticize and slow to praise. But she was also the first person who'd ever seen potential in me instead of just a curse to avoid.

"Again," she barked, watching me struggle to summon shadows. "You're thinking too much. Magic isn't about logic. It's about feeling. About reaching into the darkness and pulling it toward you like a lover."

I tried again, focusing on the emptiness inside me, the void where my heart used to beat properly. The shadows responded, creeping across the cave floor toward my outstretched hand. They felt cold and eager, like living things hungry for direction.

"Better," Morganna acknowledged. "But you're still holding back. You're afraid of what you've become. Until you accept it fully, your power will always be limited."

She was right, of course. Part of me still clung to the girl I'd been. The gentle omega who tended wounded animals and dreamed of simple happiness. But that girl was dead. I'd watched her die in a forest, arrow-shot and heart-broken. What remained was something else. Something that didn't quite fit in either the living world or the dead.

The magic came easier as time passed. I learned to move through shadows, appearing and disappearing like smoke. I learned to speak to spirits, the restless dead who lingered between worlds. I learned to see the truth beneath lies, to feel the pulse of life and death in everything around me.

But the hardest lesson was controlling the hunger. The darkness inside me wanted destruction. It whispered constantly, urging me to lash out, to hurt, to destroy everything I touched. Some days it took all my strength to keep it leashed.

"The hunger never goes away," Morganna told me during one particularly difficult night. "You're a creature of vengeance now. That's the fuel that keeps you tethered to life. But you can choose what to do with it. You can let it consume you, or you can make it serve you."

"How?" I asked, frustrated and exhausted. "How do I control something that's stronger than I am?"

"By remembering why you came back." She stirred the fire, her blind eyes reflecting flames that shouldn't be visible to her. "Every time the hunger rises, ask yourself: is this what I want? Is this the revenge I chose? Or is it just the darkness trying to use me?"

It was good advice, but hard to follow. The line between my will and the magic's will blurred more each day.

Morganna also taught me about the world outside the cave. Centuries had passed since my death, and everything had changed. The Silvercrown Kingdom had fractured into smaller territories. Wars had been fought and lost. New packs had risen while old ones fell. But through it all, Alaric remained. The cursed king who couldn't die, couldn't abdicate, couldn't escape the consequences of his choice.

"He's become a legend," Morganna explained. "The immortal wolf who rejected his true mate and brought divine punishment on his people. Some worship him. Others curse his name. But all agree he's suffering a fate worse than death."

Good, I thought viciously. Let him suffer.

But sometimes, late at night when the darkness was quieter, I wondered what kind of man he'd become after all these centuries. Was he still the proud king I'd known? Or had guilt transformed him into something different?

Five years passed in the cave, though Morganna said that outside time moved differently. I grew stronger, more confident in my powers. I could summon storms of shadow, could kill with a touch, could see futures and pasts tangled together like threads.

"You're ready," Morganna announced one morning. "Not fully trained, you'll learn for the rest of your existence, but ready enough to face the world. Ready enough to face him."

My heart, slow and strange as it was, beat faster. "I go to Silvercrown?"

"Not yet. First, you need to build your reputation. Become someone he'll hear about, someone whose name will reach even a king's ears. You need to be mysterious and powerful enough that when you finally appear before him, he'll have no choice but to pay attention."

She was right. I couldn't just show up at the palace as a nobody. I needed to be someone. Someone threatening enough that Alaric would see me as a danger before he ever recognized me as his dead mate.

So I left the cave and entered the world as Lyra, the warrior-witch. I took contracts, solving problems that ordinary wolves couldn't handle. Hauntings. Curses. Political disputes that needed a neutral party with frightening powers. I was careful never to reveal too much, never to let anyone get too close. I was smoke and shadow and mystery.

Word spread. Stories about the strange woman who commanded darkness and bore no scent. Some said I was a demon. Others claimed I was a fallen goddess. A few whispered that I was connected to the old prophecy, but no one could prove it.

I built my reputation carefully over months, taking jobs that brought me closer and closer to Silvercrown territory. I helped border packs, saved a few important nobles, made myself valuable enough that eventually, inevitably, the king would have to summon me.

The night before I planned to enter Silvercrown lands, I stood at the edge of the forest and looked toward the distant palace. Lights glowed in the darkness, warm and inviting, completely at odds with the cold revenge burning in my chest.

"Are you ready?" Morganna's voice came from behind me. She'd followed me out of the cave for the first time in years, her blind eyes somehow seeing the path perfectly.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I've spent so long preparing for this. But now that it's here, I feel..."

"Afraid? Uncertain? That's good. It means you're still human enough to question yourself."

"I'm not human anymore. You said so yourself."

"You're more human than you think. And that's going to make everything harder." She touched my shoulder, her crooked fingers surprisingly gentle. "When you see him, you'll remember the bond. You'll feel the echo of what you lost. The darkness will tell you to kill him immediately, to rip out his heart the way he ripped out yours. But you need to resist. You need to wait."

"Why?"

"Because true revenge isn't about quick death. It's about making him understand what he destroyed. Let him fall for you again. Let him feel the bond trying to reform. Let him realize too late who you really are. That's when you strike. That's when you become the doom he feared."

It was cruel advice from a cruel teacher. But I'd asked for this. I'd chosen this path when I'd come back from death.

"And if I can't do it?" I asked quietly. "If I see him and remember loving him instead of hating him?"

Morganna was silent for a long moment. "Then you'll have to decide what matters more. The vengeance that brought you back, or the love that killed you the first time."

She left after that, disappearing back into the forest like she'd never been there. I stood alone at the border, staring at the kingdom that had rejected me, preparing to walk back into the arms of the man who'd broken me.

Tomorrow, I would enter Silvercrown as Lyra the powerful witch. Tomorrow, I would begin my revenge. Tomorrow, everything would change.

But tonight, I let myself be Eira one last time. The girl who'd loved a king and died for it. The girl whose heart, broken and strange as it was, still remembered what it felt like to hope.

Tomorrow I would be doom. Tonight, I let myself grieve.

The moon rose full and bright above me, and I could have sworn I heard the goddess laughing.