Elsina was determined to reveal the sea nymph’s monstrous nature to Torrin. So she entered the tower where she stored her darkest magics. For seven days and seven nights, she gathered the vilest ingredients of the sea and added them to a boiling, hissing broth of hatred and vengeance. On the seventh day, the sorceress poured her bitter concoction into an urn carved from the branch of a cursed oak tree, the most menacing instrument used in the spell.
Carried on the back of her winged lion, Elsina landed in the cove before sunrise. Robed in black like a specter of death, she crept under the cover of darkness to where the sleeping lovers lay entwined. She stole to the water’s edge, waiting for the twilight hour. When the hour hit and the air began to pulse with magic, she poured the thick ooze into the water. Once the poison spread through the cove, she left.
Excerpt from The Lonely Sorceress, the first fable in Fate’s Fables.
