No Demons But Us: Sister Seekers 1

This one wore a uniform slightly different than the warrior; from a distance, one wouldn't be able to tell she was the leader.  Up close, I could say it had seen less activity; it was less worn in places, and something about the cut of the body harness accentuated her breasts, lifted them up instead of flattened them down, and did so without exposing any skin.

Again, I met a Red Sister’s eyes—a much darker crimson than the light copper of the warrior—and I wasn’t punished for it.  Immediately.

The sorceress tilted her head this way and that as she stepped around my chair.  Her eyes seemed to scan the air touching my body, my gown, and my hair rather than my physical form.  After completing a circle, the Elder stood in front of me once again and reached out with her gloved hand to wrap it around my throat.

My pulse beat like the wings of a panicking moth trying to escape a spider’s web; somehow, I hadn’t expected a direct touch without so much as a question asked.  My throat closed as it had whenever I had wanted to speak out against Jilrina, and it hurt.  I worried that the compulsion had returned, there was no stomachache or headache or bright lights before my eyes.

“Residual effects,” the Elder commented.  “A recent dispelling.  What spell, Sirana?  And who lifted it?”

I quivered like a tiny burrower beneath a hunter’s paw.  I’d already looked down voluntarily.  This wasn’t an interrogation I might have imagined in the lengthy time I'd waited in my chair.  She never asked me what I thought happened to Jilrina, where I was when she died, who was my witness, and so on.  The Elder asked directly about a magical compulsion being gone; one that my own Matron hadn’t known about.

Yet this sorceress could see its recent passing.  It was a spell that gave me undeniable motive to murder a First Daughter, and the incentive to assassinate a family member.

A Sister Killer, as Kaltra claimed.

I didn’t kill her.  I didn’t push her.