The Coven (Coven of Bones, #1) (2)

“If we do not open our doors once again, the witches will have no one left to breed with. If we die out, so will your kind. Do not forget that you require the blood of our people to sustain you, Alaric,” Susannah said, turning her back on me and making her way to the throne that waited for her.

I gritted my teeth, forcing my body into the shallowest of bows. “As if you would ever allow me to forget such a thing,” I said, crumpling the list in my hand.

I turned my back on them, the muscle in my cheek jumping when they couldn’t see it.

Fucking witches.





1





WILLOW





Two months later

Whispered words.

If I kept my eyes closed long enough, maybe I would convince myself that the last week had been a dream. A phantom of a nightmare, a figment of my worst imagination, the very day I’d been raised for.

And the one I wanted nothing more than to escape.

The whispers at my back existed within a bubble, as if I’d managed to separate myself from them. Even as all the people who’d murmured behind my mother’s back waited for their turn to say goodbye to the woman they would never understand, I couldn’t force myself to pry my eyes open.

I stood with my feet shoulder-width apart, a habit my father had ingrained in me all my life. Ready for anything, for a hunter to attack at any time—or something even worse. The tile beneath my shoes was unnatural, the separation it caused keeping me from touching the one thing that made my soul feel whole.

The dirt beneath my feet.

“Low,” a small voice said.

A hand slipped into mine, much smaller fingers intertwining in a pattern that we knew well. Ash stood at my side even after saying my name, giving me the chance to compose myself. To stop the force threatening to consume me. We’d kept my brother protected from the knowledge of what we were for his own safety, for what would await him if he ever discovered his magic and brought the coven down on us.

I should have been the one to be strong for him. After all, it wasn’t only my mother who lay rotting in a casket for all to see, but his as well.

I forced my eyes open, staring at the pictures of our mother and our family. Smiling faces stared out at the crowd, looking deceptively human. As if we belonged here, when the only home we’d ever truly had wouldn’t have embraced us if they’d known what we were.

Humans had only so much capacity for understanding in their hearts. They tended to shy away from actual witchcraft, if the trials that had nearly wiped out my ancestors were any indication.

A single, slow look down to my mother’s face made me grimace, remembering why I’d closed my eyes to fight back my irritation.

Her lipstick was wrong. The color was far too red and brazen for my mother, who preferred to blend into the background. It was readily apparent that the person who’d been responsible for preparing her for her services hadn’t known her at all, covering the laugh lines she valued as a result of her happy, full life, free of the coven that would have dragged her back to Crystal Hollow kicking and screaming.

It was bad enough she’d need to be buried according to human customs—her remains trapped in a box in the earth that kept her from the elements—unless my father upheld his end of the bargain. He was meant to sneak into the cemetery in the middle of the night while the grave was still fresh, lay her to her final rest on top of the casket, and bury her all over again so that she could find peace.

I reached forward quickly, grasping the amulet she wore around her throat and pulling until the chain snapped. The amulet tore free as the whispering idiots behind me gasped in shock, but Ash was unbothered when I finally looked down to where he stood at my side.

His brown eyes were a perfect reflection of what I would have seen if my mother opened hers, so different from mine with our different fathers. He had the same deep mahogany hair that was so dark it was almost black, its warmth shimmering slightly in the too-bright lights of the funeral home.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, nodding my head toward the entrance to the parlor. Ash nodded faintly, casting one last sparing look for our mother.

We both knew what came next. She’d given me very clear instructions on what to do with Ash when she finally succumbed to the illness that plagued her body, taking her from us bit by bit.

Ash released my hand, leading the way through the pews and carving his way toward the exit. He held his head high in a way that nearly made me smirk, his ferocity so reminiscent of Mom’s. I repressed it as the people around me whispered of the death that followed us, of the fact that everyone who seemed to grow too close to my brother and I ended up in an early grave.

Magic had a way of burning through a witch’s surroundings if they didn’t satisfy it with use, and then eventually it would turn on the witch themself if ignored for too long.

As it had with my mother.

Mud covered the white tiles on the floor as we approached the exit, lingering on the bottom of the shoes of those who’d entered to bid farewell to my mother, Flora Madizza.

It was fitting in a way, I supposed. Soon enough, Flora would return to the earth from which she came. She would be placed into the dirt when my father fulfilled her last request. Finally, she would be at home in the place that gave her peace, her power absorbed back into the nature that called to us.

A hand wrapped around my forearm as I walked toward the exit, following behind my brother as he hurried to escape the stifling, suffocating oppression of being in a room with so many who didn’t like us. He might not have understood the fear so many had of us, but he saw it no less.