“Two generations of witches have been left to learn their magic in the privacy of their homes,” Susannah said, rising from her throne. Her black cloak wrapped around her and hid her bones from view as she stepped down the dais stairs. “The time has come for them to be properly educated. We will only open our doors to twelve new students from outside Crystal Hollow every year, and we have personally selected those who will join us based on the power we’ve detected. There will be no formal announcement.” She held out a list, her messy cursive writing displaying the names of those she’d selected.
“What assurance do we have that we will not suffer a repeat of last time?” I asked, thinking only of the safety of my kind. While we were difficult to kill, even some of us had been harmed in the massacre that had occurred fifty years prior.
“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.