I heard each bone connect with the stone tile, from her heel to her smallest metatarsal, with each step. I refused to allow the nerves I felt to show as I stood beside Thorne. Part of me wanted to force him to release my arm, but something in that contact felt like it grounded me.
I hated him. Hated his kind with every fiber of my being, but he was predictable.
Familiar.
His motives were clear. His intentions simple.
The ancient witch who stepped toward me was a mystery, the bones of her neck grinding together as she tilted her skull to the side. She stopped only when she was a breath before me, her figure taller than mine as she stared down at me with empty sockets.
“You look nothing like your mother,” she said, the first words she’d spoken to me washing over my skin with disapproval.
She raised a hand, grasping the ends of my hair between her finger bones as I turned my attention to the way her skeleton rolled the strands as if she could feel them. My mother’s hair had been brown, the color of the earth.
As had her mother’s before her.
Mine was a distinct, deep auburn, like the darkest merlot. Or as my father liked to call it, hair the color of old blood—like what pulsed in our veins.
“Neither do you,” I said, my voice remaining calm and casual. One of the witches in the thrones about the room gasped, and Thorne fought back a chuckle at my side.
But the Covenant’s lipless mouth twisted into a wry smile. “No, I suppose I do not, child,” she said, dropping my hair and clasping her hands in front of her.
“I’m not a child,” I said, even if the words felt futile when faced with an immortal being such as Susannah.
“I suppose you’re not. We were robbed of the opportunity to know you when you were. And it does not seem lost on my headmaster that you have very much come to us as a woman,” she said, turning that eternal, empty stare to where Thorne still held my arm. There was no movement on her face, no shift in her bones, but I somehow could still sense the way she raised her brow at him.
If she’d had one, anyway.
“I am merely her escort into an unfamiliar life,” Thorne said with ease, the words rolling off his tongue. If I hadn’t heard all his promises of being in my bed for myself, I might have believed them.
“Good. My granddaughter is very much off-limits to you and your kind, Headmaster Thorne,” she said, reaching forward to unwind my arm from his. He didn’t fight when she guided me toward the dais, stopping as I stood just before the two thrones.
“That’s not entirely true,” he said, and even without looking back at him, I heard the smirk in his voice. But my mother had warned me that my seduction would need to be a secretive one—that the Covenant forbid relationships between witches and Vessels.
“We both know I am not speaking of that unfortunate exception.” The Covenant sneered at him over my shoulder, taking the first step and releasing me.
She returned to her throne as I stood, allowing silence to permeate the room. I would not be the first to speak, wouldn’t reveal my discomfort with the way they watched me.
“It is customary to kneel when presented to the Covenant,” one of the witches said, forcing me to turn my gaze to her. Her voice was not unkind, as if she understood that I had been uninformed of their ways. Her pretty face was partially hidden behind a white cloak and hood, the slightest hint of gem tone purple hair peeking out from beneath.
I smiled, taking some of the sting out of my words. “Do I look like I care about your customs?”
“You will kneel,” another witch said. This one was male, his cloak green as he swept it back to reveal his angered face. His throne was crafted from the wood of a birch tree, leaves sprouting as he pushed to stand.
He moved forward with a hand extended as if he meant to touch me, and I watched from the corner of my eye as he took three quick steps toward me.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” Thorne warned, taking a single step forward as I turned my gaze toward the Bray witch. I didn’t speak an incantation or so much as twitch my fingers.
I let loose a single breath, the tiniest bit of magic erupting through the room. The Bray throne grew, branches snapping forward to wrap around the front of his chest.
“Please have a seat, Mr. Bray.”
He glanced down at those branches in shock, his mouth parting as he leveled me with a dark stare. In the next moment, they snapped back to the throne, taking him with them. They tightened around him as he struggled, holding him firmly seated. As the other line of Green witches, the Brays were always destined to have some animosity for my return.