The Coven (Coven of Bones, #1)(19)

“Better to face the vultures with your head held high and the truth in the open than attempt to hide a secret The Covenant will never allow you to keep. What you want became irrelevant the moment you stepped through the doors of Hollow’s Grove,” he said, guiding me to the left.

Before me, an arch supported the top of two sets of stairs that curved out to the entryway. From that arch, two more columns of stairways went to the upper floors and a spiral labyrinth of floors and levels overhead. It was all crafted in the lightest gray stone, reflecting the light and somehow calling to the shadows all at once.

“The Covenant wishes to see you immediately, Miss Madizza,” a young man said, stepping toward us. He bowed his head lightly, as if in respect that I hadn’t earned as he held out a hand. I smiled hesitantly, trying to hide my discomfort with the formality as I lifted my own to accept.

“I’ll take her,” Thorne said, tugging on the arm he still held captive.

“I’m more than capable of escorting her,” the other man said, but he drew back his hand as Thorne swept me toward the hallway.

“She would eat you for breakfast, Iban,” Thorne said, not bothering to look over his shoulder at the younger man as he guided me down the hall.

Iban’s footsteps weren’t nearly as quiet as the Vessel at my side as he followed behind us. The stone of the pathway in front of us was freshly polished, glimmering in the moonlight trailing through the massive arched windows to either side of us. On Thorne’s side, they overlooked the drive and the memorial at the front of the school. To the other, I looked into a courtyard at the center of the building. It housed what looked as if it may have been a garden at one point, but the plants within weren’t flourishing in the way they should have.

Even with the Madizzas being absent from Crystal Hollow, House Bray should have been using their magic to maintain the land if it required assistance. The trellis that should have been covered in vines of roses was nearly barren, even the thorns weakened and brittle. I resisted the urge to answer their call, allowing Thorne to guide me down the hall until we stood before the legendary doors of the Tribunal rooms.

The surface was covered in black iron, gold laced throughout it to form mechanisms. I could barely see through the gaps in the metal to the entry room beyond.

Iban stepped up beside me as I raised my hand, jerking to a stop when I waved it before the lock. The gears turned, rippling through as the rest of them followed. The bars retracted with a soft click, and when the last one moved out of the way, the doors parted open toward us.

“I see your mother has told you more than I thought,” Thorne said, tugging me forward as he stepped into the Tribunal rooms. Iban followed behind us silently.

“Fortunately for all of us, you know nothing of my mother,” I said, ignoring the weight of his gaze on the side of my face. If he’d known her, she’d have done her best to have him imprisoned in the earth. She’d have summoned the roots from the trees to do her bidding, ridding the world of him in the only way she had any ability to do.

She might not have had the blood of the Hecate line flowing through her veins, but she was the fiercest, bravest woman I’d ever known. She held the magic of all the Madizzas within her body, controlling it in a way I now understood took immense control. Even as we walked through the entryway to the Tribunal room, I felt mine pulsing beneath my skin. Writhing and twining within me as if it had a life of its own, just waiting to be unleashed upon the world.

It took everything in me not to allow it to erupt like a volcano, spraying rock and molten lava over the surface of the earth. Using my magic felt more like taking a tiny breath after years of suffocation than trying to reach for anything. It was always there.

Always waiting.

The doors to the inner Tribunal room were open wide, and I forced my chin just the slightest bit higher as I drew in that breath. Air filled my lungs, the scent of the stone surrounding me washing over me and calling to that Green magic of the Madizza line. I answered the call, feeling the hair on my arms rise as my magic awakened from the miniature slumber I kept it in.

Thorne stiffened at my side, the slightest hitch in his next step alerting me to the fact that he felt it. I squeezed his arm lightly as I glanced up at him from the corner of my eye, his steely eyes darkening as he recovered and strode forward.

If I had to face the Covenant, if I had to stare into the empty, hollow bones of the beings who had made my mother’s life such a misery that she fled the only home she’d ever known, I would do it with her magic coating my skin.

With her death, I’d inherited all of it until my brother came of age and some of it passed onto him. Susannah Madizza might have been the greatest witch of her age, but the power that had made her so was no longer hers to command.

It was mine.

We stepped through the magical barrier that waited just inside the Tribunal room, keeping what was spoken within a secret from any who might have snuck into the entryway. It sunk into my chest as I passed through, formed from a representative of each of the original houses. Only the Madizza and Hecate lines were missing, but that barrier seemed to recognize something within me. It lingered, holding me trapped in the center as it swirled around me. At my side, I was vaguely aware of Thorne stepping through, of him tugging at my arm as if he could pull me along with him.

I held his gaze as I raised my free hand, turning my palm to face the sky. The shimmering, translucent power of the barrier washed over my bare skin, sliding beneath my nails deep enough to draw a single drop of blood. I let out a startled gasp as it pulled from that spot.