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

The witch’s face fell with shock as I stepped through the gate she opened. I turned to the right and moved toward the tribunal room where The Covenant waited for me. My escort remained at the gates, the good little puppy her great-, great-, great- whatever grandmother had seen fit to raise her to become.

“You’re one to talk, you undead bastard!” she called out behind me.

I adjusted the jacket of my suit, straightening the lapel as I grasped both the inner doors of the tribunal and swiftly pulled them open.

The Covenant sat in the gilded chairs they’d had fashioned centuries ago, skeletal fingers grasping the arms as what had once been Susannah Madizza leaned forward. Her hood shifted to the side, allowing some of the sunlight shining through the kaleidoscope windows at the side of the circular chamber to illuminate what remained of her face.

The flesh had long since rotted from her body, leaving only the gaunt shape of a skeleton to stare back at me. Her neck tipped at an unnatural angle where it had snapped when they hanged her, the slightest slant to the side displaying the manner of her death all those years ago.

Her eye sockets remained empty even as she somehow saw me. “Tormenting our children once again, Headmaster Thorne?” she asked, that eerie, ageless voice stretching between us. She tapped the tip of her finger bone against the arm of her chair in a steady staccato that I felt like a strike to my impatience.

The other half of her magic sat beside her, the masculine equivalent to her feminine.

George Collins had no descendants to his name to be defensive of—not with the rules that prohibited male witches from procreating if they chose to keep their magic. He was just as skeletal as Susannah, but his neck curved to the other side. What I could see of his bones revealed deep slash marks etched into them, lingering evidence of the torture he’d sustained in the hours before his death.

“I have to presume you did not summon me here to discuss my manners with your grandniece, Covenant,” I said, gritting my teeth.

My kind were not meant to be subservient to any, but the magic that kept us bound to the flesh of our vessels made us reliant on the witches if we ever wanted to be freed from the bodies that trapped us.

We’d thought it a blessing to never need to possess a new form, to have a body that could hold us for an eternity.

We’d thought wrong.

“We have decided to reopen the University,” George said, speaking before his female counterpart could interject. “We all need fresh blood. The attention we suffered as a result of that day has long since faded from memory.”

“As much as I, too, would appreciate new blood to feed upon, I have to urge caution in opening our walls once more. Rumors will spread the moment we announce our reopening,” I said, looking between the two skeletons staring at me.

“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.