The Coven (Coven of Bones, #1)(20)

Red floated amidst the barrier, intertwining with the shimmering mist. There was a flash of light as it released my hand finally, spitting me out the other side. I caught myself on my next step, only stumbling for a brief moment as Thorne tightened his grip on my arm and offered me an odd sort of support.

I couldn’t resist the slightest urge to lean into him as I clenched my free hand into a fist, hoping that whatever the barrier had sensed, the magic hadn’t revealed it to any of the witches staring back at me. Thorne guided me to the center of the circle, passing between the gap in two of the chairs. They were each marked with symbols of their house, the witch perched within wearing robes the color of their magic.

Two of the chairs were empty. A quick glance at the Hecate throne revealed twisted black iron carved into elaborate spires of darkness. At the top of the throne rested a single skull forged in iron, the bones of a spine sliding down the center and skeletal arms draped over the top.

I didn’t allow my gaze to linger as I moved it to the other empty throne. Where Hecate’s seat on the Tribunal had been crafted from darkness itself, the Madizza throne was formed from vines that still moved. They lived where it was not possible, sprouting through cracks in the foundation to form the empty seat of my ancestors.

At the top of the throne, a single rose bloomed back to life as I watched. Whereas before, it had been nothing but a withered husk, the petals spread wide, and color returned. Red tipped in black, as if the edges were tainted by death itself.

We stopped in the center of the circle, and it was only then that I turned my stare toward the two figures waiting on the small dais. The cloaks that covered their forms were black, an affront to the memory of the Hecate line. The forms were near identical, and I knew it was because there was nothing but bones left beneath them. The Covenant had no flesh to cover their skeletons after centuries of life after death, and anything that had made them human was long gone.

They swept their hoods back in unison, revealing the skeletal faces within. Susannah Madizza and George Collins rested upon their gilded thrones, with their necks crooked to the side as the only indication of how they’d died.

“I present Miss Willow Madizza to the Covenant,” Thorne said at my side.

I didn’t allow my stare to break from the figure staring back at me, from the intense, eyeless gaze of my ancestor upon me. She searched my face, probing for any sort of information she could glean as her skeletal fingers grasped the arm of her throne. She pushed to her feet, walking forward as the bones of her feet tapped against the floor with a lightness that shouldn’t have been possible.

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.