The Coven (Coven of Bones, #1)(21)

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.

“You’ve been trained,” the other Covenant said. His voice was deeper than Susannah’s, a single remnant of the fact that he’d been a man when he was alive.

I didn’t answer him as I shifted my attention to him, letting him feel the weight of my magic in the air before I drew it back to myself. Only when Bray settled in his chair did I speak. “Just because my mother hated all of you doesn’t mean she hated what she was.”

“To be a witch with no Coven is to suffer unnecessarily. We should not be alone in this world,” George Collins said, forcing me to laugh.

“She was far more alone here than she ever was in her life amidst the humans, and that’s saying something since they feared her half the time. At least there she was more than just breeding stock,” I snapped, knowing fully well what fate would wait for me if I remained too long.

“Saving an entire lineage is an honor that your mother never understood,” Susannah snapped, her fingers squeezing the arm of her chair.

“Not if she believed that the lineage needed to die,” I answered, smiling serenely, as if I hadn’t issued a grave insult. It was nothing against House Madizza. The entirety of Crystal Hollow was corrupt.

They all deserved to die.

“Is she always this difficult?” Susannah asked the headmaster. She pinched her nose bone between her fingers, sighing in dismay.

“Given what I’ve seen since meeting her, she’s being fairly cooperative at the moment,” he said with a chuckle.

I turned to him, glaring, but I didn’t bother to fight it when a grin took over my face instead, and I giggled in acknowledgement. “Think of it as something to look forward to,” I said, spinning back to where the Covenant looked irritated.

“Iban, would you show my errant granddaughter to her room, please?” she asked, ignoring Thorne’s growl and pushing to stand and moving out of her throne. “Do try not to eat him on the way, Willow.”

I refused to look at Thorne to see his reaction, refused to acknowledge the way his hand clenched at his side in the corner of my eye. Let him think I was wholly uninterested in his ridiculous jealousy.

“Eww,” I said, pressing a hand to my chest as I feigned disgust. “I would never do such a thing. Burying him alive is much more my style.”

The Bray witch blanched as I smiled at him, reaching up to pat his cheek and leading the way out of the Tribunal room.

The woods seemed like a good place to hide a body… or ten.





11





WILLOW





The man at my side wore trousers the color of a deep forest, so dark they were nearly black. His shirt was white, strikingly bright against the green of his tie, which he worked to loosen as we left the tribunal room.

“I’m not going to bury you alive,” I said, glancing at him.

He chuckled beneath his breath. “Generous of you,” he said, placing a hand on the small of my back and guiding me through the entryway.

I felt eyes on my back, and where I might have protested the touch from a stranger under normal circumstances, I allowed it. Glancing toward Iban, I blinked up at him through my lashes and pursed my lips lightly. I might not have been able to fake a blush, but I caught a glimpse of Thorne watching us from the corner of my eye.

My ancestor spoke to him as he glared after us.

I smirked, shifting the slightest bit closer to my escort as I walked.

He laughed, his chest shaking as he shook his head from side to side. “You’re trouble,” he drawled, the deep baritone of his voice draping itself over my skin.

I smiled up at him, showing all of my top teeth in a rare moment of lightness.