The Coven (Coven of Bones, #1)(73)

Gray’s stunned laughter broke it, and he reached down to run the back of his knuckles over my cheek. “Devious little witch,” he muttered, finally grasping me by my chin and forcing my gaze up to his. “You really are so fucking beautiful, even when you lie through your teeth.”

“I haven’t lied,” I argued, jerking back from his touch. “Susannah told me to leave Hollow’s Grove. I left because I was afraid of what she would do to me if I did not.”

“And you didn’t once consider coming to me for help. I wonder why that might be,” Gray murmured, dropping his hand away from my face. “Search in the dirt of the garden beds.” The order went to Kairos, who nodded with wide eyes and retreated from the room.

The moment the door closed behind him, Gray released a slow, steady sigh. The air tinged with something dark, my skin crawling as he stepped around the edge of his desk.

“It really is a shame. I’d hoped to hold on to these until everything was ready so it would be less traumatic for you.”

He approached the portrait of Lucifer Morningstar, slipping his fingers beneath the edge to pull it away from the wall. It swung out on hinges, revealing the metal of a safe behind it. Everything in me sat up straighter, my swallow getting stuck in my throat. Gray touched his hand to the safe, allowing the biometric technology to recognize all his fingerprints. The lock clicked open, and Gray didn’t so much as glance back at me as the runes carved into the metal glowed. He grasped the handle, swinging the door open.

I couldn’t breathe.

My lungs filled with raw, unfiltered power the moment the safe opened, and I could barely see through the haze of black as he reached into the safe and pulled something free. I gasped for breath, curling over myself as pain tore my insides in two, as my stomach cramped, and things felt like they shifted within me to make room for the new magic.

For what I’d never been able to touch.

Gray turned away from the safe, holding the unsuspecting velvet bag in his hand. It was the deepest black, the fabric smooth as he ran his finger over the surface of it.

The bones woke up. They rose to answer his call as my back bowed and then straightened.

“You’ve had them all this time,” I gasped, running my hand over my arm as he stepped around the desk. I’d wanted the bones; thought they were the key to completing my destiny.

Now I couldn’t wait to get away from them.

I pushed to my feet, swaying beneath the power trying to draw me in and consume me. I stepped around the arm of the chair as Gray’s voice lashed out like a whip.

“Sit down, Willow,” he ordered, the compulsion in his voice forcing me back to my chair.

He held out the bones for me, watching and waiting for me to take them in my grip. Despite a lifetime of training for this moment, I didn’t want them.

I didn’t want to aid in whatever he had planned, and with the way his blue eyes bore down on me, there was no doubt that it was something.

Something bad.

“Take the bones, Witchling,” he said.

My hand rose as if it would take them in spite of my desires, but I forced my fingers to curl into my palm. Refusing to touch them, to take them on his terms.

“No,” I said, gasping as I fought his compulsion and shook my head. It took everything in me to fight it, to keep my hand away from the bag. “I want no part in this.”

“Your entire life has been a part of this,” he murmured softly, reaching out with his free hand to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. It was wet, and it was only then that I realized I was sweating with the effort of denying the bones.

Of refusing to allow them to make their home with me.

“Then I guess it’s time I make a new one for myself,” I grunted.

Gray smiled, a humorless, twisted thing filled with pity. “I have waited a very long time for you, and my patience grows thin. You will accept the bones one way or another.”

“I don’t want them anymore. Not until you tell me the truth,” I said, laying my hands atop the arms of the chair. I grabbed onto the wood, digging my nails into it with the force of resisting the call.

“What you want does not matter. They’ve chosen you,” he said, opening the top of the bag and staring into it. The soft, pulsing light of faint purple that illuminated his face would live in my nightmares for an eternity.

He snapped out with his free hand, grabbing me by the hair and tugging my head back. My neck arched back, my arms flailing as I tried to find a part of him to scratch.

“Gray!” I protested, struggling as he shoved the weight of something eternal into my chest.

I rasped, power flooding my chest as the bones rose from the bag. He held the soft velvet against my skin, allowing the bones to shift and mold themselves as they climbed around my neck. I squeezed my eyes closed, fighting the burning pain that they brought. It was like nothing I’d ever known before, like being remade and reborn as they snapped and tumbled, the click-clack of bones bumping against one another as they settled into the shape of a necklace and stayed.

I reached up, tugging at the bones and trying to remove them. My aunt hadn’t worn them as a necklace when I’d seen her, and my mother had never mentioned anything of the sort when she spoke of the bag the Hecate witches had been known to carry.

“Why?” I wheezed when the bones wouldn’t budge. I didn’t understand.