The Mother’s words cut off mid-sentence. One moment, she was standing there, ancient and solid. The next, she simply came apart at the seams.
Unraveling like black thread. Dissipating like smoke.
Gone.
One Sister screamed. Skatia collapsed beside her, falling to her knees. “Mother…”
It is not for you to understand me! I, who made you what you are, and who can unmake you just as easily. It is not for you to question. It is for you to obey!
The shadows writhed. They curled tighter around the circle of witches, drawing in like a noose. The cold deepened, sinking past flesh and bone.
Into the hollow places no fire could ever reach.
I have tried faith,the Lady whispered, Her voice suddenly soft, almost disappointed.And now we see how faith fails in the end.
The darkness stirred. What had once been only formless black began to thicken in front of Talia, twisting upward in a column of smoke. Limbs formed. A torso. Shoulders. A head. Like a statue being carved out of night itself.
Your fear will sustain me now.
The smoke cleared, revealing a man. Handsome. Devastatingly handsome.
He was tall, even for an Arathian—taller than any man she had ever seen—with warm burnt-umber skin and raven-black hair that fell in careless waves to his shoulders. His jaw was clean-shaven and sharply cut, his cheekbones high, his mouth full. His eyes shone molten gold, as if he were a witch. Though no man could ever be one.
Talia’s breath caught.
She knew that face, though the eyes were wrong.
He was the very man the Lady had shown her the day she became a witch. She had seen him in that first vision, standing beside her—the Witchsworn who would help her bend the world to her will.
HerWitchsworn. Her destiny.
Now he smiled—and somehow, the Underworld grew a little colder. A little darker.
Gasps rippled through the circle of Sisters. Someone whimpered.
Skatia bared her teeth. “You are no Lady,” she snarled, her voice shaking with fury. “You are a man.”
The man turned his head toward her, his expression smoothing into something almost bored. “Does this form displease you?”
Before anyone could answer, his body blurred.
He shrank, curled inward. His flesh wrinkled, and his hair bled to white. In the span of a heartbeat, the handsome Arathian was gone, and the Mother stood in his place.
Her hunched shoulders, her papery skin, her thin mouth.
Even her voice, when she spoke, was perfect. “Does this form please you better, child?” the false Mother rasped.
Skatia screamed—raw, feral—and lunged to her feet. Her hand flew to her hip, drawing her soulblade. It flared into being in her grip, casting a sickly light across the gathering.
“Skatia!” Talia cried, reaching for her Sister. “No!”
But Skatia did not listen. With a wordless snarl, she launched herself at the false Mother, aiming to thrust her dagger into the smaller woman’s heart. But her blade passed straight through the apparition.
There was no resistance at all—no flesh, no bone. The Mother-shape merely vanished, merging back into the darkness.
And then Skatia disappeared as well, unraveling just as the true Mother had.Gone.
“No!” Talia scrambled forward on her hands and knees, lungs dragging in panicked, empty breaths. Smoke still clung to the spot where Skatia had been a moment before—a thin, curling ribbon drifting upward.
