Above me, a man hangs suspended between two trees.
Under normal circumstances, I would recognize him without hesitation.
Tree branches spear through his body at impossible and brutal angles, driven through arms, legs, and his torso as though the forest declared itself his enemy. But it’s the branch impaled through the back of his skull and bursting out from his bloodied, gaping mouth, that makes it hard to recognize him as anything at all. It looks as if the trees reached down, seized him from the snow-packed ground, and hoisted him into the air where they then turned him into a living pincushion. I stopped counting, but the trespasser has the better part of dozen branches piercing through him.
Few deaths come gently. This one certainly didn’t, it was designed to hurt.
As if I needed further proof of how witches’ magic can be a terrifying thing.
I glance sideways at Amara, the High Priestess standing to my left, her midnight eyes lifted toward her handiwork. She studies the scene with the detached focus of an artist evaluating a finished masterpiece. There’s no revulsion on her face. No regret or even a minute flinch. Just steady assessment.
“Nick, when you mention your witch friends left various traps around your territory,” Rook says, forcing a casual drawl that doesn’t quite hide the tension lurking underneath. “I wasthinking something more along the lines of…fuck, I don’t know, magical quicksand?”
Looking appropriately horrified compared to Amara’s calm impartiality, his amber eyes never leave the body.
Vardis, the coven’s older illusionist, pushes her cat-eye tortoiseshell glasses up her nose and sniffs in his direction. “Oh, don’t worry,” she says breezily. “We have that, too. Watch where you step on the eastern border, pooch.”
I grimace at this casual warning, the evidence of just how devastating the coven’s magic can be when they choose to unleash it hanging fifteen feet in the air above me.
“Disregard Vardis, Alpha Draven. Her taste in humor often leaves much to be desired,” Amara cuts in, her voice carrying that steady, almost-bored cadence she wields so effectively. “Our defensive spells can only cause harm to those who intend ill will toward this territory and the people who reside within it.”
It isn’t new information. Before I allowed a single one of these spells to be placed on my land, Amara explained, in detail, the safety measures they would place on each of the magical booby traps. Still, I find myself grateful to hear it again now, needing that reassurance, as I watch the man sway in the cold afternoon breeze. It was safeguards like this that originally had me willing to give her complete control over where and what kind of traps they planted.
After seeing what the dark coven did in Ashvale, and how they’d cut down Lowri, I knew we couldn’t afford to be soft or conservative with our defense strategies when we’re facing an enemy who’s willing to be brutal.
It appears Amara shares that thinking. Ashvale wasn’t protected with this level of lethal spell work, and in the attack, they lost more than just Lowri. I can sense that to Amara, this was a failing on her part. A mistake she’s silently carrying the weight of even if no one else shares her thinking. The crueltythreaded through these magical traps tells me exactly how far she’s willing to go now to keep people safe. It tells me she’s as unwilling as I am to lose anyone else, and she’ll become as lethal as the dark coven to ensure it.
“Are all the traps your coven set this…intense?” The word feels inadequate for the amount of blood staining the snow before me, but it’s the most measured option I have. If there’s one thing this display of power tells me, it’s that I don’t want to be on the High Priestess’s bad side. Ever.
She flicks me a sidelong look, not bothering to turn her head. “Was the way your two friends,” she starts, meaning Canaan and Rook, “tore apart the other invader any lessintensethan this?”
I look past her to the men in question. They stand in their human forms, naked except for the blood staining their chins, hands, and upper chests from their recent kill.
It’s hard to pretend we’re not splitting hairs here, comparing witchcraft to claws and teeth when the man above us has a tree branch shoved clean through his face and my enforcers tore the other intruder open from throat to gut. Different methods. Same result.
But again, I’m not going to challenge her.
Canaan’s hazel eyes meet mine. He gives a barely perceptible lift of his shoulder, a silent acknowledgment that the High Priestess might have a point.
“These spells only trigger on people who mean the pack harm, right?” Rook says, sounding as incredulous as he appears, never looking away from the corpse skewered overhead, held there like one of those preserved butterflies with their wings pinned. “Wasn’t this guy a member of your pack, like, a week ago, Nick?”
“Yes,” I confirm grimly. “And the man whose blood you’re wearing was too. They defected. Left with Cathal after the betrothal party.”
Speaking their names won’t undo this. It won’t pull either of them back from what they chose or soften the price of it.
It’s Darran who hangs above us now. Loud-mouthed. Arrogant to a fault. An enforcer who once swore his loyalty to this pack until Cathal dangled something shinier in front of him. And the blood Rook and Canaan wear belongs to his little sycophant that followed him when he aligned himself with McNamara.
I didn’t expect to see either of them again. That was the point of letting them go.
No one says it out loud, but the truth is there all the same, bright and unavoidable. This spell wouldn’t have been triggered if Darran had returned with anything resembling good intentions. The coven’s safeguards made sure there would be no misfires. And on the slim chance it had, his friend erased any doubt the moment he drew first blood when Rook and Canaan cornered him. There was no attempt to talk. Didn’t attempt to leverage his history with Canaan or the memory of what this pack once gave him. He chose violence immediately. Canaan told me they’d given him every chance they could to allow him to keep breathing, but the ex-pack member hadn’t chosen that route. He didn’t die quietly, fighting against Rook and Canaan until his heart gave out in his chest.
“He wouldn’t have seen this one on the marked map back in the conference room. This is a new trap,” Vardis offers, mouth twisting in disgust at the puddle of blood forming starkly on the snow-covered ground beneath Darran.
I’m grateful Noa and her girls are nowhere near this. Grateful they won’t have to carry the image of a former pack member torn apart by the land itself. Some things don’t fade. They sink in deep and remain.
“We added more and changed the locations of others after Alpha Fallamhain booted that other pack from this land,” Vardis continues. “Thought it was a good idea. Seems we were right.”
Silence settles over us, the air thick and swirling with the metallic twinge of copper, every one of us turning the same questions over in our minds.
