“If I do this, will you join us?”
She stayed silent for a long moment.
“You know the answer to that.”
I did. The witches never got involved in things that didn’t concern them.
“Does he know how to stop it?” I asked. “The coven leader?”
She pushed the orb closer to me.
“I guess you’ll have to find out for yourself, won’t you?”
Did I want revenge so bad that I was willing to do this? I had been so busy with Aurelia and Vesper that I hadn’t had time to realize what my parents’ murder meant to me.
The rage was simmering below my skin, just waiting for a chance to burst out. If I could see it, I was sure it would have a similar hue to the orb in front of me.
“This is some sort of trick.” I was trying to convince myself. A last desperate chance to talk myself out of it.
But I was being pulled in by the desire to burn it all down. To make them pay for hurting my parents. For hurting me. The people I love. He bled us dry until there was nothing left as hestarved the people in the coven, hoarding power and using us as his watchdogs to keep the peace.
Even against our own people.
He didn’t care about us. If anyone went against him, he would see that they were taken down, in or outside the coven. It was one of the reasons why I couldn’t show my face around here often.
I was among the ones sent out to kill others. Just like Vesper, murder and darkness were attached to my entire being, no matter how much I tried to deny it.
Levana wasn’t known as a witch killer. She could move with freedom. Come into this coven and befriend them.
I wasn’t afforded the same liberties.
It was my last dirty secret. My lovers didn’t know. It was the one thing I kept hidden away in the recesses of my mind, trying to help me forget.
They deserved to pay. And the coven leader in front of me seemed to read my thoughts with ease.
“A helping hand is all,” she said with a smile.
“You’re asking me to kill more of us than I already have. Doesn’t it make you feel sick?”
I was trying to get a rise out of her, but she didn’t fall for it.
“What makes me sick is all the beatings they put you through as a kid. The scars still pumping full of his magic, and I know they bother you, even now that you’ve escaped his clutches. That at night sometimes you sneak away when the others aren’t paying attention and try to scrub your body clean of them.”
I sat straight. My ears started ringing. “Stop.”
Vesper and Aurelia didn’t know about what I did in the shower when I was alone, and I was too ashamed to say it out loud.
“It makes me sick that they forced you out in the cold. That they put you through rigorous training when you were just ayoung girl. And my poor nephew, all alone. In chains. Never seeing the sunlight. I see the real monsters, Cedar. I’ve seen what they’ve done to you and what they will do. You would be doing us all a favor.”
My eyes dropped back to the orb.
“Is this a prophecy?”
My hand was already reaching out, my fingers brushing over it.
Energy surged through me.
“I would call it a nudge.”
