Shed the power that came with her anonymity.
She stepped up in front of the throne and stared down at the aging seat. It was crafted of the bones of those who had come before her, the skeletal remains of the ancestors who had already come and gone. Where the ones that were strapped around her waist were finger and hand bones, the throne had been remade from the femurs and rib cages and skulls of the oldest generations. Willow paused for a moment to appreciate the significance.
She looked over her shoulder at Itan, smirking before she glanced toward Lucifer. She dropped her hand, allowing the blood she’d brought with her to splash all over the aging and yellowing bones.
“Congratulations. You can make a mess as well as any childattempting to play with the grown-ups. What was that supposed to prove?” Itan asked, his loyal followers barking out a peal of laughter from where they hid behind him, relying on him to protect them, which was a foolish endeavor entirely. He would sooner offer them up as a sacrifice to save himself.
As she turned to face him fully, her lips pulled back over her teeth in a dark, menacing smile that was all power. “Are you completely unfamiliar with foreplay?” she asked, raising her hand and waving it in a lazy motion toward the bones that were now covered in her blood.
Covered in her magic.
The chair groaned, creaking as the bones began to shift, collapsing to the tile floor until the throne was gone.
“I don’t understand,” someone whispered, lacking the patience necessary to wait out Willow’s display of power. She knew better than most that anticipation was half of fear, that keeping them waiting and expecting her big reveal was half the fun.
She didn’t so much as look behind her as the bones clacked, their pieces groaning and smacking together as they reassembled themselves, standing on top of one another, into the body of a man, until his figure shifted forward to stand at her side.
Lucifer barked a laugh of pure joy, His enjoyment at the look of shock on Itan’s face rivaling my own. I couldn’t help the twisted smile that pulled my lips back, revealing all my teeth in a broad grin that felt completely unfamiliar.
“You.” Itan paused, looking back and forth between Willow and the creature she’d summoned from the dead. “But you’re a Madizza! I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
Willow turned her attention to the Madizza throne, lifting her dress and stomping a foot upon the floor. The vines of the Madizza throne squirmed instantly, sliding out of places they’d been trapped for centuries. The throne slid along the ground, shifting into nothing but a tangle of roses and vines and thorns as it madeits way across the center of the Madizza circle. It climbed the steps of the dais, centering itself where the two thrones of the Covenant had once been.
Willow nodded to the skeleton, earning a wordless nod back before it proceeded to the dais along with the vines. It crumpled to the floor on top of them, and we all watched in fixation and horror as the vines wound around the bones of Willow’s ancestors.
Uniting them as one.
They twisted and turned, maneuvering their way into a new throne. A throne of bones and blood and life.
Willow ascended the steps slowly, her flair for the dramatic admirable, and exhaled a single sigh. She turned and looked back at the Coven from her place on the dais, easing down into the seat that only she could occupy. “Anything else, Itan, or are you done questioning me now?”
5
MARGOT
Itan glared at Willow, taking the first step toward the dais. He paused when Lucifer moved to join Willow, acting like her bodyguard rather than the devil Himself. The dynamic was so bizarre, so unexpected that I caught myself holding my breath as He turned His back on the Coven that would have seen Him dead. His eyes were only for Willow, facing the windows behind her as He reached down to capture her chin in a moment that was so heartrendingly sweet something within me throbbed.
It felt as if I missed having that for myself, but you could not miss what you’d never known.
He tilted her face up to His, smiling down at her with lips that tipped up at the sides. I could just make out the pride on His face from where I stood, the pure and undeterred approval of her actions.
He leaned down, kissing her gently for all of us to see. She melted into His touch, the tension leaving her body in a way that made no sense to me.
She’d hated Him. She’d come here to destroy His kind.
And yet… the energy between them felt so much warmer than anything I’d seen in all the married couples within the Coven. The matches that were supposedly determined based on compatibility were nothing compared to watching the two of them together.
My skin warmed, the energy of that emotion coasting overit. It brushed over me and then continued on as if it could not penetrate into me.
As if I wasn’t worthy of such warmth.
“Never stop surprising me, witchling,” Lucifer said, turning to stand beside her. He allowed her to take the position of power, heeding her in a way that most men would be too insecure to do. Even in our world where the matriarch was the ultimate power, where women were allowed to have it all—magic and a family—the men of our society who clung to their power struggled to give in to the women who challenged them.
Toxic masculinity at its finest.
“You don’t deny it then? You’ve reduced yourself to being a plaything for this asshole?” Itan asked, turning to glare at his nephew Iban, who watched with a face that had paled with shock. I almost felt sorry for the friend who had given in to the Covenant’s intentions to marry him to Willow to preserve her magic for her heirs and continue her legacy, but he’d been too stubborn to read the writing on the wall.
“I deny nothing,” Willow said, getting more comfortable in her throne, letting her hands rest on the arms and crossing her legs demurely. “Though I think we can agree, I seem to be far more than a plaything. Perhaps the real reason you find Him to be such a threat is because He actually respects women enough to allow me to sit at His side.”
