Without your coven, you are nothing.Maura’s last words echoed in my head as they had every day since my ouster.
Elodie’s eyes trailed back over my shoulder. “So I have seen.”
I did not bother parsing technicalities with her. Maura had banished me from my coven—from seeking out any member, from attempting to enter the coven lands, or using any of the sacred artifacts. I had not done any of those things. She had said nothing about practicing my active power… probably because she thought it would fade to nothing in time.
It would. Everything in Velora would die eventually.
Which was why I peddled my spells in dark taverns where brutes like the ones behind us could too easily find me. I needed enough coin to buy passage out of Velora. On another continent, one rich with magic and power, I at least had a chance. I could seek out another coven. Other continents had dozens of covens residing on them, instead of just one. Soon, the dying magic and power of Velora would not even be enough to sustain the one that remained—the one to which I belonged. Used to belong.
Grief burned in my chest, where my heart no longer bothered to beat. Still, Elodie watched me with the damned impassive expression of hers.
Dark God, spare me these useless emotions.
Elodie had yet to state a reason for her sudden appearance. Not so sudden, I reminded myself. She’d been watching me in the tavern while disguised as a prostitute for the last few nights. Which meant she probably already knew where I’d been sleeping, too. But where I could not rest tonight, because someone had sent those two buffoons. I would not linger long enough to find out who. There was an abandoned stable three blocks over. The humans had eaten the horses decades ago. Itwas just close enough to the forest that no humans risked it, empty enough that it hadn’t attracted any of the forest’s more dangerous occupants.
The hayloft was as good a place as any to pass the night.
Elodie could find me again if she wanted.
But I had not even reached the alley before she spoke. “We are not far from the Mercy Gate.”
I turned slowly. “A gate is always near,” I recited.
“A god is always watching,” Elodie parroted back.
The words had been instilled in me from birth, in every citizen of Velora. It was an invocation. If a gate was near, so was a god. Always watching, always waiting to see the provenance of their punishment.
Most citizens of Velora—were we citizens, if the government had ceased to exist? — lived their entire life in proximity to a gate without ever passing through it. The years of people hurling themselves at the gates in hopes of lifting the curse had long since passed.
Seven gates. Seven gods. And a promise that had never been fulfilled.
But the witches did not answer to seven gods. We answered only to one—the Dark God who’d created us.
Elodie lifted her chin, her curtain of inky hair skimming her sharp cheekbones as it fell back to frame her expectant eyes. I frowned at her. It was late and I was tired. Being immortal was exhausting. Sleepiness settled in my chest, threatening to dull the edges of my reflexes dangerously if I did not find a bed soon. I shifted, trying to dislodge the feeling. This much exhaustion was unusual. I’d only performed a half dozen spells in the tavern. Was it the use of my active power? Still strong, but at a cost?
“If Maura has more to say, then say it,” I said, rolling my shoulders. That was why Elodie was here. Her words were not her own, just like her face.
Her impassive fucking face.
“The priests and priestesses offer bed and board to anyone who plans to attempt the gates,” Elodie said.
Millions of words—in the language of the Dark God and the common tongue—and never in three hundred and seventy-seven years would I have expected those particular ones to exit her mouth. She could not possibly be implying… no. Impossible.
“Walking through the doors of that temple is a binding promise,” I said. Anyone could enter the temple and enjoy the safety, warmth, and food therein. But there was only one way to leave the temple—through the Mercy Gate.
Elodie knew that. She was older than I was, had already been a witch in the Dark God’s keeping when the curse was placed on Velora.
A deep, rumbling roar echoed from the woods beyond the city. Gods, it might be in the city itself, now. Without humans to populate the continent, the monsters that dwelled in the mountains had become bolder. Once, I had not given the monsters a second thought. Most of them were created by the witches at one point or another. Spells gone wrong—or horribly right. But I no longer had the protection of a coven.
Elodie did not react to the sound. Her dark, unreadable gaze held mine as she twisted my entire world on its axis. “Pass through the Seven Gates, lift the curse that is killing Velora, and you will be welcomed back to the Midnight Coven.”
Welcomed back to the Midnight Coven.The weight in my chest lifted instantly, replaced by something light and shining and impossibly bright. Hope. That was hope.
And I was just as much of a fucking fool as every human in that tavern, because the condition was impossible.
For nearly four hundred years, fools had been passing through the gates in futile attempts to lift the curse. Some made it through one. Fewer still conquered two. There were storiesthat one person—a fae, before they disappeared—had passed through five gates before meeting his gruesome end at the Memory Gate.
“Maura asks the impossible,” I bit out, anger filling my chest, determined to murder that reckless, foolish hope. It was a cruel trick, even for Maura, to dangle the prospect of return before me like this. She’d actually sent Elodie to seek me out and make this impossible offer. “Was my banishment not enough?”
