The prostitute’sface was unchanged, though her makeup showed the evidence of her evening within the tavern. The smudged rouge from earlier was now gone completely, leaving behind pale pink lips that were just a bit too thin.
A pattern of bruises that looked suspiciously like fingers colored her pale throat. Were they new, or had I missed them in my perusal earlier?
They might not even be real.
I should have realized it sooner. My scalp did not prickle this time; my entire body sang with recognition. “Sister.”
Her features shifted as I watched. The heavy kohl-lined eyes flattened, taking on an entirely different shape above her rising cheekbones. The teased brown curls morphed into a curtain of silky, straight black hair. The bruises disappeared as the alabaster of her skin warmed to a pale olive with golden undertones that shone even in the silver light cast by the moon over the snow.
“Koryn.”
Her voice remained her own. If I’d heard her speak in the tavern, I would have known instantly. It was the only thing abouther that she could not change. Like all witches, her active power was tied to the manner of her death.
Elodie died wearing the face of another, a lowly maid who’d disguised herself as her well-born mistress in order to rendezvous with a man that she imagined loved her. In immortality, she’d learned to wield those many faces and take revenge for the death blow paid to her.
But why was she here? And where were the others? My power churned within me, calling instinctively to my sisters.
No. I am not foolish enough to hope.
I willed my power to quiet within me. There in the deserted street, with the snow deadening all sounds, it actually obeyed. The ice in my veins thawed to match the temperature of my blood.
“Why have you come?” I tried not to let myself choke on the words, but the last one caught in my throat.
Sister—Elodie had been my sister once. Before I’d been cast out from my coven. But I was not certain what that word meant to me anymore… what she meant to me.
Without power and cosmetics distorting her features, I was able to see clearly as she raked her gaze over me in appraisal. And when it flicked over my shoulder, to the wreckage of what I’d done.
“Your power remains,” she observed, her voice carefully even.
The muscles in my abdomen tightened, heat rising in my cheeks despite the cold. “Why shouldn’t it?” I shot back, even though the same head witch trained us both. Maura had always warned that power faded the longer a witch was separated from her coven.
Elodie’s eyes paused at my forehead, in the spot just above my brows. “Your coven mark fades.”
My power was tied to my coven and should have faded as well. That was the sentence she did not say.
But minutes before, I’d felt the coven mark burn. I’d seen the reflection of light on the faces of my attackers. My power had surged, answering my call without hesitation or stutter. Was that why she’d come—because my sisters could still sense me, and the strength of my power, even after all these months?
“You should have killed them both.” Her dark eyes were once again on the body behind me.
My mouth twitched, my entire being bristling at the suggestion—the expectation—that I follow the norms of a coven that I no longer answered to. That I’d been cast out from, without any chance of ever returning.
Punishment must be absolute. That was the way of the coven.
“I do not answer to the coven any longer,” I bristled.
Elodie’s gaze rested back on my face, still utterly devoid of emotion. Was that a consequence of having worn so many faces? Was she incapable of wearing her own? Or was she truly that immune to feeling?
That lack of emotion, that evenness, had always bothered me. How could anyone be that controlled all the time? And why couldn’t I?
Even before—I was not supposed to think ofbefore. That dictate had been beaten into me from the moment of my remaking. For a witch, there is only the now and the future, the concerns of the coven over the concerns of the self. Thinking about a past that is lost was the ultimate form of selfishness.
But I was no longer a member of the coven. Elodie, however, was.
“Maura sent you,” I said. My fingers curled at my side, frost tingling at the tips, but I kept myself under control. Barely.
“Yes.” Elodie nodded. And waited.
“I have followed all of her dictates.” To the letter. As if I actually believed that if I abided by the strict parameters of my banishment, then someday it would be lifted.
