“You can say that again,” Dori drawled. “The information mill is forever active.” She threw herself into the armchair beside the empty hearth, slung both her stocking-clad legs over one arm, and flipped her sandy hair over her shoulder.
“I want to know about the attack,” Benedict said. “How in Nova did you get away?”
Clary took the second armchair, leaving the two-seater free, and then they were all looking at me, a clear invitation to join them. They were acting like we were friends, like my name meant nothing to them.
Wait, maybe they didn’t know who I was? “I’m an Onyx. You know that, right?”
Dori’s eyes flew wide. “What? Oh. My. Trinity.”
Benedict snickered.
“Shut up, you guys,” Clary said before throwing a kind smile my way. “We know, and we don’t care.”
This was starting to get weird. “Why not?”
“Why should we?” Benedict countered. “It’s not like you personally wiped out a bloodline. Kinda shitty that your whole family paid the price for one person’s actions.”
“It’s messed up,” Dori said.
“But I get it,” Clary added. “Not everyone feels that way, and you’ve probably met your fair share of them. But we’re not like that. We have our own…issues.”
Now I was intrigued. “Okay.” I crossed to the sofa. “You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”
* * *
Unwoven wereArcanus whose connection to the Weave had been blocked as a disciplinary action, Clary had just finished explaining.
She pulled up her sleeve to show me a symbol that marked her as Unwoven. I’d seen it plenty of times, except on me it was faded into the skin of my thigh, a part of me because I’d been born with it.
“Once our sentence is over, they remove it,” Clary said. “Then we get our familiars back and can return to Hunter duty.” She wrinkled her nose. “Domestic duty sucks, and Pip is a hard taskmaster.”
“And combat training hits harder when you can’t throw up a shield,” Dori said.
“That’s not even one of your spells,” Benedict replied.
“Well, it should be.”
I didn’t get it. “What do you mean it isn’t one of her spells?”
“Dori’s with the Embercrest Coven,” Benedict said. “They’re allocated spells at birth and aren’t allowed to learn any others.”
I searched the archive of my mind for that coven name. It was an ancient coven created by Embercrest, one of the oldest incantor bloodlines. They had an ancient grimoire which contained all of their powerful spells. Mother had explained that the head of the coven—always an Embercrest—was able to gift spells to its coven members, incantors from various bloodlines who’d pledged themselves to the coven. The spells were copied onto enchanted parchment before being gifted to ensure that only the new owner could read them. Mother had explained that this way, they ensured that the coven members worked together, united in power. No one incantor in the coven was more powerful than another.
“It’s bullshit.” Dori picked at imaginary lint on her skirt. “Especially for those of us who get the crappy spells.”
“So what did you do? Steal spells? I mean, is that even possible?”
She smirked. “Nope.”
“She encouraged spell sharing,” Clary said, answering for her. “Encouragedbut never forced. That point should have mattered.”
“Not to my aunt it didn’t,” Dori said.
“Dori’s aunt is the Trinity Tower Master,” Benedict elaborated. “And Embercrest Coven leader.”
“Which is also bullshit,” Dori said. “All the other covens have senior students as leaders. We call them prima incantors. She’s just a power-hungry bitch.”
“But doesn’t your coven have to be run by an Embercrest?” I was so confused.
