“Aren’t you risking pissing off the coven witches, booby trapping their access to the Veil?”
Soleil avoids my gaze, looking up at the trees instead like there might still be some of those devious little bubbles waiting to fall. “The bubbles were… specially made.”
“Specially made,” I say flatly.
“For you,” Soleil explains. “I keyed the drop mechanism to trigger when it sensed the ward-breaking method you use. Still don’t know any other witches who’ve cracked that kind of magick. And I scattered tracking beacons throughout the woods so I’d have a heads-up when you were getting close and could run down here.”
She gestures to the nearest tree, and sure as shit, I spot one of the small, metallic beacons affixed to the bark.
“It’s a good spell,” I begrudgingly admit as I massage feeling back into one of my shoulders and try to ignore her compliment. “Fucking annoying. But good.”
As irritated as I am right now, I can’t pretend like it’s not.
Mentally, I’m already brainstorming ways I might copy it.
“Thanks,” she says, and though she still looks contrite, a smile plays around the corner of her lips.
A smile is—annoyingly—tugging at my lips, too, but I bite it back.
Instead, I make myself remember all the reasons the two of us are on the outs. And with that comes a flash of the last thing I learned before I left this realm three days ago.
Any momentary amusement dies immediately.
“Aren’t you risking your precious Ascension, coming after me like this?”
The taste of the word is bitter on my tongue.
Ascension. To the coven’s highest ranks.
She’ll be tied to the Crescent Coven for the rest of her life, standing with Esme and the others as they lord over all their little witchlings. She’ll become a coven councillor, maybe even High Priestess someday.
Goddess, didn’t I want the same thing, once?
I’d be a liar if I pretended my own adolescent fantasies didn’t include sitting on that proverbial throne.
Not that it excuses Soleil.
I grew up.
I learned the hard truths about the coven.
I chose a different path.
She knows just as much as I do, and she’s still here.
Soleil looks down at her feet. “Nothing is written in stone.”
Her voice sounds… small.
My sister is never small.
She may not be a witch who draws attention or seeks the limelight, but she never diminishes herself, either. The sound of her doing it now puts a pin in my anger, deflates it, leaves me reeling and confused.
“What do you mean? You’renotgoing for Ascension?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what did you—”
