I’m not going to leave her here alone.
“If someone has to pay a price for this, I will,” Soleil says.
Esme stares her down. “I would have expected you to show better sense than this, Soleil. Especially considering your upcoming Ascension.”
Seren sucks in a sharp breath, and devastation breaks across her face.
That’s the only word for it.
Any slight bit of color she’d gotten back after her ordeal fades away, and a sheen of tears washes over her eyes. She shakes her head, her mouth opening, then closing, then opening again as she searches for her words.
“How could you?” she whispers, and Soleil flinches. “Ascension, Sol? Really? You really want to commit yourself to an entire lifetime tied to this fucking—”
“Stop.” Soleil’s voice shakes, her hands curl into fists at her sides. “I get it. I really do. You hate the coven. You hate me for—”
“I don’t hate you.”
Soleil’s laugh is sharp and broken. “Could have fooled me, Ser.”
The silence in the workshop is heavy, absolute, settling between the two sisters.
I wish I knew more about what was going on here, what to say, how to help, but I’m lost, and there’s no time to get a word in anyway.
Esme takes the silence as her opportunity to cut back in.
“It’s time for you to leave, Seren.”
For a moment, I think she’ll keep arguing, or perhaps that her sister will say something else, but in the end it comes to nothing. She turns to go, and after waiting a beat to make sure neither of the witches she just turned her back on are going to try anything, I follow.
We take a different route out of the coven hall than we took coming in.
Up a different set of stairs, then another, through a series of corridors that grow wider and grander until we reach a large open chamber at what must be the front of the building.
With walls rising three stories to a domed ceiling above and more corridors branching off into more sprawling wings, the room is vast and cavernous. The walls are covered in artwork and curios, the candlelight from the chandelier above and the sconces on the walls flickers low and warm.
And in that candlelight, eyes. Witches. All turned toward us.
Peering down from the landings above and the cracks of doors set just ajar. From the arched entrances to the corridors and the shadows in the corners. Despite the late hour, it seems as if the entire coven is awake and watching the spectacle.
Seren holds her head high, her back straight. She meets every pair of eyes we pass, many of them darting away as soon as she catches them.
Only to land on me.
The murmurs begin when we’re half-way through the large entrance chamber, headed for the door. Hushed exclamations and sharp inhales, whispers ofSerenanddemonandwho is he?
I tune them all out.
The only witch I’m concerned with is the one walking ahead of me.
Though she still carries herself tall and proud, I don’t miss the lines of tension around her mouth, the dark circles under her eyes, the slight tremor in her hand as she reaches for the door.
I won’t intervene or do anything to diminish her in the eyes of her coven, but nor will I allow her to go without help should she need it.
No one speaks to us as we leave the coven hall.
No one tries to stop us.
We simply walk out the enormous set of dark wooden double doors and into the night beyond. They close behind uswith a sense of finality, and some of the tension leaves Seren’s body.
