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“I guess I’m not surprised,” he said, frowning as he glanced at his mug.

“Why?”

“I overheard Soren say something tonight.”

“What?” I set down my mug.

“He said he’d petitioned the Mothers to initiate her.”

I stared at him. “He actually did it? She told me about it when we were fighting it out at the top of the gully. I figured it was just another lie he’d told her.”

“Yeah. Sometimes they allow it, in return for favors. But then when she said she couldn’t stand the idea of him sleeping with other women for the coven, he withdrew the petition. He just hadn’t told her yet.”

I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

“Favors? What would they have asked her to do?” I said.

“Whatever they needed. Social media, recruitment. And they’d promise her status she’d never actually get.”

“Ugh. It really is the world’s worst pyramid scheme.”

“Not anymore,” he said, grinning, his hand playing with a lock of my hair on my shoulder.

“Now you really do have to tell me. What exactly happened? And is Davina alright?”

“She’s fine. Just disappointed.”

I let out a breath, and the guilt about her recruitment softened its grip.

“Okay, so start from the beginning,” I said.

“Aurora moved the schedule up. The fog was coming in and she wanted the women in the water before it killed her ambience,” he said. “Right when you were probably still climbing down the gully.”

“So what happened?”

“I dropped a crate of wine on the rocks. Every bottle. Aurora made me kneel there and pick the glass out of the sand while Soren watched. She stood over me and called me a ‘good boy’ with absolute venom in her voice when I was done.” He looked at the window. “Twenty minutes, start to finish. That’s what it bought you.”

My hands flew to my face.

“She did that? She said that?”

He nodded.

“Oh, she really is evil.”

I thought of Clemency’s voice in the dark: You are late. Begin. We had been late. And a year ago, ten minutes late had cost Damian the woman he loved and every night’s sleep since. So this time he hadn’t trusted the clock. This time he had knelt in broken glass in front of the woman who owned him, one last time, on purpose, and bought us twenty minutes. Late, and enough, because he made it enough.

“And then what happened?” I said.

“At first, everything seemed fine,” he said, with a smile that told me he’d enjoyed watching what happened next.

“They gathered around the fire and threw their sigils into the flames. Aurora summoned the Bridegroom.”

“And then?”

“I followed Aurora down to the shore, staying out of view. She gave her usual sermon about the ocean being the oldest channel there is, and that their wish was about to be received by the universe.”

“Oh, yeah. That bullshit,” I muttered.