Chapter 46
Forty-Six
CARINA
“Leave us.”
Immediately, Adalyn turns on her heel and heads out the doorway without glancing my way.
Archer takes a longer time to obey; his strides slow while he stares hard at his mother.
She isn’t looking his way, so she doesn’t notice the briefest flash of hatred that lightens his dark purple eyes into a shade more natural to our kind.
Interesting.
He takes another puff, and the scent of marijuana lingers after his exit. It’s with a curled lip that Sloane slams the door shut behind him and dispels the scent with another gesture.
Sloane, without the protection of her cloak—which hid many of her features—is intimidating.
Classically, her beauty is unearthly. Hair that slices at her shoulders—black, due to the Darkness.
Her face is slim, pointed, all sharp lines, though not unattractive.
It gives the sense of not liking being questioned.
Her eyes are the most striking—a dark purple like Adalyn’s and Archer’s, except a shade even darker, closer to black than purple.
She’s slim and tall, her fitted dress pants and blouse imposing.
Magick seeps from her; it’s even stronger than Adalyn’s. It consumes the room, a sensation that crawls across my skin and suggests none of us will ever win against her.
She conjures a chair in black smoke, which she settles on. I, however, stay put, as my hands curl into the bedsheets and fight to slow my racing heart, the blood whooshing through my ears—which may distract from what’s next.
“Is Ryder okay?”
She seems confused by my question—or the fact I’ve distracted from her initial planned conversation. “It’s scary how much you’re her twin. I’m speaking of your real mother, of course. Hope you were aware of that tidbit of your past.”
By dropping the truth like this, she’s seeking a fissure between Mom and me—but she won’t find one.
“Is Ryder okay?” I repeat, refusing to answer anything else until receiving reassurance.
“That’s the wolf, I presume? He’s fine.”
Good.
“I’m sure you have many questions, and I’m prepared to answer every one.”
While I do have plenty—mainly about what exactly she wants—I neither confirm nor deny her presumption, because as a captive she’ll expect me to fight back, not play along to get the information I’m here for.
“You’re trying to turn me away from Hecate because of a war you believe in. What more is there?”
She rises to her feet with the grace of a willow tree. “Clearly, you’ll require convincing. Follow me.”
“Where?”
“To the truth. You assume I’m the villain, so allow me to prove otherwise. I’m simply trying to save us, and there’s nothing villainous in that.”
“You renounced the Goddess,” I murmur, believing that explains everything.
She releases a low, disagreeing grunt as she heads for the doorway. “Hecate gave up on Her daughters and sons by not preparing us for what’s to come.”
“You surrendered to Darkness.”
“Your High Priestess will have you believe black magick equates to evil, but I ask you, dear girl, where is the proof?”
“I…” Uh. I don’t know.
It’s written into our teachings that black magick is wicked. That it infects and corrupts a witch’s soul. That those who are Dark betray Hecate and nature and everything we hold dear. Other than texts, I’ve never witnessed proof of it…
My feet move, compelled to learn the truth, which makes Sloane smile a predator-worthy grin. “Thank you. If you choose to join us, this could be your bedroom. You may decorate and furnish it however you wish.”
She’s kidding? Taking about furnishing a room hours after kidnapping me? She’s more delusional than we all expected. As she starts out the room and down the hall, I inhale deeply, bracing for every possibility of what’s beyond this room.
For us, I remind myself. For Mom and the coven and witches all around.
Beyond the bedroom, my breath is stolen by nature at its finest—ethereal surroundings that are an entire level of magick, a hint of the Earth witches Sloane and her family used to be.
A mansion shaped like a human’s, but not designed us such.
Rather than glass and refined finishings, Sloane’s home is bark and vines, like a hovel in a fantasy movie.
Vines twist intricate patterns up the uneven bark walls and line the glassless oval windows.
They’re charmed to block the wind the way glass would.
Forgetting I’m supposed to be following her, I force my feet in front of one another, stepping lightly on the smooth floor, even while my head doesn’t stop roving, taking in the branches above head that criss-cross over the ceiling in a winding pattern.
Leaves hang low, reminding me of Banff’s forests.
“It’s lovely,” I breathe, reaching up for a low-hanging branch. For a moment, my heart slows, forgetting everything else but the uniqueness of my kidnapper’s house.
“I’m aware.” Sloane rests her hand on popped-out strip of bark. “It’s built upon my family’s magick; there are centuries of power within this place.”
“Do you miss your earth magick?”
“Sweet girl.” With a slow spreading smirk, green lights up her palm and a vine lining the floor shoots up to greet its owner. “You know as well as I do that I never lost my powers. It’ll all make sense to you soon, if you’re ready to move on?”
As she pats the vine a final time, my own skin feels clammy. Already, I’m questioning all I know, so an entire conversation will destroy everything. When I expected a cage and yelling, Sloane’s oddly cooperative.
For that reason alone, I exhale through my nerves.
“And if I choose not to join you, where will my bedroom be?” What she’s not telling me is choice isn’t an option. She wouldn’t have done all this only to allow me to walk away.
“We’ll visit your other options later. First, you need to see something.”
At the end of the hallway, a wide staircase is cut from logs, the smooth banister gleaming with—starlight?—glitter. Sloane rests her hand on it and leads me down the steps.
“This place is unreal.” Another compliment, but it’s too true to lie about.
She peeks over her shoulder. “It is, isn’t it? It’s a shame you’re led to believe certain facts about us and not understand that we’re simply a coven, like you, very much steeped in earth magick, existing for ourselves.”
Skipping past the Darkness and murdering…
As we enter the house’s foyer, the ceiling changes from branches and leaves to low-hanging fern—some low enough that my fingertips brush as I stretch.
Everything flows together, distracting nearly to the point I skip memorizing the route, which could be the difference between escape and captivity if this doesn’t end peacefully.
“Tell me what you know about your birth mother.”
Turning away from the house’s beauty, Sloane’s abrupt question returns me to the present—to the stomach-clenching nerves of the situation. “Why should I?”
“It’s only fair a witch knows her history. I’d like to fill in the gaps of yours.”
“She’s from the Coven of the Silver Seas and is dead after running from you.”
Sloane drums her fingers along her pants as she crosses the large foyer towards another hallway, this one darker and unlit. “Yes, but it was more than me. She’d been running for a while.”
The hallway grows progressively darker by each step. There are no windows, but the wood colour itself also darkens from an oak to a walnut until we eventually reach the end. The dead end.
I peek over my shoulder, wishing I counted the steps it took us to get this far, as air expels in the stagnant space.
Sloane murmurs an incantation beneath her breath before a green glow—Earth magick—emits.
The wall ripples into a plain door with a black metal handle, which she gestures at to fling open.
She leads me through, and I follow after a second’s hesitation.
The door slams shut at my back, as loud as my heartbeat is now.
“Where are we going?”
“To the answers you so desire.”
She continues down the hallway that grows chillier with every step. Unless it’s my nerves behind the goosebumps littering my arms and my lungs requiring a deeper pull each time.
As the ground slopes downward, I realize we’re likely going deeper underground. I reach out and stroke the walls—which are no longer wood but dirt that crumbles beneath the brush of my fingertips. Scattered roots tangle along them, even hanging from the ceiling.
“Why Darkness?” I ask, breaking up the silence. Conversation to give me something to focus on other than nerves. “Why betray Hecate?”
“She will not save us from what is coming, so we must protect ourselves. I’m doing what is necessary for us all since She isn’t.”
“Where’s your faith?”
A flame from the magick dully lighting the hall catches her sneer. “My faith is with you, Carina. With Harlow, and your mother, and your cousin. With every coven worldwide. All our sisters and brothers. With witches. That’s where my faith is.”
“Because of the so-called Celestial war? We have no dealings with them, so why should anyone believe you?”
The hall bends slightly, and a glow from a wider doorway farther down becomes apparent. My steps slow and then increase, fear but curiosity battling against how fast to reach it.
“That’s where you’re wrong. The Celestials and Otherworld beings of Earth interact more than you’ve been led to believe.”
Sloane reaches the glow. The arched doorway into the room—the cavern. No more tree décor; instead, stone and brick walls and a grey-stone floor frame a long table meant to seat about twelve, with an unlit fireplace as tall as I am standing beyond it.
Hecate, what am I looking at?
My stomach twists as my scan comes to stop on the other end of the room. Everything Sloane’s claiming about Darkness not being evil becomes questionable as I look at the sacrificial table raised by a dais. Faded blood drips from the sides and coats the top.
“What the fuck?”
Sloane notices where I’m looking but simply shrugs before stepping into the cavern-like room. Her heels click against the cement, echoing with annoying ticks.
She simply says, “Magick isn’t always clean.”
“You mean black magick.”
“Since when did we rank and catalogue the types of magick? No type is superior to another. You understand that black magick consists of various subcategories, don’t you?”
I stare because…no, I didn’t.
Sloane’s scoff bounces against the stone and straight into every history lesson Mom ever taught me.
“There’s elemental magick, as you know—Light magick.
Black magick technically involves wielding the physical form of Darkness.
Blood magick is extremely powerful in binding rituals, and feared for its permanence.
Time magick, which shouldn’t be fucked with, is why covens are happy to stick it under the black magick title.
Dream magick, which is tricky and requires specific skills.
Used incorrectly, it can lead to devastating outcomes.
And of course…the final kind, which you’ll find down here. ”
My eyes flit to the dais again, but as she walks away, my attention is drawn to another door against the far wall. Wood again, latched shut with ivy leaves twisted around the handle, which respond to Sloane’s hand when she reaches and slides out of her way.
She hauls the door open and steps aside for me to peer inside, clasping her hands together.
If being shown the cavern, table, and dais didn’t convince me Sloane is lying about black magick being inherently bad, the man chained to the floor does.