Chapter 52 – Carina
Fifty-Two
CARINA
After the three witches leave, the room falls into near darkness, and after a brief and pointless test of the bars, I drop to the ground. With my back to the bars and the door, facing the opposite wall, I let my head roll back.
“Hecate, how the fuck did I get here?”
There’s nothing but silence, which is expected.
“How much of this do you approve of?” I find myself wondering to Her. “The Seer being locked up is wrong, but the rest? I saw the truth for myself; is this the path you want for us?”
Regardless, the coven has to know what’s happening—and the choices Sloane is making for every witch and warlock.
I don’t know what the next steps are. Going home and warning Mom definitely, but the only way to do that seems to be to join Sloane’s mission. If I agree too quickly, she’ll either know I have other plans or I’ll risk becoming evil before getting saved.
My head drops to my knees, and I wrap my arms around my legs until brushing the magick-suppressing cuffs. They’re worse than the potion Ryder used. Apparently, it’s my destiny to constantly have my powers stripped.
Not knowing what exactly is coming, I shut my eyes and attempt to tune all the loud thoughts out while breathing through the thumps in my head that slowly release me from their claws.
As I close my eyes, my mind replays a safe sound: the faint howl of my dark-haired wolf.
Sloane sweeps into the room some time later and conjures a chair in front of my cell, where she settles in. “How are you?”
I should be asking how she is. Bipolar, I’m sure—not that there’s anything wrong with the diagnosis. She’s gone from crazy High Priestess to teacher of the disbelieving lessons to captor of myself and a warlock-Seer…and now she’s supposedly a friendly ear?
“Doesn’t playing nice with the person you’re keeping captive defeat the purpose?”
She huffs so hard, if she were a wolf, she might’ve been able to blow her own bars down. “Face me when we’re talking. Please.”
Her syllables literally curled up and died on that word.
“Didn’t realize we were talking. I was having a peaceful rest.”
“Once again, you’ve decided I’m the villain. You think I want to keep you in here?”
For the sake of being able to use expressions to reply, I lift, turn, and settle back down, legs crossed, and then fold my arms. “Fine. Talk.”
She blinks, surprised I gave in so quickly, but recovers by straightening her blouse as if conducting a business meeting. “What’s your name?”
Already a benefit of facing her: she can read my are-you-fucking-stupid expression rather than having to say it. “If you’ve already forgotten that and have memory issues, let me clear a few things up. I’m your High Priestess and demand you release me.”
Sloane crosses one leg over the other, making her body appear even taller. “Charming. Just answer my question.”
Resisting an eye roll, I reply, “Carina Hargrove.”
“Brooks.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Brooks,” she repeats. “Your real name is Carina Brooks. Hargrove is your adopted name. I’m curious what else you don’t know about your past.”
Most of it. The fact that Sloane knows things about my past that Mom doesn’t know is troubling.
But it’s an opportunity, too. Maybe Sloane can tell me about the woman who birthed me and the coven I’m from.
For no reason but selfishness and to answer questions I barely have, considering the history of my past is new to me.
“Is it true that I was engaged to Archer?” Am still engaged?
“Yes. Covens are quite traditionalists and unions between are common. I knew who you were, of course. You or your mother would’ve proved useful. We had an agreement that you and Archer would bond the month after your eighteenth birthday.”
Which means if my mother never ran, I’d be a wife for the past few years. No Mom, no Banff…no Ryder. Just Archer, who seems alright-ish.
Archer and his insane family.
“What happened?”
“Your mother did.” Her lips flatten into a line. “The deal was to raise you here, but inter-coven drama drove your mother from hers sooner, and then she hid from me. When I went to retrieve you, she ran. Things got bloody as she got defensive.”
Because she learned the truth, no doubt.
Which means doing everything I can to not take in more Darkness. My birth mother died saving me from this fate, and I thanked her by walking myself straight into it.
“Then you killed the rest,” I finish, and she immediately raises her brows.
“Morgan, I presume, is where you heard that? Slaughtering my own kind goes against everything I stand for. No, they were scared of the offered power and went into hiding. Twenty years later and no one’s heard from them since, no matter how many I send back to Vancouver to search.
” She shrugs, as though an entire coven—one of the four original, to boot—being missing means nothing.
“Do you know what happened between my mother and the coven that drove her from them?”
“You, of course.”
“What about me?”
Her eyes flick to my neck, and the area where Ryder bit me tingles. Sex with him feels like it happened so long ago, even though my thighs and insides still have the imprint of him, and it was only yesterday morning. This morning? How long was I asleep?
“That depends. What do you know about your birth father?”
“Nothing. Mom barely learned my name before my birth mother died.”
She hums, tapping her chin. “Too bad.” She glances at my neck again before she positions an elbow on her knee and cups her own. “Tell me about your time with the pack.”
Girl talk, really?
“Well, considering how you found me, I’m pretty sure you can draw your own conclusions.”
“You’ve gotten close to them.”
“Sure. They’re not in this anymore. It’s my turn to ask a question. Is your plan still to marry me to Archer?”
“That was merely a way to raise you here. Since you’re now present, there’s no need for such a facade. Besides, turns out, you’re not his type.” Her cold eyes flick to my chest and back up to my face, chuckling at her own joke. “It’s also not an option anymore.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, our time has ended.” She lifts to her feet, and the chair disappears in a cloud of black smoke. “Give any thought into joining us?”
“I’ll join you in helping save the witches, but I won’t go Dark.”
Her lips curl up. “Shame.”
The room becomes obscure with her exit.
Some unknown time later, light flickers again, only this time two figures instead of one enter the space.
Archer takes up a spot by the entrance, while Adalyn strides forward, literally looking at me from beneath her nose. “You’re a mess, Brooks.”
“It’s Hargrove,” I counter from where I’m seated in the farthest corner, making my body as small as possible, because apparently heat is a privilege Sloane isn’t granting me, and with the cuffs on my wrists, I can’t cast my own warming charm.
“Nah, you’re a Brooks through and through. You’re a fucking pain in the ass like she was.”
“Fuck you.”
She glowers before flicking a string of magick towards the lock on the cell door. It opens with another wave, and she steps away. “Come. Mom’s requested your presence.”
I don’t budge from my corner of safety. “Why?”
Adalyn huffs through her nose before crossing her arms. “You want to fit in here? Don’t question your High Priestess. Clearly things are run differently at Highridge, but here, we respect authority.”
Laughter bubbles in my throat because “fitting in” is literally the last thing I want to do. “In Highridge we understand that being High Priestess doesn’t make them better than the rest of us. If living under a tyrant is how things are run here, then I pity you.”
Adalyn’s face flashes red, and she launches at the cell’s entrance. “You—”
Suddenly, Archer’s sliding between the cell and her, pushing Adalyn away. A quick wave has her magick nullified, forcing her arm to her side. He mutters something I don’t hear, but her responding look is a threat on its own.
She stomps to the other side of the room like a child who didn’t get her way, and Archer takes her place, propping himself against the cell’s doorway. “You really shouldn’t antagonize her. She’s a bite-first-ask-questions-later kinda witch.”
“Fuck you both,” Adalyn barks.
Their tension seems little to do with my presence. “Good thing I’m well versed in bites.”
His facial piercings shift with his smirk when he glances at my neck. “Indeed. Either way, you do need to follow, or else Adalyn will drag you there by your hair.”
“Don’t test me,” she mutters behind him.
If Sloane’s requesting my presence, she’s either decided she’s waited long enough to turn me Dark or it’s something else. More bad news for me to hopefully drag home with me.
Moving sluggishly and pretending to hesitate more than I am, I climb to my feet and cross the cell.
But as my foot crosses the threshold, an alarm blares through the space, kicking the two siblings into action. Adalyn sprints out the door and through the numerous barrier spells while Archer shoves me back into the cell and locks it with a slam.
“Wait—what’s happening?” I lurch through the bars; my fingertips just shy of his shirt as he turns away.
“The barrier’s been breached. Based on how we found you, I think we can all guess who’s here.”
He follows his sister, leaving my arm falling limp. “No…”
You idiot wolf, why would you risk it?