Chapter Forty
Freya
M y world was a mess of flames and strikes and instincts. In the dim, dark hall, the Handmaidens circled me. They wore the royal blue robes of High Witch Cordelia’s court and matching cold expressions. They launched spells and wielded the elements with the lethality they were famous for.
Aren’t you tired? a voice crooned in my mind. You can have your familiar and go home.
You can stop fighting now and save your coven’s honor, another one offered. Your mother’s honor. Just give in. Concede.
“Get out of my head,” I growled and sent flames in both directions.
The one on my left—a witch with gray-streaked hair and a scarred face—shielded herself with a mass of swirling air, while the other protected herself with a wall of pure ice. The ice wielder’s cunning, gray eyes bored into mine, and her power’s chill tried to snuff out the heat of my flames. With a bellow, I flung more fire at them.
As the witches’ shields came down, their strikes were quick to follow. In one flip, I dodged a volley of razor-sharp icicles and a torpedo of deadly wind.
The High Witch will spare your warlock if you comply, one of the Handmaidens taunted. She’s eager to work with Sybil Redfern’s heir.
Instead of letting the mention of my mother rattle me, like they so desperately wanted it to, I used her memory as empowerment. Magic thundered in my blood and billowed around me in an impenetrable mass of wind and water.
“I am Sybil Redfern’s heir,” I proclaimed. My voice boomed with power. “And like her, I won’t be working with the High Witch.”
I unleashed the tidal wave of magic.
The Handmaidens tried to defend themselves, but their shields were nothing against my fury. Following the path I hoped would lead me to my familiar, I ran the direction the Handmaidens had come and searched for a passageway my friends and I had missed. Based on the map Cady had provided, there was another hallway that branched off from this one.
On my way, I noticed a shadowed split in the hall. It was such a small crack in the stone, I hadn’t noticed it before, but I was just narrow enough to slip through it. In the tight passageway, light was nonexistent. Wanting to spare my magical reserves, I placed my hand on the wall and used it to guide me as the hall winded up, up, up.
My lungs and thighs burned, but I didn’t stop. Above me, Arion’s magic was a beacon. A thunderous roar shook the stone and urged me faster.
I smacked against a hard surface and fell to the ground. Pain laced my forehead and my backside, but I quickly scrambled to my feet. I blinked frantically in the dark and summoned a small ball of flame. As my eyes adjusted, I studied the back of a large wooden frame.
A secret doorway?
I ran my fingers over the back of the frame and yelped when a defensive spell stung my fingers. I held my breath and waited for an attack, but nothing happened.
“At least no one saw that,” I muttered.
“That would be embarrassing,” a deep voice murmured from behind me.
I spun, fully prepared to launch the ball of flame in my hand. Holding a torch, a blond man leaned against the wall. His beauty was angelic—ocean blue eyes, broad cheeks, and full lips. Even relaxed, his body was lithe in the fitted black pants and loose white shirt he wore. As if he weren’t in a secret passageway with a fugitive, he picked at something under his nails.
I wanted to run, but I couldn’t leave my back exposed to the stranger. As I decided to throw the flames and bail, he sighed.
“Don’t do that,” he whined. “It would be horribly predictable.”
“Who are you?” I demanded. I didn’t have time to play games with the stranger, but I couldn’t bring myself to attack someone who made no move to harm me.
He smirked. “The better question is, who are you, and why are you breaking into the High Witch’s personal chambers?”
The High Witch’s personal chambers?
“You don’t know my name?” I crossed my arms. “I’m offended.”
“Oh, everybody in this place knows your name, Freya Redfern,” he assured me, “but I asked who you are.”
The High Witch’s emblem blazed on his shirt sleeve, but there was something decidedly different about this man. He had yet to attack me, which separated him from the rest of Cordelia’s lackeys.
Or he’s stalling me until backup comes.
“What is your game here?” I said. “You’re too cowardly to fight me yourself so you’re waiting for someone else to show up to do it?”
Magic seeped out of him like a beast emerging from a cave. His power thrummed with a different timbre than Walker’s, but it was stronger and wilder than the magic of the masked guards.
Whatever he was, he would die if he got in my way.
He chuckled and gestured behind me. “You’ll need something of hers to unlock that.”
The man sauntered closer. As he approached, every muscle in my body tensed. He was taller than me but not as broad as Walker. It wasn’t his physicality that set me on edge, but the easy, gracefulness of his steps and that strange, simmering magic lurking under his skin. He smelled like rain and fury.
He slipped past me and laid a hand on the frame. Light blazed under his palm, and something clicked.
“Burn me,” he instructed. “We need to make this look like you got the upper hand.”
I hesitated. “Why?”
This had to be a trap. Nothing this pretty and convenient was ever free.
“Because,” he drawled, “I want to see who you are, Freya Redfern.”
I didn’t trust him, but I also didn’t have many options. There was no time to turn back and look for an alternative way through the court—every second that passed allowed the Handmaidens to close in on me and my friends.
“This is going to hurt,” I warned and launched the ball of flames at his chest.
He choked, but I didn’t stop to inspect his wounds. He would survive—I hadn’t wielded enough fire to burn him to death. As he gasped, I crawled through the now-open frame and squinted against the sudden, dazzling light.
As I cast out my magical senses, I spotted a gauzy white curtain and tucked myself behind it. Magical beings roamed the court like dutiful ants, but no Handmaidens crept close by. I had bypassed them through the secret hall. The cloying texture of Cordelia’s magic hung in the air like residue, but that breath-stealing power of her presence was nowhere nearby.
Hesitantly, I ducked my head out of the curtain and surveyed my surroundings. I stood in a wide, sandstone and white hall. Oval-shaped windows lined the walls and through the gaps in the white curtains, a pastel painted sky loomed. Convinced I was hallucinating, I turned back to the window where I had hidden and shoved the curtains aside. Clouds billowed, and dizziness swirled my thoughts.
Wasn’t I just underground?
I shook my head and returned my focus to the High Witch’s chambers. To my left, rose-scented candles burned beside a huge bed. Rich blue and purple tapestries decorated the walls. To my right, double doors led toward Arion, but I hesitated. Power emanated from Cordelia’s bedroom—the kind of power that could fuel a ripple.
As I drifted closer to Cordelia’s bedroom, I silenced my footsteps with a quick spell. Perfume, powders, and jewelry were strewn across her vanity. I couldn’t help but smirk—the almighty High Witch was messy.
There was nothing suspicious about her mirror or her ornate chest of drawers. I faltered at the door to her closet. Last time I had approached a ripple, I’d been yanked into it against my will, but I was so close to an escape. Knowing exactly where to run when everything undoubtedly went to shit could mean the difference between survival and death. Sucking a breath in through my teeth, I yanked the door open.
Only rows and shelves of creamy fabric and fancy shoes loomed inside. Feeling silly, I sighed and closed the door.
Arion’s magic surged, and my heart tugged. This was taking too long. By the time I found the ripple, there might not be anything left to save. Resigned, I turned to save my familiar, but a painting caught my eye.
Hanging over Cordelia’s monstrously large bed, the painting depicted a drop of water hitting a serene pond. The blues of the water and the orangeness of dawn were extraordinarily rich. My fingers curled toward the painting against my will, and my magic hummed in my veins.
A ripple, I realized. It’s a painting of a ripple.
Arion bellowed, and his anguish unlocked me from the ripple’s thrall. Foregoing stealth in favor of speed, I raced across Cordelia’s chamber and threw open the double doors. In a matching chamber, three Handmaidens ran toward me with vicious smiles. Two of them—the air wielder and the master of ice—stood among them, wet and bloody and enraged.
With a blast of power that shook my bones, I pointed my palm to the ceiling and used air to punch a hole through it. As debris showered on us, I squinted against it. The Handmaidens coughed and sputtered, and I launched myself through the opening I had created.
Any satisfaction over my small victory shattered when I realized what I faced.
In his saber-toothed tiger form, Arion stood surrounded by Handmaidens and contained by a collar that emanated soul-sucking magic. The runes on the collar blazed with power, but I homed in on my familiar’s fear-filled, amber eyes, and the purple blood that stained his sides. He whimpered, and I had never heard such a broken outcry.
“I’m sorry, friend,” I whispered.
Too late, I realized he hadn’t been whining for himself, but for me.
Someone wrenched my shoulders back and clasped cuffs over my wrists. Immediately, cold emptiness stole my breath, and my magic was snuffed out. I couldn’t even sense it past the numbing power of the cuffs. Tears burned my eyes.
Since Mom had left the coven to me, I thought leadership was my heaviest burden to bear, but I was wrong. Failure was a much weightier thing to face.
“All that running,” a Handmaiden taunted in my ear. Her wet body pressed against mine. “And look where it got you.”
Cursing myself for letting my emotions distract me from saving my familiar, I lifted my chin and promised myself that given another chance, I would get my friends out of here.
I stood in a spacious hall. The gold-plated ceiling arched high above the white-stoned floors. A monument of a golden throne perched on a dais. Birds and elements and an ancient language were etched across the golden chair. Beyond it, the purple, pink, and blue sky stretched across enormous windows.
Something surged behind me, and four more Handmaidens from downstairs jumped through the hole I had created. Plaster dusted their once immaculately blue cloaks, and I couldn’t help but smile at the mess I had made of them.
“Think this is funny?” one of them snapped. She pushed her dark braid over her shoulder and glared at Arion. As I realized her intent, I shivered.
“No—”
Purple flames struck Arion’s mangled side, and he whined. Anguish blossomed in my chest, and I choked on a breath.
“That’s what you get for burning one of ours,” another Handmaiden sniped.
Arion’s side bubbled. He was burned down to his white ribs, and he wouldn’t heal with those goddessdamned cuffs on.
“Let him go,” I said, “and I’ll do whatever you want.”
No matter what a wretch it made me, I meant it, but the Handmaidens tittered. Though they varied in age, magical specialty, and appearance, their laughter rang with identical cruelty.
“You’ll do whatever High Witch Cordelia wants anyway,” the dark-haired one promised.
Opposite from the grand throne, doors swung open, and footsteps echoed across the marble floor. Walking amid the various sculptures and ornate furniture were the magical, masked guards who had attacked us in the armory. As they neared, I noticed a pair of boots and pink sneakers poking through the haze of black.
I tried to hide my panic, but judging by the nearest Handmaiden’s smug smile, I failed. As the strange guards peeled apart, Walker and Cady came fully into view. Blood stained Walker’s leather fighting vest, and my magic heated my veins without an outlet. The nearest guard snatched the black sacks covering their faces off, but their magic-binding cuffs remained on.
At least Ryder isn’t captured.
As I met Walker’s electric gaze, magic crackled—light as an ant—across my skin. I swallowed my surprise and looked away.
With our adrenaline pumping like this, I wondered, is our bond powerful enough to break the cuffs without us touching?
The cuffs were certainly not enough to block out the weight of High Witch Cordelia’s presence. From behind her throne, she floated into the room in a cloud-like gown. It was only a shade lighter than her nearly transparent skin and her haunting gray eyes. As she drifted over, wearing the most beautiful diamonds and the loveliest smile, I wanted to run.
“Hello again,” she greeted in a voice like bell chimes. Though she spoke softly, it echoed across the throne room. Her gray eyes studied Cady, and Walker tensed. “It’s lovely to meet you, Cadence Moonflower.”
“It’s Cadence Reid,” Cady corrected.
I braced myself for Cordelia to strike the girl, and Walker inched in front of his sister, but the High Witch merely laughed.
“I’ve heard rumors about your spunk,” she said. “I’m glad it does not disappoint. So many things are a disappointment as of late.”
Her gaze drifted to Walker then settled on me. I refused to wilt and instead stared brazenly back at her.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Some things are very disappointing.”
The Handmaiden behind me jerked on my bound wrists and growled in my ear, but Cordelia was unperturbed. The High Witch strolled closer. Walker lurched forward, but one of the guards grabbed him. Cordelia’s power pressed in on me from all sides. It popped my ears and rattled my chest, but I did not yield under its weight. Like a Redfern witch should, I stood tall.
“Where’s the wolf?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.
And neither do you.
Somehow, her magic intensified. Her power reeked of roses and tasted like copper. My head pounded, and my heart raced. The Handmaidens shifted nervously, and a couple of the guards dropped to their knees. Though my eyes burned, and I struggled for breath, I held the High Witch’s stare.
I am my mother’s daughter.
I will not falter.
“Why do you care?” I rasped. “What’s a lone wolf to a High Witch?”
Cordelia’s magic finally subsided, and she sneered.
“There’s so little you understand,” Cordelia said.
“Explain it,” I shot back. “You need us for something—otherwise we wouldn’t be alive. You can try to torture us into helping you, but wouldn’t it be much easier to convince us of your motives?”
“You can’t keep these cuffs on us forever if you need our help,” Walker added.
The High Witch considered us, clasped her hands in front of her, and sighed. “I don’t like to be the authoritarian the world paints me as, you know.”
No, you just like to steal witches’ daughters and use them to fuel your eternal reign.
I bit back my initial response.
“Of course not,” I said. “Leading a coven has its challenges. I cannot imagine the weight of the crown you carry.”
I meant it both literally and figuratively. Sitting firmly in the coil of her snow-white hair, her golden and diamond-crusted crown looked heavy.
Cordelia’s voice returned to its lilting cadence. “That’s only half my burden. I was so relieved when you retrieved the chimera, Freya Redfern. You’d finally done what your mother could not.” She traced the arch of my cheekbone almost tenderly and snatched her hand back. “Then you betrayed me.”
You’d finally done what your mother could not…
Had Mom truly tricked Cordelia? Was the High Witch unaware of her betrayal?
I swallowed. “I don’t understand—what are your plans with Elle? Why do you need her so badly?”
“Why?” Cordelia purred. “I need her to save the world.”