46 #2
“The world as we know it is changing,” she says after a few moments, still with her eyes fixed out the window.
“Changing in what ways?”
“In ways that mean we may not always have to hide like this. To be so careful about protecting ourselves and the truth of who we are.” She reaches a hand up, fiddles with a trailing ivy vine.
“The man who left my office a few minutes ago? He’s in a position of power to influence the policies of nations, to sway governments in favor of allowing those like us to live more freely. ”
“What… is he?” I don’t know a more polite way to ask it. With the remnants of his strange power still lingering in the air, I can’t even hazard a guess, but I know enough to suspect he’s not entirely human.
“A dragon, I believe.”
“A… dragon? Dragons aren’t—”
“Real?” Esme turns back to face me. “A great many impossible things are real, and I suspect we’ll see more than a few of them come to light in the next few years.”
“I was going to say there are no dragons in this realm,” I tell her wryly, remembering the unearthly, terrifying beauty of the drakon. “But you’re right. There’s certainly more to this realm and all the others than any of us can know.”
“There is.”
For the first time in as long as I’ve known her, Esme Hawthorn looks… tired.
No, more than that.
She looks bone-deep exhausted, like the weight of the entire coven hall is pressing down on her shoulders.
Not the untouchable High Priestess, not the most formidable witch I’ve ever encountered.
Just a woman faced with a mountain of responsibility and an uncertain future.
“And will all of those changes mean coven rules won’t have to be so stifling and ironclad?”
She levels me another hard look. “We protect our own. Our rules are in place to ensure we can do that adequately. Why would that be any different in the face of such monumental change?”
“You don’t, though,” I say, reckless but committed. “More than half the witches who begin their education here don’t get to finish it. They’re made to believe they’re not good enough and then cast out into the mundane world without the coven’s protection.”
Esme isn’t ready to back down. “Focusing our attention on the strongest witches of each generation is precisely the reason we’ve been able to persist as long as we have. With the power we nurture here, we can—”
“To what end?”
Unthinkable.
Interrupting the High Priestess. Showing her this level of disrespect in her own office.
“Everything is changing, Esme,” I say quietly. “The bargain. The nature of our relationship with the demon realm. The way we exist here in the human realm. What does it say about us if we’re unwilling to embrace that change and see where it could take us?”
She hums thoughtfully, mulling that over, and in the absence of any more scathing pushback, I continue.
“It’s been good for me, you know,” I say, finding a little more of my courage.
“Getting out of this place for a while, testing my skills in a way that has real impact and real consequences. It reminded me why I love to practice, why I’ve worked so hard in my training.
It’s given me some actual perspective rather than the same view I’ve had for years inside these walls. ”
“Is that right?” Esme asks sardonically.
“Yeah, that is right, and it’s one thing I’d like to implement when I become a priestess,” I say, fully pushing my luck on the whole Ascension question, but unable to stop myself.
“I’d like all the apprentices to take a sabbatical of sorts before they decide their paths.
Get out of here and live a little. Maybe experience a bit of that changing world. ”
“You want them to leave the coven hall?” she asks, one brow arched high.
“I do,” I say, and this time I don’t even have to fake the confidence. “They should all have to leave the coven hall. For a year, at least, during their training.”
“And you’d supervise this?”
“Me, and other priestesses. The other apprentices, too—the older ones.” I swear that arch gets even higher, and I continue on with this half-baked idea before she can protest. “We can take on more responsibility before we become priestesses. Stop wasting our time on—”
I bite back my words when I realize what I’m going to say.
I might be on a bit of a roll right now, but it’d probably be better not to test my luck that much.
“Wasting your time on work for the priestesses?” Esme helpfully supplies, and I grimace.
“Sorry. That’s not what I—”
“It’s a problem,” she says, surprising me. “One that’s needed to be curtailed for a long time.”
“Is there a reason it hasn’t?”
Okay, well. So much for not pushing luck.
But again, Esme must be in a generous mood today, because she floors me with her honesty.
“And what?” she asks with a snort. “Piss off the council and wreak havoc amongst the ranks? Priestesses get comfortable with certain expectations once they’ve Ascended.”
“Maybe they shouldn’t. Isn’t that the entire purpose of Ascending? So we can be of service to the coven, not the other way around?”
That earns me half a smile, and my confidence soars for a few wonderful moments before it comes crashing right back down.
“So many changes you want to make,” Esme muses, still studying me—not entirely unkindly, but in a way that gives me the distinct impression of being a specimen in a petri dish.
“But that would require you to be here. That would require you Ascending and accepting all the commitments that come with priestesshood.”
The commitments that come with priestesshood.