Chapter 15
Seren
The first thing I see when I wake is crimson.
Bright crimson eyes, nearly glowing in the dim light of wherever the hell I am. Shining with worry and relief.
I suck in a surprised breath, and it’s a mistake.
My lungs seize, not as bad as they did back in Faerie, but painful and raw enough to set off a round of coughing that only makes it worse.
Callum springs into action, grabbing for a pitcher on the table beside me and filling a glass. He helps me roll gently to my side, presses the glass to my lips, and water flows down my throat in sweet relief.
“Thanks,” I croak, and he lays a hand on my shoulder, easing me back down to the… table?
Why am I lying on a table?
“You don’t need to thank me,” he murmurs. “Just rest.”
Though it’s never been in my nature to follow orders, I obey. The table, for all its faults, might just be the most comfortable place I’ve ever slept.
Or maybe anywhere at all would feel that comfortable after nearly being taken out by a lizard man and a putrid freaking mushroom in an entirely different realm.
Maybe it hardly matters that I’ve got no idea where I am in this cool, dim room, back pressed to hardwood, the scent of herbs and medicine thick in the air, the walls lined with bookshelves and racks of…
Fuck.
I know exactly where I am.
How many afternoons did I spend skipping out on classes to come down here and pester Soleil while she was working, distracting her from her potions and only occasionally making myself handy by using my own gifts to suss out an ingredient from the racks and racks of obscure plants and herbs?
This has been Soleil’s domain since we were just thirteen years old.
Unheard of, for a witch that young to be given her own workshop in coven headquarters, but here we are. In this place that practically hums with her familiar magick, a soothing power that used to comfort me instead of making me want to bolt.
I let out a small, distressed squeak, promptly followed by another round of wheezing coughs, and Callum gets me another glass of water.
Callum.
Callum is here.
Giving me water, helping me to lie back down, not just an apparition of my spore-scrambled brain.
“Why are you… how did… what are you doing here?”
Apparently my capacity for tact must not have entirely returned after my near-poisoning, because he recoils slightly at the question.
“No.” Another cough, another reach for the water, but I wave him back. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant… what happened?”
“I found you in Faerie and took care of the two males who were attacking you.”
“Yeah, I gathered that much.” Words are still slow—but whether that’s because of my aching lungs or the utter absurdity of the situation, I don’t know. “But… how?”
Callum doesn’t answer right away. He won’t meet my eye, and he hesitates for long enough that suspicion tightens my chest.
Not great, considering I can still barely breathe.
“Callum. How did you find me?” I start to sit up so I can get a better look at him, make him see I’m not going to take silence for an answer.
Before I make it more than a couple of inches, though, he lays a hand on my shoulder.
Goddess, that touch shouldn’t do things to me.
It shouldn’t send a wave of warmth and calm through me. It shouldn’t send a pulse of right all the way down to my bones, driving out some of the unsettling wrong of this place.
“I… felt you.”
“Felt me?”
“Yes… I… it’s hard to explain.”
“Well try.”
Despite the lingering aches and pains, despite the slight edge of panic over the idea that he can just find me at will, something in me calms when he touches the center of his chest. Something soothes, gentles, and he smiles slightly.
“Don’t you know?” he says. “Can’t you feel it, too?”
I don’t know how to answer that.
Correction, I don’t want to answer that.
I don’t want to think about some weird magick that lodged itself in my chest without my say-so. Weird magick that brought Callum right to me, apparently, and that I’m almost certain might bring me to him, too. If I let it in, if I let myself follow all those strands to…
No.
Not going there.
Not when the idea of it still makes my skin crawl, even as it warms me.
One more way my magick makes me who I am, makes me worthy, rather than the other way around.
“And is that common for demons who’ve found their…” I still can’t quite make the word come out. “For demons in this situation?”
“Every bond is different.” Callum’s voice is lower now, more gentle. “It’s… personal to those within it, and ruled by the Goddess in all her infinite wisdom. You have some sort of seeking magick, don’t you? Maybe parts of it have woven themselves into our bond.”
Despite all my misgiving, curiosity sparks. The same insatiable hunger for knowledge the coven instills in all of us.
It’s an intriguing idea.
My mind skips ahead to who I might talk to about it. Joan, for sure, and maybe Allie, if Callum and I ever travel back to the demon—
The door creaks open, halting our conversation and those thoughts in their tracks.
When I meet my sister’s eyes, the years fall away.
For a moment, we’re seven, standing in front of Esme Hawthorn while she judges our magick and finds us worthy.
In the next, we’re thirteen, on the first night we spent in the Crescent Coven dorms the year we started our advanced training. Twin beds in the darkness, whispers filled with hope, stars shining bright in the sky outside.
One more, and we’re eighteen. I’m crying. She’s crying. I’m standing on the front steps of the coven hall, the last time I was here. There are no goodbyes. There’s nothing but a hurt so deep it still flays me open nearly a decade later.
Damn this place and all it’s ghosts.
Damn me for not being strong enough to stop the lump that forms in the back of my throat.
“You’re awake.” Soleil moves into the room slowly, cautiously, eyeing me up for a few moments before she grabs a stethoscope and approaches the table. “Can I?”
Reluctantly, I nod, and she spends the next couple of minutes listening to me breathe, listening to my heart, before letting out a long, exhausted breath.
“I think you’ll live.”
“Thank you, Doctor Soleil,” I mutter, and she rolls her eyes.
“You should thank me. Considering you were on death’s door when he brought you here.”
She nods toward Callum, voice tight and haughty in a way I recognize immediately. The kind of serious she only ever gets when it concerns her work. She’s a gladiator for her patients and for her craft, and though from the outside it might look like anger or irritation, I know better.
It’s fear.
“You burned the inside of your lungs,” she continues. “Where were you, and what kind of plant—”
“Unless you’re familiar with the fungi of Faerie,” I croak, still having difficulty with the whole talking thing. “I don’t think you’ll be able to figure this one out, Sol.”
“Faerie?” she asks, aghast. “You’re telling me you went all the way to—”
“Later,” Callum says, moving to put himself between me and my sister. “Seren needs to rest. She’s in no shape to—”
“You didn’t think it would have been good to mention you just came from Faerie when you brought her to me?” Soleil snaps at him.
Callum has stayed mostly out of the way while she’s been tending to me, and I was way too far gone to remember if they made introductions when we got here.
Seeing her square up against my supposed demon mate, hands on her hips and chin held high, like she’s about to go to battle for me, sends a sharp pang of misplaced sisterly pride through me.
Goddess, even after everything we’ve been through, she’s still ready to protect me without a second thought.
But, at the same time…
Callum has gone completely pale, eyes filled with horror as he realizes his mistake. “I… I didn’t…”
“And who the hell are you, anyway?” she demands, still looking like she’ll reach for something sharp and pointy in her supplies and stick him with it.
“Sol,” I murmur. “It’s alright. He’s… he’s with me.”
They both look at me, and I avoid their eyes by shifting to my side then sitting up on the table. Soleil clucks her annoyance, and Callum tries to get me to lie back down, but I ignore both of them.
“That doesn’t mean it’s alright for him to leave out that key bit of information. You could have died, Seren.”
If it’s possible, Callum goes even paler. He looks so damn distraught that not even my mistrustful heart is immune.
Alright. Officially over my sister’s terrible bedside manner.
Before I can think better of how it might be received, I reach over and squeeze Callum’s hand, just to let him know I don’t blame him. He squeezes back, and when I cut him a quick glance, his lips are parted on a small, surprised inhale.
“And what do you mean ‘with you?’ With you as in…” Soleil continues, before she spots my hand intertwined with his, and shocked understanding takes over her face. “Wait… really? You, too?”
“Her, too?” Callum asks. “What do you mean?”
Soleil runs a hand through her rumpled black curls. “Crescent Coven witches have been pairing up with demons left and right, going over to your realm and finding their m—”
“Seren and I have only just met,” he interrupts gently. “And it’s… complicated.”
Well, that’s… surprising.
Especially coming from Mr. ‘You’re my mate’.
Maybe he’s already decided the whole mate thing isn’t going to work out, that he’s already sick of me.
I don’t know what to think, don’t know what to make of the fact that even as he says it, he doesn’t let go of my hand.
Soleil’s not buying it. She looks from Callum to me and back again before throwing her hands up in exasperation.
“Alright. Fine. Whatever you say.”
She crosses to her workbench and pours a deep blue, viscous liquid into a series of glass vials.
Even though I wasn’t awake for it, I’ve got a feeling it tastes just as bad as it looks and that I’m really, really going to hate it if she tells me—
“Here.” She stoppers the vials and places them into a small leather pouch. “This should last you for the next few days. Drink one morning and night, and you probably won’t need to come back and see me.”
The way she says it, like me coming back to see her would be the worst of all outcomes, puts another lump in my throat.
Not that I blame her.
I nod silently and take the bag.
Goddess, I’m exhausted. Bone-deep exhausted. I could lie down on this table and sleep for hours. Days, maybe, until I don’t feel like I’ve been run over by a truck and had shards of glass dumped down my windpipe and into my chest.
“We need to get you out of here,” Soleil says, picking up the pillow I’d been lying on and handing it to Callum.
Or… not a pillow. A cloak.
Callum’s cloak.
Instead of putting it on, he rests it over one arm before helping me up from the table. When I’m steady on my feet, he drapes it over me and fastens it at my throat. He also picks up my bag from the floor, the same one I’d had with me when I went to Faerie, and slings it over his shoulder.
I’m way too off-balance to take it all in right now.
My sister’s cold hostility.
Callum’s kindness.
Being back in the coven hall after all these years.
The fact that I nearly died today.
It all feels like way, way too much to process, so I do the only thing I can. The thing I’ve been doing since I left here.
I put one foot in front of the other.
I don’t protest when Callum puts a gentle hand in the center of my back and leads me toward the door. I can’t think of anything else to say to Soleil, so I don’t try.
I’ll sort it all out later.
After I’ve slept.
After I’ve had time to replay everything that happened and make sense of it.
I just need some time to figure it all out, some time to rest and to—
The door to Soleil’s workshop swings open again.
“Well. Who do we have here?”
There, in the doorway, framed by the flickering torchlight, is the very last person I want to see.
Someone I thought I’d go the rest of my life without facing. Someone who hates me a whole lot more than my sister does.
“Esme,” I rasp. “Good to see you again.”