Page 27 of First Ritual

I shook my head.

Her face hardened. “We all thought you knew. I mean, it’s not a secret amongst other covens.”

“I didn’t come from another coven, remember?”

“They should have told you,” she said, a deep wrinkle between her brows. “That was really shitty of them.”

Tell me about it. “Varden said the council was excited to have another magus in the game.”

“Not good enough.” She pushed off the counter and grabbed the cloth, then started to clean. “That’s not how we do things here.”

Was Rooke a stress cleaner?

“It was big news to me.” I sipped at my drink, smiling after. A gunpowder gimlet. One of the fiddliest, unknown cocktails in the world, and I was drinking it. This situation wasn’t all bad. In fact, with every sip my problems seemed fewer.

How much gin was in this thing?

She tossed the cloth aside and topped up my glass.

Her shoulders slumped. “Will you stay? Or have they messed everything up?”

I lowered my glass. Ahh, that was a sound I knew. That sound echoed in my aching heart often enough that I could never miss it in another.

Loneliness.

The cornerstone of my imbalance.

But in all honesty? “I don’t know, Rooke. I didn’t come here to play a game.”

“We still offer everything a coven usually does,” she blurted. “I promise.”

The question was whether I wanted to take on the game. That could take a lot of space I’d assumed would be free for my pursuits. How much time would I have left afterward? And if I got hurt, and my magical reserves had to recover each week… was it worth going through to find the person on the other end of the tether?

Rooke swallowed, slowing her cleaning frenzy. “For what it’s worth, I hope you don’t leave. I have a feeling we’d both be missing out on something meaningful. Something we’re both missing.”

My heart ached. “Both of your parents are gone?” I’d already guessed as much when I didn’t meet her parents’ magic during my initiation.

“Long story that I hate telling.”

“Same answer. Do you have any children?”

She snorted. “Yeah, right. I can barely look after myself.”

Dammit, there went my one-and-only theory. Should I ask her where the children were kept? That was bound to come across weird. “So Grandmother left with my mother, and Grandfather stayed with your dad?”

“Seems so. Grandfather and my parents didn’t like to talk about it. They got a lot of… comments after Rowaness and Hazeluna went. The coven took it pretty hard. Grandmother was in the council and everyone loved your mother. People felt betrayed. Do you know why they ran? Dad would never say.”

I shook my head. “They wouldn’t tell me either. Maybe they would have once I was older, but then I lost them. She ran while pregnant, so I’d assumed there was an issue with my father—but I have nothing to prove that.”

Rooke peered around the emptying space. “Your father could still be here, do you think? Corentin’s family switched with three sisters from here, and they were the last before Wild’s exchange with Marten, who was too young to be your dad.”

“If my father is here, then our magicks didn’t recognize each other. I really don’t have any interest in him though. Is that odd?” I shrugged a shoulder, finishing my first gimlet. Well, one and a half, perhaps. She’d filled it partway and confused me.

Rooke filled my glass again, then set to making another batch.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” I accused.

“You’re putting it in your mouth,” she shot back, scowling.

---