Page 8 of First Ritual

The echo of a smile returned to Varden’s face. “The system has changed from what your mother and grandmother knew. Our grimoires discovered that not recognizing natural ability early on was curbing our coven’s growth and strength.”

Fucking grimoires. Too smart for their own good. “Of course.”

I had a month to figure out how to fudge their test. Maybe I’d be gone before then if I got to meet the entire coven tonight. I could be out of here by tomorrow morning. “Thank you for the information, and thanks to the council for accepting me into this coven. That means more than you know.”

“Council dismissed,” Barrow announced, getting up. “Opal?”

“I’ll show Miss Corentine to a room,” the woman said, flashing me a grin that was a stark contrast to her earlier glare.

Winona hurried to my side. “It’s late, Opal. I’m happy to take her.”

Opal’s grin widened. “No, no. It’s my honor.”

The two women locked in a silent, glaring battle.

Uh, were they fighting over tour guide duty? I tried to identify the undercurrent. Maybe an old grudge? A scan of the chamber showed that the council members had split into two groups. Half behind Winona, and half behind Opal. That mustn’t be correct. Maybe they’d parted that way around the table to leave the room.

Hmm. Every community had crappy politics. I’d walk a fine line until I got the lay of the caves. “I’d love if you both came along.”

The fierce exchange broke with a near-audible snap. The women blinked my way. I beamed. “Would that be okay?”

Not waiting for a reply, I snagged my duffel and walked to the door, making sure not to stride. As the artist coach at my previous job used to say, “Float, darling. The untouchable, mysterious you, that’s what people will pay for. Not the stalking thing.”

While somewhat concerning on a self-confidence level, he’d been right. People didn’t like stalking things and people certainly disliked people that didn’t add up. A woman who looked like me but walked and talked like me? That was a person to spurn and keep outside if you didn’t know her. Don’t get me wrong, there were times when I refused to stay in any society’s neat, little lines, but only when there was nothing to lose. I had coven members to meet before relaxing my mask.

Opal was the first to move. Winona hurried to catch up with her, and they reached me at the same time.

“It will be so great to have new blood in the coven,” Winona said, far friendlier than she’d been thirty minutes ago.

Talk about a one-eighty. And should I read into the new blood comment?

She passed me to enter the wide, stone tunnel that was twice my height. Seemed like a main thoroughfare.

“Don’t get many new members?” I asked her.

“Not since Wild came.”

The notorious Wild who didn’t show up to council meetings because he embodied the meaning of his name? I withheld a smirk.

The women started on ahead, and I couldn’t help glancing back at Varden. His lips twitched as I met his eyes.

I’d meticulously groomed my answers for the last few weeks and didn’t get a chance to utter more than a small number of them. Still, I’d gained an eleven-to-one landslide to join their midst. I’d come to the knolls mostly expecting that these people would kill me at the barrier—their coldness when meeting me had all but disappeared now, but there was no saying that wasn’t a trick in itself. They could simply be waiting for the right moment to strike.

I’d expected hostility. I’d expected interrogation and pain. I hadn’t expected the council to trip over themselves showing me to a room.

Something was off.

I’d come here wanting to enter their cage. Why did I get the feeling they’d already thrown away the key?

4

I stood naked, staring into the mirror above the sink into my blue eye, then my rust-colored eye. Tonight was a storm moon. How fitting given a Corentine had returned.

I stretched magic through my apothecary affinity to call my trusty scissors from the depths of my duffel. Cool metal met my palm.

In an ideal world, I’d keep my hair chin-length and dyed to avoid the inevitable “why is your hair white” question. But magic showed itself in funny ways. When I hit puberty, my magic decided that my hair would always reset at dawn to remain the same color and long enough to tickle the small of my back. That rust streak of mine? I had to cut it every day to keep the color out of sight. White-gray hair wasn’t unusual for a magus. Natural white-gray hair. My hair used to be red, and the presence of the rust color amongst the white-gray told a dark story—one that my rusty eye didn’t.

I didn’t wish that story known.

---