Page 125 of Her Blood Revenge

‘I took it off her.’

Shaw blinks at me.

‘She said she loved us. I was overcome. The chain is gone, and I vowed not to put it back on her.’

He smiles. ‘She said she loves us?’

‘Well. She shouted it as she was losing her ever-loving mind and raging her words. But yes. She loves us. I offered her my life in exchange for her freedom. Said she could kill me and run. That I wouldn’t stop her.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She fucked me senseless instead.’

He laughs and shakes his head, drinking again from the bottle.

‘We should go. Before the pimps come looking for that lot.’ I nod to the dead whores. ‘You feel up to travelling?’

‘Yeah,’ hereplies, despite his tone being tired and pained. ‘There’s an air coven a few miles through the woods. We’ll head there.’

‘A coven?’ I ask. ‘You certain that’s the best idea?’

‘It’s the last place they will think to look, and a witch is hardly going to report to the humans that the witch hunters are lurking about in their village.’ He nods. ‘The coven is the safest place to be.’

We leave through the window and disappear into the night.

Chapter twenty-one

The Necromancer

My fingers drag in the dirt, drawing that symbol again and again.

I focus on that and nothing else. Not a damned thing. Not the fact that I witnessed my entire coven be destroyed by my mother. Not the fact that I’m separated from Shaw and Dorian. Not even the fact that I’m underwater with a load of misfit witches and humans who all live happily together or that I’m Archie’s Mate.

No. I think of this symbol.

The coven leader, Avalyn, was good to her word. I’ve been given a clean dress and a plate of food I have no need of. And Archie is wearing some ill-fitting trousers and a billowing shirt.

I’m wearing a long dark green dress made of thick cotton.

My coven colours.

Wearing it feels like rubbing salt into the gaping wound.

‘Pix?’

Archie’s hand rests on my shoulder, and he sits cross-legged beside me.

‘You doing okay?’

‘This symbol,’ I tell him, still dragging my finger through the dirt. ‘I’ve seen it before.’

He leans over.

‘Are you drawing thatsymbol Neve has been using?!’ He starts rubbing it out. ‘Are you crazy? You have no idea what those markings mean.’

‘It has something to do with the goddess Hel. This marking was on her manacles and-’

‘Blood magic markings written by a powerful blood witch, and written in the earth by a powerful earth witch!’ he hisses, kneeling over the patch I was just using. ‘Pix. You can’t mess about with blood magic like it’s nothing. Fuck knows what you might conjure up.’

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