Page 160 of Demise

Everyone gives me a quizzical look as I explain.

“My brother mentioned to me that there were rumors the witches were going to try something. That we needed to link Asher and Skyla on the thirty first of October because it is a sacred day for you all.”

“It’s not,” Rachel corrects. “That’s dark witches, so, disrespectfully, your brother doesn’t know what the fuck he was talking about.”

“Rach,” Jonathan chastises, and she lifts her hands in surrender as she busies herself with her plate once more.

“It was a full moon the following day, though. I think I remember that because everyone was fucking feral at the university,” I scoff, shaking my head. “Did you all have something planned? Or was that his own paranoia?”

They all share uneasy looks as Rachel speaks.

“We had heard of Skyla’s return to Salem. We heard she was engaged to a Putnam,” Rachel sneers with a shake of her head. “We’d…discussed the idea of a rescue mission of sorts.”

“And you were going to harness the full moon to do so?” Vincent guesses.

She nods. “Very good. We have a few other moon witches in our coven, and together, we were going to utilize it to create a protection spell, similar to the one we did for Giselle. You can’t go into the lion’s den without being properly guarded.”

“What stopped you?” Asher asks. “Us being married…or married under the Brethren’s standard,” he says, causing Giselle to grimace, no doubt remembering her own ceremony. “Why did that keep you away?”

“It wasn’t so much keeping us away as it was letting us know that we had a traitor among us. Someone leaked our plan to Christopher in exchange for asylum. She was young and scared, and unfortunately, we are told that she was taken captive,” Giselle says.

Liam pales at her words and Asher and I share a look with him.

“What did she look like?” he rasps.

All eyes move to him, frowning as Astrid speaks.

“Long curly black hair, very petite. Soft eyes and—”

“Excuse me,” Liam says, standing to his feet and stepping out the door.

Everyone stares after him in concern and I feel I have no choice but to give a brief explanation.

“We’ve seen her. She unfortunately did not survive.”

Astrid’s face falls as she nods. “We assumed not. She had so much potential, but she allowed fear to rule her.”

A heavy silence falls over the room for several seconds before the door opens again, Liam stepping through, his face looking pale and clammy. Skyla gives him a concerned look, squeezing his hand as he tries to muster up a smile.

“I don’t understand. Why was Christopher so hell bent on me as Asher’s wife? Especially if he knew that I wasn’t Henry’s daughter,” Skyla says.

A good point.

“You were Henry’s daughter, though,” Giselle says, causing a thunderous look to pass over Jonathan’s face. “At least in the public eye. Don’t forget, image is everything for those people. To them, you were not only his bond brother’s daughter, but a miracle. You were the first daughter to be born of an elder since the trials ended.”

“Why is that?” Wesley chimes in.

The witches share an uneasy look before they speak.

“We can’t know for sure,” Sariah says. “All we have to go off is the stories told to us from our ancestors, much like you all. One story in particular was that shortly after the Brethren was formed, the surviving families gathered, terrified for their safety and the future of those left behind in Salem. They wanted to prevent history from repeating itself.”

I nod as Astrid continues.

“They couldn’t focus on every single family of the townsfolk in Salem. That kind of magic would have required a Coven much larger than what they had. And at this point, they weren’t even an official Coven. Just a group of people that had all survived the same horrors. A few of them weren’t even witches, just unfortunate souls that got caught in the crossfire.”

“To prevent history from repeating itself,” Rachel says. “They needed to stop the birth of daughters, as much as they could, since men inherently believed women were more prone to witchcraft,” she says with an exaggerated eye roll.

“And so, they selected the families that were to be affected. Nine of them,” Giselle says.

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