Page 31 of The Witch and The Blood Oath

I was grateful to focus on the real problem at hand.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Cady had a nightmare.”

I stepped aside so Thea could come in, though I was surprised Freya hadn’t beaten her to it. Witches milled in the hallway, but I ignored them. Thea was a talented healer, and I trusted her to look after my sister. I turned around, ready to get back to Cady, and tried to close the door, but a hand slapped against it. I recognized the magical presence of the witch before I turned back.

Freya.

Her hair was wilder than usual—sticks and leaves were caught in the curls. Her face was unusually blotchy, and her copper eyes shone like red-rimmed pennies. Her chest rose andfell rapidly, but I didn’t notice any wounds or signs of a fight on her. Arion, in cat-form, stood beside her. Freya surveyed me.

“You’re okay,” she said and sighed. “You’re okay.”

I nodded. “Are you?”

For a moment, I expected her to hug me, but she swallowed and shoved past me.

“You should put some clothes on,” Freya snapped.

As she entered my living room, she paused.

“Is Cady crying?” she asked.

I nodded. “She had a nightmare.”

Freya cursed and hurried into my sister’s room. Feeling even more out of the loop than normal, I quickly threw on some jeans and a white t-shirt, then hurried back to Cadence and Freya. As I stepped into my sister’s now crowded room, I caught the words that made dread pool in my stomach.

“—dream-sharing,” Thea said. “You two have done this before?”

The healer stood by Cady’s bed, where both my sister and Freya now sat. They both nodded.

“We dreamed about a betrayal of the coven,” Freya said quietly, “before learning what Josephine had done.”

I leaned against the wall and studied Freya’s wild appearance once more. Learning about whatever awful thing they’d dreamed could wait a beat.

“What happened to you?” I asked her.

Freya met my gaze and quickly looked away.

“I spent the night at my cottage,” she answered.

“Alone?” I asked. My concern heightened. “I would’ve gone with you. Someone should’ve.”

Freya hadn’t been back since the golems had rampaged it. She hadn’t been eager to investigate the damage of her childhood home. The mess, however, wasn’t what had kept her from it.

I still remembered walking into my house for the first time knowing my mother’s love and laughter would never fill it again. Opening that front door had opened the floodgates of loneliness and grief. Luckily, Cady had been at my side.

Freya shouldn’t have faced that kind of pain alone.

Freya frowned. “I wasn’t aware I needed an escort. Besides, Arion was with me—he was how I got back here so quickly. And that’s not the point. I had a dream, and I…I just knew I had to get back here.”

Realizing she wasn’t going to explain her rationale for going to her dead mother’s home alone, I moved onto the topic at hand. I studied both Freya and Cady.

“What exactly did you dream?” I asked.

Cadence shivered. “There was a woman. She was so beautiful, but there was something wrong with her. Really, really wrong.”

“I only caught a glimpse of her smile,” Freya added, “but she was laughing.Cackling.”Her voice grew quieter.“And there was so much blood.”

As we stewed in that creep-fest, I remembered something.

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