Page 61 of The Coveted
“How—how did you know that I needed help?” I asked.
“We just did. You were calling to us, while we were setting up for Solstice festivities. We saw who you were when you wore that dress. You were sent here to make things right again.” Her voice shifted, as if asking a question.
I nodded. “I was. I don’t know how or when exactly, but it’s like…”
“A map,” a man finished, from across the room.
Suddenly the group of twenty or so witches began to finish each other’s thoughts, one by one, as if the words themselves were a kind of channeled magick—a collection of threads that weaved together to form a whole.
“Or a puzzle.”
“A trail of breadcrumbs, baked by the Great Mother and spread out by our ancestors.”
“Wisdom and knowledge left behind by our parents.”
“By the Fire God.”
“By the Universe.”
“The Source.”
“You have to travel somewhere—somewhere your physical body can’t go,” Callum said, the only other witch I recognized. He stared into the beyond, his cheeks stained by tears even as his lips held an awestruck smile.
“So that you can learn what happened to this realm.”
“And restore the balance the King disrupted.”
“By closing back the divine circle of reciprocity.”
The candle flames waved wildly, some extinguishing and relighting over and over again as each voice was heard.
“Before we lose access to everything our ancestors created and sustained for thousands of years.”
“Before it shatters the realms.”
“To free us from bondage.”
“And from the dungeons,” Amaya whispered, her voice catching. Now it was my turn to squeeze her hand.
I was speechless. I had never felt so alive, so full of love and aligned with my power and this collective story of loss and hope. Daelon was right. There was something within me that gave rise to a pleasure infinitely greater than elixir or Lucius’s seductive, all-consuming magick. These witches who defied the King, who found each other against all odds, now felt what I felt. They saw what I had seen in the waves and heard our collective song. I reunited them with the places and families they were stolen from, if only in the form of visions.
For now.
I listened as they each described the people and places they belonged to, and I laughed with them, and I cried with them. From lush, tropical islands, mountains covered in snow, forests with trees so tall they brushed the clouds, from people who used elemental magick, or those who dutifully practiced in line with the phases of the moon and the path of the stars. Through their differences arose a common heartbeat—a soulful understanding of the power of land, language, tradition, ritual and ceremony, belonging, and transcendent, dutiful love.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m so glad I found you.”
“And us you,” they echoed.
Áine. Where thehellare you?I heard Daelon force into my mind.
“Will you stay and eat with us?” Callum asked.
We still had so much to say and so much to share, but I knew my time had run short. “I wish I could. I know we will meet again soon, like this. But I have to go back before I risk exposing you.” I stood.
Amaya pulled me into a hug. “I’m so glad I’m not alone. Not the only one who survived.”
My eyes welled. “Me too. I thought I was alone for a very long time.”
