GRAY
Willow’s gaze darted over the fifty people who had been dead and gone only moments before, taking in the bodies of each and
every one of them. Those I’d killed to open the seal stared back at her, having been freshly buried while she slept off the effects of her own resurrection.
I hadn’t stopped to think about what her Green magic would do to the necromancy in her veins. To the complications it might cause, if she was inexperienced with shutting out one of the forces swimming inside of her. They could be two separate entities if she trained them to be, but until then…clearly her natural instinct was to combine them and use them seamlessly.
I should have seen it coming after the way the thrones had melded together, creating something new.
Willow herself was something new. She wasn’t a Madizza or a Hecate, not a Green or a Black. She was part of me, and that was before she’d even discovered the faint impressions of the other magics on her soul. To bring her back, I’d given her enough of my blood that she’d gained access to magics that weren’t hers.
Just like the Covenant before her had.
They were the ghost of what I had, and that was why the Covenant was never strong enough to challenge me in truth. However, Willow already had the gifts that were hers by birthright, and then I’d gone and added to them like a fucking moron.
She was a ticking time bomb, and it was a miracle she hadn’t done something far worse than this.
“Gray,” she said, and the smile that transformed her face made my heart hurt. I almost wished I didn’t have it again, so that I wouldn’t feel the echo of her pain when she accepted the reality of what she’d done.
And what she would have to do to make it right.
“They’re alive?” she asked, as if she couldn’t quite believe it. She knew enough of her lineage to understand that they should have been mindless zombies, an army of the undead that existed only to serve her. Instead, they made their way around the cemetery, greeting anyone they knew with hugs and signs of affection.
The Coven had emerged from the Tribunal rooms shortly after me, but Willow had been too lost to the magic and the call of the dead to notice. She spun as I looked over her shoulder, finding her people staring back at her. Everything in her went still, and I reached out to take her hand in comfort.
Della was the first to step toward us and reach into the fabric of her skirt. Bunching it into her fists so that she could lower herself to her knees gracefully, she knelt before Willow and turned her stare up to her. “Mihi donum tuum est, Covenant,” she said, touching her hands to the ground at Willow’s feet and lowering to press her forehead to the earth in a bow.
Water gathered on the blades of grass, winding into a single rope that curved its way up Willow’s legs. Winding over her dress, it circled her like a serpent as it approached her chest. My wife shivered when the cold touched the bare skin of her arms and chest, sinking into her body and becoming one with her. Della was too young to make such an offering of allegiance, but her loyalty moved others to step forward and take a knee.
“Why?” Willow asked when one of the eldest witches struggled to get up from her bow. She reached out an arm to help the old woman, the yellow of her clothing bright against the black of Willow’s gown.
“We have no Covenant. We have no Tribunal. There is no one to lead us through this chaos after centuries of rules and order,” she said, glaring at me over her shoulder. “We may not like your proximity to the Morningstar, but our ancestors trusted Charlotte. She saved us from certain death and gave us this place. She gave us something to believe in.”
“I’m not Charlotte,” Willow said, holding her chin high. She wouldn’t accept the mantle of power if they gave it because they expected her to be
something she wasn’t. She would either rule with fire in her blood or watch the Coven burn. Either way, she would do it with honesty.
“No, you’re not. But I think you’re our something to believe in,” she said, stepping back so that the others could take her place and continue the procession of allegiance. The only people who might have opposed her were those who had once sat on the Tribunal and had closer proximity to power than Willow.
But Willow had already taken care of them when she turned the Coven against them, leaving them to die in the Tribunal room they’d ruled in.
When the last of the witches watched Willow and gave them the promise to listen, Willow turned to me and looked at those she’d resurrected. That hope in her eyes made me want to die, knowing that I would have to be the one to tear it away from her. “I know things are a mess right now, but I have to go to Vermont,” she said.
Loralai stepped forward as if she might approach Willow, but I took my wife’s hands in mine. “Willow,” I said, pausing as I fought to find the words to explain.
“She’s all alone,” Willow said, a beautiful smile transforming her face. Tears stung her eyes as she thought through what she could give to her mother without the threat of the Covenant, who had chased her from her home in their efforts to make her obedient. “But I can bring her back.”
“Witchling, they can’t stay,” I said, watching as her smile froze in place. It fell the next moment, confusion flittering with a furrow of her brow. She backed away, tugging at her hands when I didn’t release her.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, staring at me as if I’d ruined her world.
“You, of all people, know how delicate the balance is. You took something from death,” I said, tipping my head to the side. My face hurt from fighting back the surge of emotion I felt pulsing off of Willow. It struck me like a bolt to the chest, shoving deep into my heart with the sharp pain of a thousand blades. “You have to give it back.”
“You saved me!” she yelled, tearing her hands out of my grip and stumbling back. “You didn’t put me back!”
“I was willing to pay the price to keep you here! I was willing to murder anyone the balance demanded of me if it meant I had you, and I won’t spend a single moment regretting that choice. Who would you offer in their place?” I asked, stepping forward as she shook her head. She glanced at the
group of witches behind her, the implications of the number of deaths she would need to satisfy, making her chest heave.
As much as my witchling wanted to pretend she could be ruthless, she cared. She cared far too fucking much to condemn innocent people to death to save those who had already had their chance and lost it.
“I can’t just leave her,” Willow said, her bottom lip trembling. “I don’t care who it is, I’ll—”
“Never forgive yourself,” I said, moving forward to cup her face and gaze down at her. “What if the balance demanded Ash take your mother’s place?”
She blanched, shaking her head furiously as her nostrils flared. “What is the point in having this power if I can’t FUCKING USE IT?!” she screamed. She buried her face in her hands, sliding them into her hair in frustration.
“The point of having it,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets to keep from reaching out to touch her, “is that you care enough not to abuse it.” I smiled sadly. She would need my comfort in the quiet of our room later, when she could break without other eyes to watch her.
For now, she needed my strength.
Anyone else, and I never would have believed that they would go through life without ever disrupting the balance for selfish gain. But Willow would never want to play God with people’s lives.
“It’s okay,” Loralai said, stepping up beside Willow finally. She didn’t show any signs of her hatred for me, revealing nothing of remembering I’d been the one to take her life. She just stared at her niece, willing her to understand. She took her hand in hers, guiding her to the treeline. I knew what waited in those woods, the crypt that many remained unaware of. “Lay us to rest. Give us peace, finally.”
Loralai was the only one to go with Willow into those woods, respecting the sanctity of the Hecate crypt. It may not have held the bones that acted as the conduit of power, but it housed the bones that couldn’t be contained in that pouch most Hecate witches carried at their sides.
I watched her disappear with her aunt, knowing that she needed to discover this on her own. I could feel the emotion surging off her even if I couldn’t see it, knowing what Loralai asked of her. What she guided her through when I couldn’t.
The Coven watched, looking at one another with somber expressions as Willow did the work that they could not. She laid the last of the Hecate bones to rest properly, taking what had been denied to Loralai. She’d been the first witch to be denied her burial rights, done quietly when the Coven remained ignorant of what was happening.
It was only fair that she was the first to find peace.
Willow stumbled out of the woods with a terse expression on her face, her lips pressed tight. She cradled the bone of a finger in her hand, wrapping her own fingers around it before she slipped it into the chain of bones dangling around her waist. Her aunt’s bone found the place it belonged, settling against her hip as her wet gaze met mine.
“Witchling,” I said from across the cemetery, taking a step toward her.
She turned away from me, moving to the center and calling out to the whites. Those who belonged to those houses stepped forward, allowing Willow to guide them to the crystal cliffs beside the ocean. She made her way toward the rocky path down the hillside, the line of white witches following behind her. Their flowing white dresses made them look like ghosts, and even if they were corporeal, they might as well have been as they followed wordlessly. Willow stood on the cliff’s edge, watching with the wind in her hair as those witches robed in white had draped themselves over the crystals.
The moon played off the reflective light, casting a dazzling array of colors through the night and off their white gowns. When the youngest of the witches draped her body over a purple crystal, laying her back upon it with her dress draping toward the ground, Willow raised her hands toward them.
Her eyes caught mine, and I watched from the top of the cliff, a single tear accompanying the tremble of her lips as she closed her eyes.
Her lips parted.
Willow drew in a deep breath, trapping it in her lungs as she pulled life back into herself. Her skin glowed as she pulled it in, shimmering with golden light. The witches returned to their natural state on the crystals without the magic she’d given.
Flesh melted from bones, the scent of decay filling the air. It slipped over the crystals, spreading the blood and essence of magic back to the very Source they drew from.
Willow swallowed, her features twisting in concentration before she finally dared to release her magic completely.
Her eyes opened slowly, looking at the carnage of the dead she’d dared to hope she could save. She turned her back on them, her face a blank mask of strength as she ascended the cliff.
She’d gone with a group of four at her side, Although, as I was gradually coming to realize was standard for Willow, she always returned alone.
