Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 125083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
“Yes, I heard,” he said, sure to sound bored. “What do you want?”
She slowly inhaled, clasping her hands in front of her. “There is a rumor that a stray member of my coven is under your correction. I have come to take her home, where she belongs.”
“Have you now?”
“Her name is Wynter Dellavale. I have it on good authority that she is here. If you would be so kind as to summon her—”
“No one would ever describe me as kind.”
Someone from the slowly gathering crowd snickered, drawing the attention of the coven. These witches weren’t the first people to come searching for an outcast, and they wouldn’t be the last. The residents often enjoyed watching such people be turned away just as they were once turned away by those who mattered to them.
“What do you want with her?” Cain asked.
“To take her home, as I said,” replied Esther. “She is ours.”
Was she fuck. “Yours?” The word almost came out on a growl—a sound that would have come from Cain’s creature. It really didn’t like hearing another refer to Wynter as theirs. Like him, it wanted this bitch gone. “You didn’t seem to feel that way when you chose to cast her out of your coven.”
Esther licked her lips. “That was a mistake. We will make it up to her.”
“Hmm now, see, this is my problem … I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you give a whisper of a shit about Wynter. Of course, I don’t expect you to admit that to someone whose protection she is under—it would be unwise of you, to say the least. What I do expect is for you to leave here without drama.”
“But—”
“The bounty hunters did pass on my message to the Aeons, yes?”
Esther cleared her throat. “Yes. They claimed she is now your property. Your kind protects what belongs to them—I know that. But you have no real idea of who she is or what she is capable of. If you did, you would not be so eager to keep her at Devil’s Cradle.”
“I know everything I need to know.”
“But Wynter is the source of that information, and she cannot be called a reliable source.” Esther sniffed. “I’m sure she told you that her magick is tainted because she was killed as a child. That is a lie. Her death was an accident. She was not tortured as she claims. She invented that lie so that she would not be held responsible for what she did to the boys who accidentally ended her life. Ten years old, and she murdered two teenage boys. Hacked their bodies with that dark magick of hers.”
“Sounds like my kind of girl,” said Cain, hiding his surprise at the latter revelation. There was every chance that the Priestess was lying, of course. She’d certainly lied when claiming that Wynter’s death had been an accident—he’d heard the note of deceit in her voice. But that note had been absent during her latter claim. He needed to have a talk with his little witch for sure. “I’m pretty sure I’d have done worse.”
Esther’s face tightened. “Her magick isn’t merely dark, it is death itself. She has ruined the land at Aeon. You think she will not do the same to your town?”
“Since I don’t intend to exile her as the Aeons did, no, I don’t think she’ll make any such attempt.” Cain heaved a bored sigh. “I’d say we’re done here.”
“Protecting her would be a mistake,” Esther blurted out.
He narrowed his eyes. “Now that almost sounded like a threat.”
She swallowed, her eyes flickering nervously. “The Aeons asked me to pass on a message.”
“This ought to be good,” he muttered.
“They wish me to remind you that they gave you mercy all those years ago. They could have killed you; they didn’t. You owe them for that, they said.”
Anger coursed through him and put a rock in his gut. “Owe them?” he echoed, his tone silky smooth. “Do you hear that, Azazel? We owe them.”
The porch floorboards creaked and then … “Yeah, I heard.”
Esther’s eyes flew to something behind Cain. “Ah, there you are. It is time to come home, Wynter.”
“Aeon isn’t my home,” Wynter said, no inflection in her voice, as she and Azazel moved to flank Cain.
Esther’s eyes flared. “It will be no one’s home if you do not fix what you have done.”
Wynter snorted. “You can’t tell me that the big, bad Aeons are struggling to handle a little environmental erosion, surely.”
She scanned the sea of faces, taking in the hard expressions, marveling at how—despite all they’d done—it still hurt that they’d so easily banded against her. But then, she’d been an outsider to them since she was ten years old. It was now simply official. Rafe’s absence did lessen the sting slightly.
She cocked her head. “Did you know that the exiled are killed before they can even reach the border?”