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“I won’t be long.”

“You’re taking that?” He nods toward the messenger bag and the grimoire.

“She might know more about it than I do,” I say with a shrug. “It’s worth asking, anyway.”

“Be—”

“Careful?” I finish for him, teasing a little. “You’ve said that before.”

Eren swoops down for a quick kiss. “And I’ll keep saying it any time you’re parted from me, witch.”

Chapter 31

Allie

Approaching the coven hall feels nothing like walking down Main Street in Beech Bay. It’s familiar, sure, but no part of me relaxes into that familiarity.

The hall itself is a huge, stately building tucked away on a large estate set far back into the woods. The cottage I grew up in is just down the road, and other houses are dotted throughout the area. This place can’t quite be called a town, but it’s a little compound all its own. A quiet, dispersed village populated with witches and their families.

And at its heart, the coven hall.

Three stories high and built in the style of a Tudor-era country estate, it’s warded by layers upon layers of protection spells. Each one sizzles gently across my skin as I approach, and would be enough to make any mundane person turn away in forced confusion.

The gravel of the main drive crunches under my feet. On either side, wild tangles of gardens are just coming into their spring glory. A few witches work here and there, and the further I make it up the drive, the more heads swivel my way.

“Allison?”

I turn at the sound of my name, only to find Josephine Delacroix walking tentatively up behind me. One of the witches who, by all rights, should have been chosen in the Tithe over me.

“Hi, Josephine,” I say. “I’m here to speak with my mother.”

It’s awkward as hell to have her looking me up and down, no doubt searching for some sign I’ve come back drained and damaged, like Emilia. Her face is unreadable as she nods toward the manor.

“She’s inside.”

Not in the mood to answer questions or waste time on small talk, I thank her and head inside. Thankfully, no one else stops me on my way to my mother’s office.

The inside of the coven hall is as stately and serious as ever. Walls lined with artwork and cabinets filled with strange curios, wings that branch off to classrooms and dormitories and workrooms far below in the several layers of cellars beneath the manor. The whole place hums with generations of the coven’s magick.

It was my favorite place in the world, when I was young.

Beyond my brief trips back to tend to the library, I’ve barely spent any time here since graduating high school and going on to college. Partly because I know my welcome wore out the day I was passed by for advanced training, and partly because it’s just too damned painful.

Heading up two staircases and down a familiar hallway, I arrive at my mother’s office. The door is cracked open, and when I glance inside, I find her there alone. She has her back to the door, watering can in hand as she tends to a couple of her finnicky ferns on the windowsill.

“Hi mom.”

Her head whips around, and all the color leeches from her face as she sees me standing there. “Allie?”

Dropping the watering can in a moment of uncharacteristic haste and clumsiness, she rushes across the room and pulls me into a hug. I don’t even get a word in before she’s fussing over me, her words rushed and panicked.

“Darling, are you alright? How are you here? Did your magick—”

“I’m fine,” I assure her, a little disappointed, if not surprised, that she would immediately assume I’d been forced, rather than chosen to come back. “I came back with Eren so I could speak with you.”

“You… came back?” she says slowly. “Through the Veil?”

“Yes?” I ask, confused. “Eren said it’s been done before. That Tithe brides have come back occasionally.”