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“And when I heard,” she added, rounding on me.“I didn’t even have time to grieve before witches were flooding in here from all corners of the Earth.Pitiful, glassy-eyed, clutching their few belongings and telling stories of the same thing happening everywhere.

“We took them in, those who made it this far, yet most did not.And those covens who did were broken, their leaders killed fighting a desperate rear-guard action to allow some of their people to survive.Unlike the Circle, whose leadership had to be rooted out from their holes underground after their armies were annihilated, Mothers don’t lead from behind, they don’t cower, they don’trun.”

“The Circle doesn’t run!”Pritkin snarled and received a fist to the groin for his trouble.

“They stayed,” Zara said, going down on one knee again, getting in my face, making me look at what the struggle had cost her.“And they fought, and theydied, to a woman.Leaving me,only me, as the last remaining Mother on Earth!”

Yeah, that would explain it, I thought, staring at her dizzily.The covens had lacked cohesion since their long-ago struggle against the Circle had destroyed their leadership, and they’d never been able to get it back.Quarrels, fights, and chaos had been the order of the day, with each coven going its way under its own Mother, with no head witch or council on top anymore.

Looked like that had changed.

“Do you know what that’s like?”she hissed.“Do you have anyidea?”

“No.”

“No, of course, you don’t,” her once beautiful lips, now lost in a mass of tiny lines, curved into a sneer.“You weren’t here.But I was, and they came every day, spilling out of our portals as tattered, traumatized refugees with no coven leader, no idea what was happening, and nowhere else to turn.

“We took them in, fed them, clothed them, gave them a chance to survive while the gods were busy hunting the Circle—and every other magic user they could find!And when they finished with them, they turned on us, tracking us down, decimating the raiding parties I sent out, looking for supplies, both here and in Faerie.And circling closer every day, with each use of our portal network helping them to hone in on our location, the last remaining bastion of magical power on Earth!”

I stared around at that, but my watering eyes saw only a blur of faces flowing with firelight.Hundreds of them; I wasn’t sure how many, as darkness ate at the edges, leaving parts of the throng in shadow.But hundreds...

Out of millions.

Was this it?Were these the only covens left in the world?Or the only coven, I corrected myself, because they were all under Zara’s control.

“And now here you come,” she hissed, “to lead them right to us.Cassie fucking Palmer, who abandoned us at our gravest hour, and now returns to what?Save your hide by turning us in?”

“No!I swear—”

“And what do your assurances mean to us?What does anything that comes out of your lying mouth mean?I trusted you once, defended you, stood by you when I should have helped the others kill you before you could betray us!But that oversight can be remedied.”

“Does coven law mean nothing, then?”Pritkin said, his voice ringing out so loudly that he must have enhanced it.I guessed to reach the cheap seats in the back, although why he was bothering, I didn’t know.

I doubted they had a different opinion.

“Silence him,” Zara snarled.“If he breaks the spell, kill him.”

“Yes, you can kill me,” Pritkin said, deflecting the half dozen spells sent at him and causing witches on all sides to hiss and duck.“But you can’t do it to her.Not by your laws.Not without a trial—”

“What do you think this is?”Zara snapped.

“Not that kind of trial.She is a coven leader, and by your laws—”

“Don’t you dare quote our laws to me!”

“And yet, it seems someone must,” he said calmly, even though we were surrounded by a group of very angry, very dangerous women.“For you seem to have forgotten them.”

He glanced at the circle of witches who had somehow eluded the gods’ purge all these years.They were survivors and looked it, many with visible scars that they weren’t bothering to conceal, tattered clothing, and gaunt faces.But magic was snapping around them so thickly that it distorted the air, turning the vengeful faces under the flickering torchlight monstrous.They wanted someone to blame for what had happened to them, for all they’d lost, and they’d found one.

And it didn’t help that I wasn’t sure they were wrong.

What had I done?

“What you had to,” Pritkin said because I guessed I’d spoken that last part out loud.“The best that anyone possibly could have.”

“You call this the best?”Zara spat.“She left us to die—”

“She left you tofight, which is what she has the right to do here.Or do your laws and customs mean nothing?Are you the freedom fighters you always claimed to be, rejecting the Circle’s forced compliance, or are you feral animals crouching underground, looking desperately for a scapegoat—”