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“Yes,” Bryn answered as she took the book from Sage’s hands, pulling it onto her own lap as she ignored Sage’s agitated, “Hey!”

Bryn was used to the random spurts of frenzy and then complete silence as Sage moved onto a new topic before randomly yelling more words from the next thing that caught her eye. Something Bryn found charming when the topic wasn’t abouther.

Turning the book to the page labeled “The Morrigan,” Bryn looked upon a woman draped in black sitting on a throne of skulls, a sword leaning against the side. Her umber eyes staring back at Bryn.

Running her fingers along the braided black hair and crown of silver, Bryn took in the woman that held the power she supposedly carried inside herself.

Bryn felt no kindred spirit or pull from the woman on the page, but she wished she had. Wished that the truth was easy enough to verify from a memory or some opening of light upon the house from the heavens.

The crow on the back of her throne could mean anything, as could the shadows moving at her feet.

Underneath, it simply stated, “The Morrigan,” along with various other names before a small paragraph of text.

The Morrigan. The Phantom Queen. The Great Queen. Banshee.

“A deity of Celtic mythology with the ability to move across the veil using her shadows. Her dark nature allowed her to take worthy souls from the battlefield, but not before predicting their deaths. Could change the tides of war with her premonition and ability to shape-shift. Her animals are a crow and raven... How did they know all this in Tanwen?” Bryn asked, her eyes moving back up to the crow on the picture as she stopped reading, not at all like Cyerra who was the size of a domesticated cat with a silver feather on her breasts.

As she focused in on the crow, Sage stole the book back.

“Because we were all interested in history and where we came from. Now, let’s see what you are capable of, Phantom Queen,” Sage joked as she looked for where Bryn had left off in the paragraph. The woman was so excited to be reading up on this as if there were not actual people this was affecting.

“. . . tides of war... yadda yadda... crow... Ah! Goddess of death, war, prophecy, shapeshifting, and witchcraft.”

That last word had Bryn jumping up before her knees buckled. Jace moved quickly to catch her as she fell to the floor, his hands grabbing her arms to keep her from slamming her knees on the ground.

“It’s true,” she murmured as tears slipped down her face before she had even realized she was crying.

It was all true.

“I am a witch.”

Chapter 14

Openingherswolleneyes,Bryn took in the room she had woken in. Not hers, but from the plants everywhere and the smell of lavender, she knew it was Sage’s bed she’d slept in.

From one blink to the next, everything came crashing back on her. She was a witch after all, just like the town had been saying for years. Tears tracked down her face at the revelation, and she was surprised there were any left after curling up into a ball and falling apart. She must have exhausted herself and fallen asleep.

Never had Bryn felt so alone. Even when they found her father on the other side of the gate, a sacrifice of the desert with his clothes torn apart and bite marks deep into his flesh, she’d had Jace there. They’d grieved the loss together, holding each other tight as the body of her father was moved to the pyre, covered in cloth stained red from his blood.

He’d been attacked by a wild animal while out checking on a group of people at the gates asking for refuge. The scrios was the only one to return alive and covered in blood.

It was then, as the scrios walked past the gate covered in blood not his own, that Bryn felt deep inside that Arioch and the Church of Baleros was wrong in a way she couldn’t explain. Something under her skin warned her to stay as far away as possible, and so she did.

Listening as Arioch had said the words to carry her father’s soul to wherever people went when they died, she’d watched the man closely. There was not an ounce of true compassion in his soul. His eyes were dead, and she wondered how none of the adults had noticed that about him.

His brother Daran was the same, something about them screamed predator, and she kept a wide berth ever since.

Thankfully, Daran was usually at the church, Mallory as well most days, doing something there to “help” for daily services while Arioch roamed about tending to his flock.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing, pretending to be one of the sheep he professed to love, woke every day to guide them down the holy road Balor had set before them.

The day of her father’s funeral, his eyes had caught hers, and something in them changed. As if he read her mind, knew she was catching on to something even she was unaware of, he took the first step toward damning her.

He’d looked at her as he’d prayed for safety from witches.

Not one of the congregation members attending missed it either.

If not for Mr. Rafferty moving her to the pyres when her try at healing after her father’s death had failed, which she now questioned since he seemed to know far more than he let on, she was sure she’d have been put to death when the sickness passed and her body count didn’t go down.