Page 38 of Head Witch in Charge (The Sherwood Witches #2)
Erik…
When I wake up after sleeping so hard it was like I’d gotten hit by a bag of bricks, the sun’s up and there’s a raven with feathers so black they almost look blue in the sunlight sitting on a tree limb just outside the window.
After a lifetime of getting five hours on a very good night, I’d slept for nearly eight, and I don’t have to wonder very hard about why, because the answer is snuggled up next to me.
LeLe has her head resting in the pocket of my shoulder and one leg flung across me.
Her bright Sherwood-red hair is a tangled mess, she is definitely drooling a little, her eyes are cracked open just enough to make me wonder if she is faking that soft snore (she’s not), and she’s so beautiful I don’t want to look away.
Whoever is texting me nonstop, though, has other plans for me.
The insistent buzzing from the living room hasn’t stopped for the past twenty minutes.
Trying not to jiggle LeLe awake, I wave my fingers in a silent spell and my phone flies through the bedroom door, zings past the window where the raven is still staring, and pops into my waiting hand.
My phone vibrates with another incoming text, but there’s something about the raven that holds my attention.
It takes me a second, but it finally hits me when the bird stretches out its wings before taking off.
The vivid blue in its feathers is the exact same cobalt shade as the patterned scarf my mother always tied to the picnic basket before she magicked us away from our father’s unhappy ranting to a grassy spot for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and sparkling grape juice.
My chest tenses as I work to lock that memory back up—the usual process for anytime even the mere hint of weakness threatens to make its way to the surface, where my father can pounce on it.
Unlike normal circumstances, though, I’m not alone.
LeLe mumbles something in her sleep and kisses my chest and then starts snoring quietly again.
And just like that, the tension is gone.
No, that’s the wrong way to phrase it, because it’s still there.
It’s just that it doesn’t seem like so much of a vulnerability as it did before.
Oh yeah, the woman I’m going to screw over so bad she’s going to curse me for the rest of my life and possibly the next million to come after is the one person in all of Witchingdom who makes me feel fucking safe.
How perfect.
I’m never participating in the dimitto spell, no matter what I’ve told her. I can’t. It’s the only way I can finally take my father out of play and save Cy and Sigrid. I’m all they’ve got.
My phone buzzes again before I can delve too much into that epiphany of exactly how screwed I am, and what I see on the screen fills my veins with ice and I have to scroll back to the beginning.
CY: NEED TO TALK. CALL BACK. NOW.
SIGRID: WHERE ARE YOU? SOMETHING IS HAPPENING. DAD KEEPS HAVING VISITORS AND HE MADE ME PLAY THE PIANO LIKE SOME KIND OF WINDUP DOLL.
SIGRID: ERIK! IT’S GONE SO WRONG. CY AND I ARE PACKING. WHERE ARE YOU?
CY: I CAN’T LET HIM DO THIS TO SIGRID. I’LL BE IN TOUCH WHEN I CAN. I’LL KEEP HER SAFE.
I don’t react. I can’t, because that’s when the voicemails from my dad start—fifteen of them. Forcing myself to be as solid and unperturbed as the faun statue in the other room, I listen to the messages.
“You better be marrying a little twat right now,” my dad snarls. “Call me.”
That escalates on the next message to, “I can’t believe you’ve done this. You’ve ruined everything. All you had to do is marry the girl.”
There is more along those lines until the final message left while that raven was watching me.
“You better get on this phone and call me with good news, boy,” my father says, his voice hoarse from the amount of off-the-line raging he must be doing.
“If you think this little prank your sister and brother just pulled changes anything, you’re wrong.
I don’t need them to keep you in line. Nothing has changed.
You’ll do what you set out to do or you will pay the consequences—and you won’t be the only one.
I’ll burn all of Witchingdom to ash and it will be your fault, boy. ”
If I hadn’t grown up having to choose between shit and crap, I’d probably be drowning in my own sweat about now. Lucky me, I grew up in the jackal’s den.
The strategic thing to do at the moment would be to call my father and let him know everything is taken care of; the timeline of my marriage to LeLe doesn’t need to come up in conversation.
Then once Father was convinced, I’d send out a covert communication to Cy and Sigrid to stay away.
They’ve made it out. There is no reason for them to return.
Anyway, after I blow up the family at the power exchange ceremony, there won’t be anything left for them to come home to—only me watching until the last dying ember of the Svensen magic burns out into nothingness.
No one needs to wait around decades for that.
Of course, that’s how long it will take until the handfast marriage bonds finally sever.
LeLe won’t get her divorce—and she’ll hate me forever for that—but she will, eventually, be free of me.
I can’t wait for that for her, but I need her to take the family magic, and then I’ll need the combined power of both families to banish my father and keep him in The Beyond until he draws his last breath.
She could leave me then, and I won’t fight it.
What would be the point? I’m only going to stay breathing long enough to watch the Svensen magic disappear from Witchingdom.
This is my plan. I’ve spent years studying the masters of strategy to develop it. I’ve followed the rules, stayed close to best practices, and I’ll stick to the plan no matter what.
I fucking hate it with every ounce of my being.
Lying here with LeLe asleep on my chest as I coil a strand of her bright red hair around my finger, I watch the fauns and other magical creatures carved into the bedposts play their games. They never make the same move twice. Each change in position, each exchange of partners is new and unexpected.
It’s what makes satyrs and their like such dangerous enemies. They live by the code of fuck-it-let’s-just-do-it. There are no common plots or standard plans. There is no tomorrow for them, only today, only this moment, only this heartbeat, only the now.
So what about that makes them so formidable in battle? Because how in the hell are you supposed to outmaneuver someone who doesn’t know what their next move is until they make it?
It’s absolute chaos.
And it’s brilliant.
And maybe—just maybe—this Nullam Inhibitionis doesn’t have to end when LeLe and I walk out of the inn.