Page 7 of Solar Shadows

I moved closer. “Why did you do it?”

“Oh, Hecate! It’s so hot!” she complained.

For a few seconds, I wondered if I could go hotter. Crisp them up until they screamed, screamed, screamed?—

No. Never that. My power was defensive, not an instrument for a sunny massacre.

Yet.

“Please…” a different guy added. “Please…”

His whining only pissed me off harder. “Did you just try killing us with a Hecate Crystal?”

Riley’s deathly pale face flashed behind my eyes.

Stop it!

I shoved it away, focusing on these idiots. “Well? Someone start talking.”

“We can’t focus under this spell!” the other woman bellowed. “Please turn it off.”

“Nope. Not until I get an answer.”

Riley appeared by my side. “Maybe turn it down a little.”

“Or maybe not,” I responded haughtily.

Why should I turn it down? You fuck around and you find out, right?

This night was quickly testing my patience. Screw these idiots begging me to cool things off. They’d get some mercy when they gave me what I wanted.

I intensified the heat, their faces now pouring with sweat. My mouth spread into an unpleasant-feeling smile, the dark nature of my blood humming in my veins.

I knew I had to be careful. Being a sacred witch came with a lot of responsibility, as well as many pitfalls. The biggest were arrogance and anger. Combined, the two could make me tumble into the negative trappings of being an Aurora.

I didn’t want that. I never wanted to lose myself and become a monster like Uncle Jonathon where my head was so far up my own ass I couldn’t see anything but my own wretched darkness. No, no, no. I would not be going downthatpath. This darkness was something we had to shape into a tool rather than allow it to consume us. Our mother, Juliet Aurora, wrote us a message, telling us to use our inner darkness as a weapon.

Riley and I were working on this, incorporating it into our training.

I wish I could’ve known you, Mum…

With that somber thought, reason gave me a slap. I dimmed my sunlight, because how could these witches give us any answers while sweating like me whenever I was told I couldn’t have cake for a year—which was most of the time. And poor Drake, Jake, and Ollie were suffering too.

Riley patted me on the arm reassuringly, then crouched beside his boyfriend to check on him.

I got to questioning the witches, all of them splayed out on their backs.

“Start talking,” I demanded, looming over them in full bad-cop mode.

The woman who’d smashed the crystal, the dying shards of its remains scattered across the ground, took hold of the talking stick.

“This isn’t for you to…to know…yet,” she wheezed.

“Great. Evasive bullshit. My fave.”

She sat up, rubbing her chest, her hair frizzy from sweat. “How…how did you do that?”

A surprising shiver ran up my spine. “Sorry?”