Page 117 of The Unbound Witch

“Every single time we leave them, all hell breaks loose.”

“Yet we’re all still standing here,” Atty said, staring into Bastian’s hard face. “Let them go.”

Raven turned to a seething Bastian. “It’s just a conversation. We’ll be back before you know it.”

“If you aren’t back in one hour…”

She shook her head. “We’re not doing that again either.”

Turning on a heel, she stepped forward. “How does a person that cannot fly enter your cave?”

The wraith giggled, it was haunted and dreary and echoed off of nothing at all. “She finds a way.”

The beings all vanished at once, the haunted moaning ceasing.

I grabbed Raven’s hand. “I’ll take you.”

We landed inside the dark and dank cave, only able to see what the glow of my body would illuminate. Raven cast a floating flame, but it hardly showed more than black walls, dripping with sea spray and a slippery stone floor.

“Come,” a wraith whispered beside us, guiding us forward.

That heart I wasn’t supposed to feel beat wildly as the whispers of the wraiths grew to a deafening level. So many chattered at one time, echoing off the tunnel walls, I couldn’t follow a single chain of gossiping conversation. They spoke of all the covens, of witches and shifters. Of affairs and old secrets. It was absolute chaos. Clearly the central location of all the wraiths’ whispering.

The one we followed stopped short, taking a side tunnel without warning. She raced forward and Raven struggled to keep up, running as fast as she could. It was like the blind maze Trial, which felt like millennia ago. I held the middle ground, making sure Rave could see me while I kept eyes on the wraith, who flew about with haunted laughter. I could always escape. I could simply move through the ground, but Raven would be trapped, should they intend it.

The narrow tunnel grew darker as we weaved through. No amount of growth on Raven’s flame made a difference. I missed my connection with Scoop in that moment. He would have navigated flawlessly, and I could trust him. Eventually, Raven gave up and extinguished the magic. Somehow, the lack of magical light made the tunnel a bit brighter, as if the glow from the wraiths was something far more natural here.

“Do you know why you were allowed to come, witch?”

Raven shivered at the words from a being that appeared from nowhere, likely coming straight through the wall. “No. But I’m grateful all the same.”

She’d put her shop owner's smile on, used the voice she’d taken with every patron that walked into the store. Though Raven was always kind, very few saw her true self. She never wore her struggles on her skin and confided in almost no one. Still, I could see something was stewing below the surface.

“As you should be.” The wraith surged around her, twirling and twirling as if she meant to intimidate the witch.

But she'd gone toe to toe with the Dark King and won. Raven had faced the swamp witches with absolute rage. She’d taken Nikos to the brink of death. She wasn’t afraid. In fact, she was more. More than she’d ever been.

“You will come forward and see Meliora, witch. And then we will see how confident you are.”

“Lead the way,” she said with quiet conviction.

I tried to follow, but another surged forward. “Thewishisn’t invited.”

“The thing about me is, I’ve never taken orders well. In life or death. So, unless you plan to send me back to the afterlife, you can fuck right off.”

As Raven disappeared down the tunnel, the wraith’s only reaction was a sly smile as he tilted his head. “Follow me, then,”

“I don’t think so.”

He flew in closer. “I can show you how to listen if you wish to hear your friend’s questions.”

“Try any funny shit and I’ll spend eternity figuring out to pin you to this Earth in an endless cycle of torture.”

His eyes lit with mischievous delight. “Consider me intrigued.”

“I seriously hate wraiths,” I said, rolling my eyes as he turned and led me in a different direction than Raven had gone.

But true to his word, we entered a cavernous room above a cyclone of wraiths circling the high ceiling, looking down on a curly haired, unmarked witch holding her hands clasped behind her back as I’d seen her king do a hundred times. An ordinary wraith, no more significant looking than those surrounding me hovered above a throne she couldn’t sit on, looking entirely amused by whatever they were discussing.