Page 22 of The Unbound Witch
“She was running from her mother.” I pulled back on the thin leather reins, remembering the harsh tone of Endora Mossbrook’s words every time she spoke to me. “Can’t say I blame her for that one.”
“Indeed.” Grey reached up to take my waist, helping me down from the stolen horse. “Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes shifting between mine.
“Fine now,” I lied. “Just processing.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you. They will see reason.”
I nodded, backing away from him toward Kir as the door swung open and a witch with no markings stepped out from her home. Sucking in a sharp breath, I changed my mind and shifted toward Grey. She was beautiful, if not brutal. Half of her hair was as white as the moon, falling down her back. The other half, so dark, it seemed to capture the light and devour it. One of her eyes was solid black, a steep contrast to the light hair on that side. The other, so white, she seemed to have no iris. Two halves of a whole; the descriptions I’d heard my whole life hadn’t done her justice.
“Eden Mossbrook,” Torryn said, a loving twinkle to his eye as he beheld the infamous missing witch. “This is Grey Firewing.”
She twisted her face, something strange passing over her eyes as she held a hand out toward him. “I’ve heard so much about you, Grey. It’s nice to meet you in person.”
“Likewise.” He smiled, dipping his chin before gesturing toward Kirsi and I. “Kirsi Moondance and Raven Moonstone.”
Torryn stepped toward me, as if he’d felt my apprehension and deigned to provide an ounce of comfort with his calm presence. If he only knew. A very small part of me felt I should curtsy to the witch who had perplexed the world, but then I remembered that her choice to run from her mother had sent the world into a spiral of torture and heartache. Had she stayed, spoken whatever truth she’d been running from, perhaps our reality would be a different one.
Her strange eyes passed over Kirsi, landing on me before she gasped. “Goddess be damned, you look just like your mother.”
9
RAVEN
Grey whipped his head to me as I processed the words she’d just spoken. “You know my mother?”
“Best come inside, dear,” Eden said, before looking to the others. “See the horse is taken care of, would you?”
She moved to let us inside her home. The space was small and warm, covered in plants both hanging from the ceiling and in pots along handmade tables, and books stacked everywhere. Something was different, though. Off. Like an anomaly in an unmagical world. I scanned my eyes around the room, wondering why I could feel magic when I shouldn’t have. Nothing significant. Like a flicker of light before it turned dark again.
Eden gestured to the cluttered table, and I sat across from her, a million questions swirling through my mind as I tried and failed to build a narrative that made sense. Grey took up so much of the cottage, I wondered what it would feel like with all three men inside. Still, he slid a spindled chair across the floor and sat backward on it, waiting patiently for Eden to speak.
“Me first then, it seems,” she said, pouring hot water from an old kettle into three cups. “Where shall I start?”
“How do you know my mother?”
She smiled and, though her eyes were jarring, the juxtaposition of her features and expression made her more of an anomaly than she already was. “Yara Moonstone had just married your father when I left. We were friends. As close as we could be, living in different territories. My mother visited your grandmother’s shop often. There was a particular youth elixir she liked, if I’m not mistaken.”
She leaned back in her chair, blowing the steam from her delicate teacup, but then her brows furrowed, and she jerked upright, gasping.
“How did you survive the Harrowing?”
I scooted back in my chair. “How could you have known that?”
“The Harrowing is why I left. My father was hardly present, and my mother was a cruel woman.”
“Still is,” Grey cut in.
She settled again, as if preparing to tell a story she’d waited her whole life to tell, though I suspected she told it each time new guards came. “Many years ago, there was an announcement that peace would be forged between the witches and the shifters, ending our lifelong war. And with that peace, the shifter king would marry a witch of power. Because the Fire Coven ruled over the witches, their royal bloodlines dating back to before the Grimoire was split into seven, it was widely known that they would be the selected coven.
“My mother, and possibly even my father, had other plans. They found records and then met an ancient witch who told them of a dangerous type of magic. One that mixed conjuring and spelling, twisting intention within a seance until it became a curse.”
I fidgeted in my wobbly chair, dread rising in my throat with razor sharp talons. She described the type of magic they used to force the death spell upon me, taking away any future magic I’d ever receive. Even now, I struggled to believe their sickening plan had been put in place all those years ago, before I was born. Before Bastian was born. Before there was even a chance to heal our world after the war.
Eden sipped her steaming tea. “I snuck into the gathering of six coven leaders, hiding to listen to my mother spew venom. I’d heard my parents whisper of it before, but this time they declared that the spell they called the Harrowing would be the answer to all their problems. The thirteenth witch born of power in each family line would die. They would consecrate the witches, recycling a full generation of magic, believing it would give them enough of an advantage to overthrow the shifters once and for all. The Harrowing would be our salvation. Sacrifice a few seedlings for the good of the forest.”
Kirsi glided across the room until she hovered within an arm’s reach of Eden, her slight blue light illuminating the witch’s teacup. “Wait. Are you telling us the Harrowing targets specific witches? It’s not a random act?”
“Yes. I am telling you that, Wraith. But there is more to this tale. Later, I snuck into my mother’s rooms to find that list of witches. I was sick for days as those names swirled through my mind. When I saw your mother’s, my oldest friend, beside the number twelve, I knew I had to do something. So, I lied. Stealing the Grimoire the morning I was to be presented to King Dristan as a potential bride, I traveled as fast as I could to warn your mother, to tell her that she could never reveal the truth to anyone or she may die. And then, I fled to the castle.