Page 24 of The Unbound Witch
Iswooped low enough to stare into Grey’s emerald eyes. “Do you get it now? Something is wrong with her.”
Grey laid Raven down on the couch, pressing the backs of his fingers to her brow. He was worried; we both were.
“Could it be the Harrowing?” he asked Eden. “Remnants of the spell?”
She shook her head. “There’s no magic here. It cannot be that.”
Pulling that fucking Grimoire from the bottom of her discarded pile of books, she slammed it on the table as if it were no more than a journal she’d been dragging around for all these years. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one up close. It was smaller than I thought it would be. But the casual way she flicked through the pages of her ancestors' magical knowledge shocked me. The paper was so thin, warm light from the flickering candles in the room shone through them, illuminating the text as she searched.
“You’re not going to find an answer in there,” Grey said. “The Grimoires are just a record and a collection of first and last power.”
“Don’t tell me what I’ll find in a book I’ve been protecting longer than you’ve been alive, boy.”
I wasn’t sure I was a fan of the witch. Of her cowardice for hiding. But she’d put Grey in his place, and I liked it, if only for the steel in her veins.
“The Grimoires are a record of life and death, spells, and magic in-between. But there are pages added to this book. Small notes here and there that my parents had etched and added before I took it. If they had any theories about the human lands, they might be here.”
Raven stirred again, and I dashed for her, noting the sweat beading on her brow. “She’s warm.”
Torryn moved into the kitchen for a few minutes, returning with a wet cloth. With a deep sense of kindness radiating from him, he held it out to me. “For her head,” he whispered.
I floated backward, hands outstretched, as if he would understand. “I’m not… I can’t…”
I wanted to help her. To be the friend I’d been during those scary days after the Harrowing. But I didn’t want them to see me struggle to hold simple fabric. So instead, I backed further away. Understanding flashed across his face, but he did not balk, did not smirk, as the other one might have. Instead, he knelt carefully to the floor and placed the cloth over Raven’s brow before feeling her cheeks for temperature.
“Only a bit warm,” he said. “Likely just the change of weather and altitude. She’ll be good as new in the morning.”
That confidence in his deep voice was a welcomed relief.Something about the shifter was so soothing, I couldn’t help but believe him. Most of the witches I’d met in my life had an agenda, but Torryn’s aura was strictly sincerity and loyalty. He nearly reminded me of Scoop. My panther’s loyalty had never wavered, no matter my mood, my actions, my attention or any lack thereof. He’d always been there. Fuck, I missed him.
“We should all get some rest,” Eden said. “Torryn, see that Grey is settled in. Let’s move Raven into my room where the bed may be a bit more comfortable. I’m happy to take the couch.”
“You will not be sleeping on the couch, Eden.” Atlas’ face twisted into something feral as he shut her down. For all his jokes and banter, when the animal within him came out, even in his words, it seemed none would argue. “Grey, Tor, and I can take the living room, the ghosty can keep watch over the girl. You can have my bed.”
She shared a look with Torryn, and he closed his eyes, dipping his chin. “Best take my bed instead. I’m not sure when Atty last washed his sheets.”
“Hey!” the wolf protested, shoving Torryn with a lopsided smirk.
Within minutes, Raven was carefully placed onto the freshly made bed in a small room on one side of the cottage, and Eden had disappeared into the room opposite. Raven awakened long enough to sip water, those bags under her eyes a deep shade of purple. She’d never been a sickly person, had never had papery skin or a weak demeanor. I hoped getting her home would be the answer, though my gut told me that may not be the case.
The evenings were the longest, I’d learned. With free rein over the world, no one the wiser, I could come and go as I pleased. While the others had bodies that needed rest and nourishment and occasional pleasure, I needed nothing. I wanted to need those things, longed to feel something below my damn fingers, be it the tufts of Scoop’s ears, the velvetiness of Nym’s skin, the veins in a dried petal… Even a surge of power within me. To stand in a salt circle, to bury my toes within the earth, to feel the cool touch of the moon’s purest light kissing my flesh. I would do anything, give anything, to experience those things, if only one last time.
Drifting this way and that, meandering between the randomness with which trees grew on the rocky mountainside, I floated along, content to look up at the scattered stars and wish upon every single one of them to feel my familiar’s comfort. To feel anything.
Let there be more than this. Let there be more than this. Let there be more.
Like a chant, a conjuring without power, I prayed to the goddess to relent. But she did not hear me.
A flash of pure white, nearly glowing in the moonlight, slipped below me like a dart. I rotated, staying high above as I breathed in the absolute beast that was below me. Running on padded paws, his fur rippling through a breeze of his own making,the pup,I assumed, was anything but in full wolf form. Curious, I followed him, keeping a distance. His long, muscled body pounded the earth, those sharp claws digging into the raw ground, leaving massive wolf’s prints behind.
Clouds of air surrounded his maw, his breath showing the chilly night temperature, though otherwise he did not seem to notice the cold. Just as I didn’t. Unable to feel anything at all. Atlas knew exactly where he was going as he navigated the incline, pivoting to the right and powering forward until he reached a ledge protruding from the mountainside.
Smooth, black stone met the claws of the magical beast as he stalked forward. All the way to the edge, bathing in the light of the moon, he sat, tucking his long white tail around him as he looked down upon the world. A guardian of the night.
Beneath the starry sky, I wondered if he thought of home in this place. If the feel of the pooling silvery moonlight did something more within him, as it did the witches of the Moon Coven.
I ceased all movement, unabashedly staring, studying the whims of a shifter. They’d always been our enemies. Since the dawn of time, the witches had fought against their rule. Lifetimes and generations of war had forced us all into poverty I hadn’t seen yet in the human lands. But what would it be for a shifter to leave this place behind?
Without provocation, the wolf’s head whipped toward me, our eyes meeting as the power of that animalistic stare held me in place. I vanished. The wolf did not deserve my awe. But perhaps I did not deserve this view either. Perhaps my bias made me unworthy as he turned and tore off into the night.