Page 87 of The Unbound Witch

He yanked me forward, still laughing until he could manage words. “You are such a terrible liar.”

I could have corrected him. Could have told him how his power enraptured me even before we met. How touching that powerful, black barrier on the day the Trials were announced changed everything for me. But I didn’t. Because I fell in love with Bastian in all the little moments along the way, too. The rose petals falling from the ceiling. The fiery notes full of humor. The night he stayed with me, hidden in shadows, after Kirsi died. The day of her funeral when he took every step he could to comfort me. Standing beside me as Grey, no matter the looks, because I needed him. I loved him then and now, and I knew the second I thought he had died, I would love him always.

“How does a bath sound, love?”

The word would never hold the same meaning for me again. Not when it was used as a measurement of my feelings for him. I scanned my eyes up and down his backside before answering.

“Like heaven.”

He moved to the side, showing off a pool of dark blue water, clearer than any I’d ever seen.

“A gift, then,” he said, holding a hand out so I could sink into the steaming bliss while silver eyes devoured me.

* * *

“Rule one:trust no one. When we step through the door, Widower’s Grove is a field, and it’s about as dangerous as it gets. The Storm Coven has placed rods as beacons for the lightning, but they are only a margin of help. The witches are hiding there for a reason.” Bastian stepped around me, tightening the black cloak and lifting my hood before doing the same for his own. “In and out. We find the Grimoires and separate them. That’s our only goal right now, witches be damned. If you get in trouble, abandon everything and run for the door.”

“What if they trap me?”

He grabbed me, yanking until our noses were touching. “Then you fight like a goddamn warrior until I can get to you.”

“Helpful.” I shook my head, noting the headache back in full swing. A single throb turned into several as tracers followed movement within my vision. They were getting worse. But I couldn’t say a thing if I didn’t want to be strapped to a bed somewhere. So, I forced a smile. “I’m not afraid. Let’s go.”

“You should be,” he said over his shoulder, walking through the door.

The last time I’d been to the Storm Coven, constant claps of lightning and pouring sheets of rain had mixed with the heavy scent of sulfur and fire, creating an ambiance of terror. The witches that lived here didn’t stay above ground because of the danger. I’d prepared my heart for what it meant to stand in the middle of a field in this coven. Prepared for the thrashing of rain and ground-rumbling thunder.

But the sun shone.

There was no flooding rain. No crack of lightning. Only a wide expanse of hills covered in an endless golden field, the tips of grass blowing gently in a cold breeze. Everything was dead or dying, but this couldn’t have been the right place.

“Was that a test of some sort? Before we go to the Storm Coven?”

Bastian in Grey’s form turned to me, the color drained from his face as he pointed to the ground. “This is the Storm Coven, or so it was.”

The outline of a person scorched into a burnt section of the earth laid a few paces down the hill from us. I stumbled forward, tasting the charred ash on the breeze. Something within me jolted. Looking back as Bastian who spun as he studied the horizon, I realized he hadn’t felt it.

Trusting my instincts, I followed an invisible pull. As if the goddess nudged me forward. I kicked through the long grass, quickening my pace down the hill we entered on and up another until a glistening caught my eye.

“Raven,” Bastian warned.

But I didn’t listen, carrying onward, curious and determined. It hadn’t been a glisten, but a tiny stroke of lightning, and then another. Not cracking across the sky or dropping to the Earth, but rather an orb of storm magic, swirling and crackling. As I grew closer, I could make out the leather spine of a book. The Storm Coven Grimoire was trapped within, whispering something I couldn’t quite understand. I reached my hand forward, no longer able to fight the pull to touch it.

“Raven, don’t!” Bastian barked from directly behind me, grabbing my wrist.

Time slowed. I couldn’t pull my hand away. It was as if magic itself had forced me into this moment. I looked back to the king. To the fear and desperation in Grey’s green eyes. Then back to the orb, drawing me as if there were a cord attached. When time commenced, I did something I’d never meant to do. Something I’d never forget from this day until my last. I cast upon Bastian, hitting him square in the chest with a bolt of lightning before turning to close the distance between myself and the book suspended in air.

33

RAVEN

Iwaited, stunned. My fingers dug into the aged leather of the magical book as Bastian slowly rose to his feet, pinning me with a dark stare that said far more than any words might.

Letting the book drop to the ground, the whispers it hurled quieting as he stomped toward me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I don’t know what happened. It was like I couldn’t control it.”

The fire didn’t leave his eyes as his head snapped up, catching something behind me. I lunged for the book and whipped around as Bastian raised his hands to cast.