on an adventure. No, she just sat back and gave orders.” Her features tightened and her pale blue eyes flashed with temper. “Well, I don’t take orders anymore and neither should you.”
Shea’s mind tumbled with broken bits and pieces of the past. The days after that last battle with the demons had been filled with pain and torment and regrets. When together, they broke the Artifact, they had decided, all of them, to cast the spell of atonement and go out into the world, hiding the shards of black silver. Mairi hadn’t given any orders. Not that Shea remembered anyway.
“You’re not here to talk about the past, Kellyn,” Shea said. “So why not get down to what’s really brought you here?”
“You’ve no business here,” Torin thundered, gaze fixed on the woman. “Leave now and there’ll be no trouble.”
“I’m here to talk, Eternal,” she said smiling, lifting both hands as if in surrender.
Shea shouted a warning, convinced the dark-haired witch was going to use magic against them. “Torin!”
“Oh, relax!”
Torin didn’t move. He was a pillar of strength. Coiled power. “What are you doing, Kellyn? If you think to harm Shea, know that I will kill you, Awakening be damned.”
Shea’s heart swelled with pride in him. Strong, relentless, and more powerful than ever thanks to the mating, Torin would be a much more formidable opponent than Kellyn realized.
Shea rested one hand on his back, covering the branding tattoo so that he would feel the burn of her magic sliding into him.
“If I wanted her dead, Eternal,” Kellyn said with a shrug, “she’d be writhing on the ground at your feet.”
The easy, casual way she said it did more to convince Shea than any demonstration of power would have. There was something evil about this witch. Something deadly. Dangerous. Magic flared in her eyes and shimmered around her in a dark red haze as if it were all too much for her body to contain.
Torin speared the woman with a hard glare and spoke quietly. “Shea. Go to Haven. Take the Artifact to safety.”
“That would be a mistake,” Kellyn said.
“And why’s that?”
“I’m sorry.” Kellyn glared at Torin. “Did you assume I was talking to you?”
“Fine, then,” Shea said, stepping out from behind her lover before he had a chance to let his anger explode. “Talk to me.”
“Shea-”
“No, Torin. It’s fine,” she assured him, keeping her gaze fixed on Kellyn. “She won’t hurt me.”
“You know this how?” he demanded.
“Because she needs something from me,” Shea told him, tipping her head to one side to study the woman looking at her.
“Aren’t you the perceptive one?” Kellyn’s mouth curved as she folded her arms across her chest.
“Not really,” Shea said, keeping her grip tight on the Artifact within the fire cage, since she half expected the witch to make a grab for it. “You’re not exactly subtle, Kellyn. You’ve been scrying on us for weeks. If you didn’t want something from me, you would have killed me already. Or at least you would have tried.”
“You know,” the other witch said, “I always liked you, Shea. Back in the day, we were friends.”
Somehow, Shea doubted that. This woman didn’t have friends. Only people she used.
“That was then, this is now. So what do you want?”
“To make you an offer.”
“Not interested.”
“Too scared to hear me out?” Kellyn laughed, delighted. “So, eight hundred years pass and you’re still the tentative one.”
“Nothing tentative about the word ‘no.’ You don’t know me,” Shea said, taking a step farther away from Torin. “Eight hundred years is a long time. I’m not that woman-that witch-anymore.”
She distanced herself physically from Torin so that she and the other witch were on more common ground. She didn’t know what else was coming, but she had the distinct impression that it would be decided between the two of them. No Eternal was going to be able to help her now.
This was magic to magic, witch to witch.
And Shea knew, with a sinking sensation that dropped into the pit of her stomach like a ball of ice, that her powers were no match for Kellyn’s. Even with the mating, she didn’t have the strength Kellyn did. And that thought worried her. If Kellyn wasn’t Awakened, how did she have so much magic churning inside her? Power rippled off the other witch in thick waves that were hard to miss. If Shea didn’t do something to alter the balance between them, Kellyn would win.
She glanced at Torin. Please. Just be still and let me deal with her.
No. She’s too dangerous.
This is for me to handle, Torin. Shea sent that last thought firmly, then shut her mind to him. She needed to focus on Kellyn. To prepare for whatever might come next.
“Talk him into butting out, did you?” Kellyn asked. “Good.”
Shea knew the risks in this. If Kellyn killed her with the mating incomplete… hadn’t Torin told her that their souls would die? Trepidation rose up inside her, but she pushed it down and steeled herself for what was about to happen. Too much was riding on her success to take any chances at failure. And there was only one sure way to give herself the edge she needed.
The morning air sparkled with promise. The sea crashed into the cliffs below, sounding like the heartbeat of the world-thunderous, impossible to ignore. Here, they had once traded the world’s safety for their own greed.
Now, a time for the choice was here again.
And Shea would make the only choice she could.
“Shea, don’t do this,” Torin said, his voice low and compelling.
“I have to,” she answered and snapped her fingers.
Instantly, the fire cage disappeared and the Artifact shard lay in Shea’s palm. She swayed with the fierce release of its dark power into her system. It swelled inside her, erupting with the force of a long-dormant volcano at last allowed to show the world what it was made of.
Every cell in Shea’s body eagerly drank in the energies pumping through her. As if from a distance, she heard Torin’s shout and Kellyn’s delight. But they didn’t matter. Nothing but the rich, intoxicating buzz of something more inside her mattered.
“By the moon, I envy you,” Kellyn whispered, stepping closer. “I’ve waited so long to touch it again. To feel that rush again. Let me just…”
Shea shot her a look of contempt and held up one hand to keep her at bay. “Stay where you are.”
Kellyn’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Greedy, huh?” She shrugged. “Well, who can blame you? I wouldn’t want to share it either.”
Her now black hair flying in the wind, Shea fought to hold on to who she was in the face of who she had once been. “It’s not yours to share. It’s not mine, either. It goes back to Haven. Where it belongs.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Kellyn snapped. “Do you know what you’re holding? Do you remember what it was like to command such dark forces?”
“I remember what it was like to lose control of it,” Shea told her, trembling with the battle to hold on to her soul. Her heart.
The wind kicked up, howling, swirling around the three people in the inner ward of the castle. Cold dripped from the stone walls surrounding them like the spread of frost.
Shea’s fingers tightened around the black silver and the element took a stronger grip on her as well. It whispered through her mind of glories to come. Of battles to be won. Of victory and more power than any witch had ever before claimed.
She heard it all and fought anew to retain knowledge of who and what she was.
“Think about it Shea,” Kellyn said, her voice as musical and compelling as a chant. “Think of how the world has changed in eight hundred years. Think how much more we could have now. Think of the dynasty we could build. Together. The black silver craves us as we need it. We are blood-bonded, the coven and the Artifact. Each of the other, we are pieces in a puzzle, incomplete unless joined.”
