“You are so young. You don’t understand the ways of the world yet, Willow. Let me guide you.”
I laughed, taking a step back. “I will never be like you. I won’t turn my back on the way magic is meant to be used the way you have.”
She let her hand drop, clasping it in front of her once again. “Without the Hecate line, the Vessels have far more power than they should. We have no way to kill them, while the witches of the Coven are very mortal. They live and they die, and as we saw with the young witch last night, they’re very capable of being murdered.”
“But what does that have to do with starving the source? What can you possibly hope to achieve by making the witches weaker?” I asked, my frustration rising as I stared at her.
“As we weaken, so do they. They feed on us. The source sustains their vessels, but they can’t access it directly. They can only touch the magic through our blood, Willow. If we no longer have that magic in our blood, then there is nothing to keep them alive,” she said, and her bones clacked together as she shifted her hands. Her jaw spread in what I thought was meant to be a smile.
“But we’ll no longer have magic,” I whispered, stumbling back a step as her words reached me, as they penetrated the haze of my anger.
“Some of us will. Vessels are forbidden from feeding on the Tribunal. They practice the old ways in secret, to keep the masses from accessing the source so efficiently. The Tribunal remains strong because they must, and when the time comes, we will bring in a new era of witches. We will make a new bargain if we must. One that does not involve those parasites who survive off our suffering,” she said, a note of wonder in her voice.
“And what happens to the rest of us when you strike that new bargain? We lose our magic?” I asked, throwing my hand to the side to gesture back to the main part of the school.
“You’ll be fine, Willow. You are part of this Tribunal even if you are not yet finished with your schooling. You, or your child, will be a part of the new age of witches,” she said, stepping forward to take my hands in hers. Her bones were rough from centuries of use, of being unprotected against the elements.
“This is why you’ve allowed your line to dwindle. All this time, you’ve known it doesn’t matter. One is enough for you, because it’s all you plan to take into your new world,” I said, the breath catching in my lungs.
“And you will continue in that tradition, giving birth to a single daughter so that you never have to know the pain of losing a child,” she said, pressing our hands forward. I shook out of her grip, flinching back when she touched the fabric of my shirt where it covered my stomach.
“I won’t have any part of this,” I whispered, taking a step away from her. “You’re going to kill them, aren’t you? Every last one of them. What is the point in educating them at all? Why bother?”
“Our people do not know these plans. If they were to discover them, all we would achieve is panic and rebellion. This school remains simply because it must,” she explained, turning and pacing around the circle. She walked around me, her stride slow and relaxed as she shifted her hands to her spine and rested them on the curve of her pelvis.
“You made a mistake telling me,” I explained, scoffing at her certainty that I wouldn’t tell everyone what I knew.
That I wouldn’t tell Gray.
We might have had a common goal in eliminating the Vessels, but I would never sacrifice an entire Coven to do it.
“You will tell no one, because you know as well as I do that the reality of this secret will tear this Coven in two. The Vessels will go to war with the witches, and we will not win. You’ll only expedite their deaths,” she said, stopping at my side. From the corner of my eye, the sun shone in the windows behind the thrones, making the dull white of her bones shine brighter. “One day, you will understand. The survival of the Coven is more important than any individual life.”
“This is not an individual life!” I yelled, snapping my head to meet her stare. “This is the life of an entire Coven. This is condemning the souls of our people to Hell because you deny them their death rite.”
Her hand shot forward, grasping me by the chin. The tips of her finger bones dug into my skin, sinking into the flesh as she held me still. Blood welled from where she cut me, dripping along my skin as I scowled at her.
“It is a sacrifice that must be made,” she warned, her voice dropping lower as it filled with magic. She thrust her arm forward, her fingers releasing me in the same moment. I was weightless for a moment, time seeming to suspend as I watched Susannah get farther and farther from me.
My body struck the stone floor, knocking the air from my lungs as I gasped. I coughed, waiting for that breath to return as I writhed on the floor in pain.
Fuck.
I rolled over, getting my hands beneath me. The vines on the Bray throne writhed in response, looking as if they wanted to interfere. To help.
But they couldn’t strike the Covenant. No magic could touch them, a gift that had been given to keep them from being struck by errant members of their Coven. Susannah’s foot snuck out from beneath her robes, her toe bones catching me in the shoulder and pushing me to my back.
I wheezed as I fought for breath, feeling as if something inside of me had been broken. Pain tore through me as she placed that foot on top of my chest, pressing me down into the stone as I glared up at her.
“You will remember your place.”
“I’ve never been very good at that,” I said, my breath a raspy gurgle as moisture filled my mouth.
She removed her foot from my chest, squatting beside me as her hand wrapped around the front of my throat. Pushing down until the pressure became too much, she stared at my mouth.
“I may need you alive, but I do not need you to be awake, Willow. You would do well to remember that the next time you think to question me,” she warned, those fingers clawing at my throat and tearing it open.
“I hope you burn,” I rasped, raising a hand to grab her wrist.
I punched her ulna and radius, taking too much joy in the way she reared back as her bone cracked. Her fingers tore across the front of my throat, threatening to do more damage than I could survive. She spread them at the last moment, seeming to realize how close she was to losing the last of her bloodline.
“Did your mother tell you of the deep sleep, Willow?” she asked, cradling her cracked bone as she stared at it in confusion. It was as if she’d never been hurt, as if none had dared to strike her. “You will live, trapped within the realm of dreams, until I decide to wake you. I suppose if Iban could get past the… distasteful aspect of breeding you while you’re unconscious, it would be a far simpler way to get you to do the one thing that is expected of you.”