at me is not seeing to the things I’ve asked you to see to.”
No, this Beast was not simple, docile, innocent and easily led.
Jellan bowed his head and scurried off.
Marian would have smirked, but such was the direness of the situation, she could not even take enjoyment in Jellan’s subjugation.
“He, well he…” Daemon began, stroking her cheek. “Black of soul, is he.”
Marian lay still in his arms, held to his body, seated in his lap, and stared at his face for she felt something had changed about him and she’d experienced enough change from him that morn, she could take no more.
“You,” he whispered, still stroking her cheek. “I regret you. You were guided to your darkness.”
“I don’t…” She swallowed. “What do you speak of, Daemon?”
“If I did not need you for what must be done for me to succeed this time, kill the gods, claim their kingdom, I would have used you like the one in the kitchen and then put you out of your misery.”
Kill the gods?
What gods?
“Daemon,” she whispered, “what do you intend to do?”
“They created us; they cannot forsake us. They will learn this time.”
Us? she wondered.
Who was us?
“But you could have veered away from the darkness. You did not,” he murmured, studying her face. “This was your mistake.”
Oh, Gods.
“Daemon—”
“Thank you for releasing me, my witch.”
After saying that, he stood.
And when he did, Marian rolled out of his lap, onto the floor with a painful thud that forced a grunt from her before she emitted a groan.
She watched him walk out the front door into the rain.
Then her gaze fell again on the dead child.
The child he killed.
The child was, perhaps, four.
Her Beast.
The one she’d helped ascend.
Marian closed her eyes.
“By the gods,” she whispered. “What have I done?”
119
The New
The Great Coven
Silbury Henge, Argyll Forest
AIREN
In the clearing of the forest, the first flash of light came before the first of the five standing stones.
The light was crimson.
The witch Nandra of Firenze.
The next was green.
Rebecca of Wodell
Then came marine-blue.
The witch Lena of Mar-el.
The last was coral.
And there stood Melisse of the Nadirii Sisterhood.
“Why did you bring me here?” Melisse straightaway snapped, and she did this angrily. “My sisters are—”
“There is something very wrong with the veil,” Rebecca stated, openly concerned. “You must have felt it.”
“Nadirii and Airenzian ride on the revolutionaries as we speak,” Melisse returned irately. “Ophelia is lost. Of course, there’s something very wrong with the veil.”
“It is not that,” Rebecca replied.
“It cannot be the Beast,” Lena murmured, and Melisse’s body shot straight at her words. “His ascendency would be more…dramatic. Don’t you think?”
“It’s something,” Rebecca said.
“It is something,” Nandra agreed.
“I must get back to the mountain,” Melisse decreed.
“You are of the Great Coven now,” Rebecca told her quietly.
“It should be Elena, though I am glad you did not pull her here at this time, for she is needed. And I might not be at my greatest strength, but I can still string a bloody bow with an arrow and that’s needed as well.”
“It is you,” Nandra shared.
“Right. Fine,” Melisse clipped. “Now release me, I must return.”
“We must hold the ceremony,” Lena said.
“Later,” Melisse gritted.
“You are of the Great Coven now. In this time as in any time, but particularly in this time, we must be at our full strength. Thus, we must hold the ceremony.”
“Later!” Melisse shouted, turned, rushed to her standing stone, touched it…
And she was gone.
120
The Miracle
King True
One Hundred and Fifteen Miles over the Border
AIREN
They were riding east, rain streaming down, hell bent for leather in order to get as many miles under their horse’s hooves before the necessity came to allow the steeds, and the men, rest.
And the next day they would do it again.
But as they rode, True was assessing the distance they had to cover, and the days that would take, and coming to unhappy outcomes.
Unless the allied militia was thoughtful enough to give Elena time for mourning, and Elena elected to do that mourning on the side of a mountain three hundred miles away from Sky Bay— both of these unlikely—the ambush could happen in the Night Heights any day.
Thus, True was coming to terms with the fact that the best-case but entirely impossible scenario was that somehow, Cassius with five hundred soldiers, Elena with the same, could defeat twelve thousand militia, and True and Farah would meet them on their victorious return to Sky Bay.
However, what was far more likely to happen was that he would lead his men, and his wife, to the sight of a massacre,