saw two girls in front of her. One was a beautiful Black girl with deep skin and a kind smile. The girl holding out her hand had tanned skin and jet-black eyes that looked like eclipsed moons. Her hair was jet black too and fell to the middle of her back in loose waves.
“Take it,” the girl with the hypnotic dark eyes said. Noa did as she said and was hauled to her feet. She felt cold. So bone-shakingly cold. Confusion lay thick in her in mind like molasses.
Noa scanned her surroundings. There were several narrow, uncomfortable-looking beds, stone walls boxing in the room, and one tiny barred window that allowed virtually no light in.
Noa still reeked of smoke … smoke that had killed her grandma.
“No tears,” the dark-eyed girl said sternly. Noa snapped her head up as though the girl had slapped her. Noa must have shown her immediate fury in her face, as the girl smirked, showing off her breathtaking beauty. “Good. Feed that darkness. Own it.” She walked to one of the beds and slumped down to the mattress. “In this place? You’re going to need it.”
“That was how I met Priscilla,” Noa said. “Dinah was there too.” Noa’s skin had broken out into a cold sweat just recalling that night in so much depth, the haunting visions still crystal clear in her mind. “Jo, Candace, Naomi and Beth came later.” Her teeth gritted together. “They named us the Coven because of the backgrounds we came from. They were mocking us. Taunting us for not being like them, for being from differing faiths and cultures.”
“What were those backgrounds?” Diel asked, completely focused on what she was saying.
Noa sighed. “Priscilla is a Romani traveler. They took her from her family too. A gypsy, some would say. That’s what the Brethren called her, alongside ‘heretic.’”
“And Dinah?”
“Her family were from New Orleans originally. They moved to Boston when she was young. The matriarchal side of her family stemmed from a long line of voodoo queens.” Noa felt the rage on behalf of her sisters, at how they were all robbed of their families, their beliefs, traditions and practices, all because the Brethren believed them to be sinners. They thought they had the fucked-up God-given right to destroy them because their doctored scripture told them so.
“And the others?” Diel asked.
Noa shook her head. “Those are my sisters’ stories. I shouldn’t have said anything about Priscilla and Dinah. I just …” The lump moved back into her throat. She startled when Diel’s hand cupped her cheek. She closed her eyes as the warmth of his touch traveled through her body, a balm, a calming tincture. “We were all segregated from society and homeschooled. When they took us, no one noticed.”
“What did they do with your family’s bodies?” Diel asked. Noa tried her best to block out the memory of her loved ones on the ground of their sacred circle. It was a blood sacrifice no element, triple-headed goddess or horned god had ever, or would ever, ask of them.
Noa leaned into Diel’s hand. She didn’t overthink how much strength this man she had just met brought to her broken soul, how much peace the simplicity of his touch brought to her warmongering heart. “When we left … when we had escaped the Witch Finders, I researched that night. I never knew what they had done with them all.” Noa breathed deeply to stop herself from losing it. “A man had been arrested and charged with the murders.”
Diel frowned. “What man?”
Noa shrugged. “Some murderer they pinned our deaths on.”
“Our?”
“I was mentioned in the newspaper write-up. It claimed he confessed to killing me too. They never found the body, of course.” Noa closed her eyes. “They said he had stumbled upon the Samhain ritual and killed them—us—through insanity.”
“Fuckers,” Diel spat. Noa nodded. When she opened her eyes, Diel was sitting right in front of her. He searched her eyes. In that moment, she felt completely vulnerable. She felt weak.
She couldn’t tolerate feeling weak.
“I never tell anybody this. About my past,” Noa whispered, her voice trembling.
Diel was silent for a second, then said, “I’m not just anybody.”
Noa’s heart flipped in her chest. Because he wasn’t. She had known that from the minute he had held her up against the wall in the priest’s home, the collar around his neck a beacon to her darkness. Diel pulled Noa across his lap and pushed inside her. Noa’s breathing stuttered as he entered her again.