eyes slowly opened, and when she lifted her throbbing face, she saw Father Auguste right before her, eyes darkening with rage. “Witch,” he hissed. The twin priests held her arms wide, locked, as if she were tied to a cross. Noa tasted blood in her mouth. But her resolve did not break. She recalled her grandmother as the priests came for her in the forest, the strength and courage she’d possessed as she fought for Noa to get free.
And Noa felt that same strength fill her. She felt centuries of persecuted women filling her with the same boldness, the same courage that had been displayed by her people for hundreds of years. And Noa smiled. As Auguste visibly lost his grip on his anger, Noa smiled wider. She smiled because she was there, carrying the same faith as those who had been cut down before her. They died, were put through hell at the hands of the forefathers of these Brethren men, yet their treasured pagan ways remained. Witches remained against the odds, just like Noa and her sisters. Just as, Noa knew, they would survive even after Auguste had disposed of her too.
Though they might try, Noa knew then that with all the power and will in the world, the Brethren could never destroy Mother Earth herself. In the end, these misogynistic men could not break women.
Another hand across Noa’s face was her reward, then Auguste gripped her chin and pulled her face forward to hover a millimeter before his. “What’s so humorous, witch?”
“You,” Noa replied, mocking clear in her tone.
Auguste’s nails dug into her cheeks. Blood sprouted from her splitting skin. “I’m going to break you,” he promised, darkness lacing his graveled voice.
“You never will.” Noa knew those words were true. Because she knew who she was. And nothing the Brethren could do would ever take that from her.
But Auguste’s vicious grin promised Noa that he would do his very best to destroy her spirit.
With a firm nod from Auguste in the direction of the door to Perdition, the twins wrenched Noa forward. She was dragged down to the lower level and delivered into the room that had once held so much trauma for her. The place where Auguste had once tried to beat and torture the witch from her bones. The place where Noa believed he actually had, that he’d made her ashamed of her family’s bloodline.
But she had been wrong.
As her body hummed with the specters, the spirits of all the burned and drowned and hanged witches before her, Noa knew that no matter what he did, this time, she would never forget who she was.
“Tie her to the stake,” Auguste said, undoing the cuffs of his long sleeves and rolling them up to his elbows. He tied back his hair, looking like Sela’s doppelganger. The twins tied Noa to the stake that stood next to the stream that ran below the church.
Noa closed her eyes and thought of Diel. She focused on his face. On those of her grandmother, her sisters. And she was calm. She had tasted love and had given love. In the end, that was enough.
“Lower her down,” Father Auguste commanded. In seconds, Noa was lurching forward toward the rushing water, hands tied behind her back. Fear tried to push through as the water came closer, but Noa kept it at bay. Instead, she focused inward. She withdrew into herself. And even as her face met the surface of the stream, as Auguste commanded his men to dunk her further, Noa didn’t thrash. She didn’t fight. She simply surrendered herself to her end, to water, one of the elements she trusted with her whole heart.
As the cold water enveloped her head, a sense of relief rushed through her, as fast as the current rolling past her face. Beth would have gotten away by now, unseen by Brethren eyes. And soon, Diel would have his sister back. Noa’s lungs began to burn with the absence of air, every part of her body now submerged in the water. And as she felt herself begin to slip into the next phase of existence—sweet, numb death—she knew that, in the end, this was the best way to go …
For love.
Chapter 26
Diel checked the clock again. Noa was late. She was really fucking late, and he wanted her back.
“So what’s next?” Gabriel asked Dinah. The Fallen and the Coven, bar Noa and Beth, were gathered in the Nave. Diel’s head ticked, over and over again, as he