to judge. Not to ridicule her. Not to write her off as crazy, delusional or a joke.
Noa’s life was no fucking joke.
“Tell me,” Diel said. The fire continued to crackle behind them. And with every hiss and pop, a new memory surged into Noa’s brain. Fire. Fire and water and air and earth and the spirit. The Triple-Headed Goddess, the Horned God. The moon and the sun. The brand on her chest throbbed as though it had been freshly seared onto her skin by Father Auguste.
“Noa.” Diel’s hard voice propelled her back from the spiral she had begun to fall into.
She met his eyes. Stayed grounded. Used them as her anchor. Her heart raced, but she remained planted to the earth by the intensity in his sapphire gaze.
Noa took a deep inhale. “I was raised by my grandmother.” Even to her own ears her voice was shaky and weak. But this was her family she was talking about. The people who raised her. The light that existed before the dark. The paradise she lived in before the fall.
Diel’s thumb stroked the back of her hand. Noa used the hypnotic motion to keep her heart steady, to keep pushing on. “My grandmother was a Wiccan priestess. She raised me from a baby.”
“Your parents?”
Noa shrugged. “They were too young when they had me, still in high school. My father moved away, never to be heard from again. My mother was a drug addict. She died of an overdose before the age of twenty. But in reality, she’d left me long before that.” Diel remained still as night as he listened. He didn’t seem shocked about her parents. Why would he be? The Brethren didn’t target people from stable and happy households. They targeted the vulnerable, the weak … people no one would notice were missing and would be forgotten once the Brethren had them in their clutches.
“My grandmother was my everything.” Noa recalled her grandma’s long, wild gray hair, the moon and sun tattoos on her arms, and the smell of essential oils that filled up the air whenever she danced by. But the memories quickly became tarnished by the coppery smell of blood, the putrid scent that came with a gruesome death.
A murder.
“People think of Wiccans—witches—as evil, as wrongdoers, people who are intent on hurting others in supernatural ways.” She shook her head. “It couldn’t be further from the truth.” Noa allowed a small smile to grace her lips as she thought of her grandma’s circle, her family coven. “They are kind people. They cherish the earth, they are about people’s happiness and good deeds. But they are different. I’ve come to know—all of my current ‘Coven’ being proof—that coming from a different background can put you in harm’s way. People don’t like the abnormal, those who push back against social norms. They don’t like those who follow their own path.”
Noa felt the air heat between them. She didn’t know if it was from the fire casting its warmth around the room, or the story she was telling. “History has bastardized the true nature of pagans, Wiccans, people who worship the earth rather than one God found in an old book. Witches were made to be the villains in fairytales—the crones, the hags, the monsters that would come for children if they misbehaved.” Her body tensed. “We all know who is responsible for that narrative. The Brethren has been around for centuries, Catholic priests by day, their true evil secret sect revealed by night. They sullied the view of pagans. They were instrumental in the witch trials, in the ruined reputation of anyone who worshipped the earth and the elements.”
Noa blinked fast as the pictures built in her brain. Her family’s circle; the dense, secluded forest; the lit fire; the songs; the drums; the white robes; the flowers; the wine; the candles …
“It was a small coven, mostly made up of vagabonds, people with no real prior home, poor people who made a family for themselves away from the ones they were born into.” Tears built in her eyes. “They raised me. And I loved each and every one of them as my own. They were harmless. They were good people. They cared for me, for each other. It was … it was a beautiful way of living …”
“But?” Diel asked, as if hearing her unspoken words hovering between them.
The vine of thorns returned, slicing into Noa’s flesh, flooding her with their poison. Its slithering length tightened around her neck. “But