like the Proctors and the Bishops—”
“Like from the Salem Witch Trials?”
“Not a coincidence, either. But that’s a story for another day. The Proctors have always been leaders. Steady righteous witches with a passion to protect…the Bishops, well, they’ve always had the most raw power. Some are calm. Others are fierce warriors.” She chuckled. “The Proctors were your friends, your confidants. The ones you could lean on. Whereas the Bishops were the bodyguards.”
I frowned. “And the Lancasters?”
“The Lancasters are the keepers of the light,” she said softly.
I gasped. That was what the angel had said to me inside the painting. A chill slid down my spine.
“The Lancasters were the compass guiding our species to stay on the path of Heaven.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it. I wasn’t even sure what to say to that… or to anything else.
“Tell her about The Coven, Millie Anne,” granny said with a smile.
“The Coven…weren’t they, I mean aren’t they, the leaders of the witches? Isn’t that what you told me?” I scratched the back of my head, trying to force the stories back into my mind.
Mum walked over to the middle painting that showed a man sitting on a large golden throne with a strange sort of horned crown on his head. This painting barely moved. The man sat tall and rigid, yet the air seemed to pulse around him. Lightning flashed between his fingers and his body seemed to glow.
“Tarot cards you find nowadays are based off of The Coven. Humans simply never realized where they got the idea. Well, there are twenty-two major arcana cards. Each Coven member is Marked with the Roman numeral that coincides with a Card. Like Emperor. Like him.” She pointed to the man in the painting – to his left forearm where the Roman numeral IV was tattooed into his skin. “This was the first Lancaster who was Marked Emperor. And this painting is from his Coven Leader ceremony.”
“The Coven,” granny said with a bit of awe in her voice. “There are twenty-two members, two of whom are elected as Coven Leaders. One woman, one male. Those two rule over the species, technically, though really the entire Coven is in charge.”
My head hurt. This was too much. Too much to process.
“You look like you have a question.”
I looked up to my grandmother and frowned. “Well, I mean, I understand the witch thing. I get where we originated from – I’m in a history fellowship at All Souls, for God’s sake. That part I understand. I just…you’re telling me that I’m a witch. We’re all witches. That we have magic, that we’re these keepers of light. Yet I’m twenty-two years old, how do I just have magic now? Why did it suddenly burst out this morning and scare the shit out of me?”
Granny’s eyes saddened. She looked up to my mother. “Mille Anne?”
But mum just shook her head. She spun away and strolled over to the third painting on the wall, the one depicting a horrific brutal war. I’d purposely not looked at it earlier. The people were thick in battle and I hadn’t wanted to see it. Dust and dirt kicked up in the air. Blood splashed in arches. Swords and silver body armor glistened in a hazy sunlight. Mum hated that painting. She always had. She never wanted to look at it or talk about it – and I’d asked about it many times as a child.
Yet now she stood in front of it like it meant something to her.
“Mum?”
She sighed and hung her head. “You tell her, Mille?”
Mille. Millie Anne. My mother was named after her. The two had always been close. Pippa and Gregory were the heads of the Lancaster family, my cousins, but my mother had been closest with my grandmother.
I glanced over to granny and found her sipping some tea. “Tell me what?”
“A story I never told you as a child. I feared it would upset you.” Granny sighed and it sounded painful. “In the year 1307 a war broke out between witches and Lilith, the mother of monsters and evil—”
“Excuse me, the Hundred Years’ War? That wasn’t—” my jaw dropped. “Bloody hell. Are you about to tell me the entire thing, the history written in books, is all rubbish?”
“Yes and no.” She poured herself another cup of tea. “Our war with Lilith started first, but it was so treacherous that it eventually triggered a war among humans thirty years later. All of the things your history books tell you are true,