Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
“Yeah.” Again she drank and nodded. “Thanks to you.”
“Me?” I didn’t know what I had done.
“Yes, you, using higher magics with not a single clue!” she scoffed at me. “You did something in Montréal. I don’t know what. It wasn’t as major as what you did here. But it was big enough that some in the coven felt it. It was like static shock in the air. And you leave bread crumbs with that type of magic. They left me to figure out who did it and where.”
“And while they were searching, you escaped the coven by yourself?” They didn’t leave one person to guard her?
“Don’t give me that look,” she sneered. “I may seem pitiful now, but I am—was—part of Simone Ward’s circle, the ninth circle.”
I shrugged. “And that means?”
She sighed deeply as she chewed. “God, you really know nothing!”
“As if I haven’t been trying to tell you that all along!” I snapped back at her.
“Depending on the size of a coven, the circles are numbered,” Arsiein said to me. “The honor of ninth circle is given to the nine strongest witches in the coven. They are nine of nine. As you know, that number is important to witches. They believe eight is the symbol of vampires as it is the sign of the never-ending, while ten is the sign of perfection, which none can reach.”
I did not know that, but I didn’t want to expose my ignorance any further.
“See, even the vampires know,” Adelaide scoffed at me.
“You do realize I am a vampire, too, right?” Why was I getting an attitude?
She ignored me and looked back at Arsiein. “Exactly. I am part of the nine of nine. The witches they left to guard me couldn’t stop me, even bound. I escaped. I hid and tried to heal as much as I could.”
“Were you healing in the tree?” I asked, remembering.
She nodded. “All things have energy and life, so I took from whatever I could, either to heal myself or travel.”
“What does that mean?” Arsiein asked her. “If you had to run, you wouldn’t have been able to get documents to fly here. How did you leave America and enter so close to our lands undetected?”
She bent over to eat, not answering his question. But we all just stared at her.
“You do realize we can outwait you, correct?” Arsiein replied.
“I answered your question. I took energy from nature to cast spells or heal myself until I got here. Though holding on to Jason is weighing most of everything else down.”
“Yes, I heard you, but you didn’t say when? You felt her magic, but she hasn’t used magic in days. So were you hiding here for days? Or did you arrive only yesterday?” I wouldn’t have thought Arsiein would be the interrogator.
Adelaide licked the syrup from the corner of her lip and shrugged. “I am injured and frantically using magic. I don’t know what date it is or when I arrived here exactly.”
That was a lie. Her heart rate had shifted slightly, and if I heard it, so had Arsiein.
“Strange,” Atarah mused and clapped her hands together before her mate could say anything more. “Oh, well, you are here. Now, what to do about your Jason. Druella, what do you think?”
I looked at her, and I wanted to shrug. I felt nothing more than a bystander in a story that supposedly was about me. Everyone was talking about things and revealing things that were apparently worth war or torturing people over. Meanwhile, I just wanted to get this all over with so I could lay next to Theseus.
This was a mystery I didn’t want to solve, but I knew I had to because I wouldn’t be able to escape it. I felt that itch within me again, the one that wanted to pick up and run.
“Druella?” Atarah asked, worried. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, sorry,” I said quickly, pushing the curls from my face. “You all decide what you want me to do. I’ll do whatever.”
“Is it the vampire in you that makes you selfish, or is this who you really are?” Adelaide questioned.
I turned back to her, my eyes narrowing as I was now pissed. “I notice you keep talking to me as if I’m below you in some way? Or I owe you something.”
“Jason’s life—”
“I don’t owe you that!” I interrupted as I stood up. “Binding your magic? Attacking your coven? I don’t remember, so I will not feel guilty. We are not friends—”
“But we are,” she cut me off as she put down the food that was in her hands. “I do not remember, either. But we are friends. Sisters by coven, bound in the same circle.”
“Just because your cat tells you that doesn’t mean it’s true! If you don’t remember, and I don’t remember, then none of it counts. Especially now that I am a vampire and no longer a witch.”