Chapter 34

34

“Have you accepted your seat?” Ty asked as I sat on my purple beanbag across the low table from him.

“Getting there,” I replied honestly.

He dipped his head, and his deep voice was warm. “I am glad. We continue with the staves. What do you recall from our last session?”

I’d recalled very little, so I’d read a book on the subject before bed last night so as not to waste Ty’s time.

I rattled off a summary of the last staves we’d gone through, then went through the remainder of the twenty staves after, adding bits and pieces of questions and theories I’d formed along the way as to how they might interact.

Ty was smiling by the end. “You are opening to your divination magic, High Esteemed. This is nice to see.”

“Thank you, sir.” His smile had made me realize how few others were smiling in the divination center. “What’s up with everyone today?”

There was a tension I hadn’t noticed. Even the centering circle on the other side wasn’t a hum of peace and love like usual. Corey was looking my way.

Shit. Something was up.

Have you heard anything amiss today? I asked Wild.

His response was sluggish. No, my love.

Crap, he’d been resting. Sorry, go back to sleep. Probably nothing.

I cut Ty a glance. “Have you heard anything?”

“Just foolish rumors, High Esteemed,” he answered after a beat, lowering his voice. “I would be sorry to repeat them.”

Like many of my other friends, Ty didn’t want to put more on my shoulders. I smiled at him. “I know you would be. And I thank you for that. Even still, I do need to know if something is affecting the coven.”

“We know who’s affecting the coven,” he answered.

Frond. I waited.

Ty sighed. “There are rumors that your blood is black. That was the start. Then rumors of black smoke started to circulate. There was a fight with Corentin a while back? I’m unsure of the details, but the ceiling was smeared with soot after. Recently, someone said they saw the same black on the battle center roof and Esteemed Advisor Astar was cleaning it up. Another close to the center earlier on is telling of words shouted in another language, and of roaring. The coven assumed you spoke the demon language because of your upbringing outside the coven. Now there’s a resurgence of the dark magic rumors and there are some questioning your runes again, despite what is clear to the vast majority of us.”

I peered around. The vast majority in here appeared to be giving some room to the rumors. Divination affinities weren’t my biggest fans, if I had to generalize an entire affinity. They didn’t like that I was doing things our ancestors never did. They wanted to exist as we always had, and I valued that part within them that sought to uphold traditions. In part. “I do not practice dark magic.”

“No, High Esteemed. Like I said, I’m sorry to repeat such foolish rumors.”

Misguided rumor, but not foolish. They’d returned to the secret that could be the end of my leadership. They’d just labelled it wrong.

The label they needed was demon magic.

“Shall we focus on something productive?” the divination mentor asked, gesturing to the staves.

I nodded. “Let’s do that. Where do we go from here?”

“We practice interpreting a reading of the staves.”

Finally the exciting part, though… “I’m scared of what they may say.”

He didn’t laugh off my worry. “Readings should be undertaken with great respect of the knowledge they may impart. You should know that the future isn’t set, however. Some choose to look at a reading that way—as a fate that may be cheated if they should wish.”

“How easy is that?”

Ty gathered up the staves. “Not impossible.”

I took that to mean nearly impossible. “I can direct the staves, right? I could ask them what I’m having for dinner.”

“You could, though the staves are better applied to a collision of nature and person.”

Of course. “So asking a question about the coven would be better?”

“It is the perfect tool to ask questions of a magus, as we are a species closely linked to nature. Luthers would give strong readings with their connection to nature as well.”

I racked my brain. “Why don’t we ask the staves about my seat and whether I’ll accept it?”

“If you wish to know the answer,” he said.

I did, actually. I felt I already knew the answer. “Yes, let’s do that.”

Ty passed over the pouch containing the carved staves. I took them, and he said, “Open your affinity.”

Divination magic poured through me in a wave that I’d never experienced. The flood stole my breath, and I was left staring at Ty in the wake. “That’s new.”

“Since the mating?”

“Must be.” That was the first time the affinity had even responded with the same enthusiasm as my other affinities. “It’s happier.” I soaked in the sensation for a while longer, then straightened on the beanbag. “Okay, what’s next?”

“Focus on your intent—the question you wish to answer. Direct your intent and magic into the staves.”

Will I accept the authority? I directed magic into the staves, picturing each of the twenty small pieces of wood within the leather pouch. Will I accept the authority?

“Open the pouch,” Ty directed. “Push more magic into the staves until you recognize the moment is here to find your answer.”

I pulsed divination magic into the pouch, loosening the tie. My eyes were closed, and I poured more and more magic into the staves. When I was nearly ready to crack an eyelid and ask if I was doing this thing wrong, I felt a switch.

A vibrating hum filled my ears. My fingertips warmed. A heat built in the pouch in my hands.

The answer wanted out.

I held my magic and intent steady—something I knew from practice in my other infinities. Then I scattered the staves.

Ty gasped.

I pulled back my magic and opened my eyes.

The twenty staves were smoldering and smoking. A sigh escaped me. They’d also turned black and twisted. Fuck. “Here I was thinking that I may just need to add a cushion to it.”

Ty was horrified as he gaped at the staves.

“What does it mean?” I dared to ask. I could hardly not. The magus pretending not to watch before were craning to see the charred remains.

Though I already understood what happened somehow. My fate can’t be contained in these staves. The sudden thought belonged to my demon. I wavered on my beanbag, shaking my head a few times. My demon uncurled from my chest to stretch throughout my body.

I gasped as my head and mind squeezed,and a torrent of information and images flooded in. The information was distant and inaccessible in a strange way—like an extra wing had been built in a library, but the books could only be found as the right question or situation arose. The books in that library were filled with everything known by my demon.

We’d merged further?

The questionno sooner crossed my mind than the answer arrived from my new library. We’d merged after the conversation with Spyne—the conversation where I’d realized that who and what I was had nothing to do with my fears of the coven’s future. The one where I’d relieved myself of the guilt plaguing me since discovering what I was.

My breaths came quick.

“High Esteemed?”

I blinked across at the divination mentor. Twenty charred staves smoked on the table before me. Ty was torn between concern, horror, and shock. Whispers filled the center.

What a time to assimilate more deeply with my demon.

I tried to get a grip. “Sir, what does it mean?”

“Darkness,” Ty whispered.

He had a deep voice that carried, and I appreciated that he’d attempted to quieten it on my behalf. The closest to us still overheard, and his earlier gasp was replicated and spread through the center.

The mentor lowered his voice further. “The staves do not accept your nature.”

“My gut tells me that the staves can’t hold my fate,” I answered as calmly as possible.

I’d perhaps really, really reinforced the dark magic vibe just now. Fuck.

Ty was shaking his head.

“High Esteemed?” Corey interrupted. “You’re needed in the advisory chamber.”

I glanced up. I wasn’t needed anywhere. Corey was doing me a solid.

Rising, I glanced at Ty, then banished the staves. “I’ll think on your words, sir. Thank you for the lesson.”

What else was a gal to say when her insides were just put on display?

I kept my steps measured and my head held high as I left beside Corentin.

We entered the tunnel, and he portaled us to my chamber.

Wild jerked upright. “What is it?”

Corey’s hands gripped my upper arms. “Fuck.”

“Fuck,” I replied.

Wild was up, clad in sweatpants and totally disorientated. “What’s fuck?”

Corey answered, “There’s a group of young magus who are adamant they saw Rooke pull black blood out of Tempest. They’re talking about black smoke, dark magic, and then Tempest went and reduced her Ogham Staves to a black, smoking mess in the divination center just now.”

Rooke burst into the room. “We have a problem.”

She slammed the door behind her. “I just got baled up in apothecary by some proven. They wanted to know if your blood is black. I know you wanted to set a trap for Frond’s group, but I had to show them the old vial of blood to calm them down. Except one of them saw some of my notes on your blood before I banished them. They want to know why your blood is important.”

I sat on the bed. “It begins.”

A curious amusement found me. A relief.

I laughed.

Sven burst into the room. “We—” He glanced around. “You know.” He peered my way. “Is she broken?”

Corey nodded.

Rooke sat on the bed next to me. “What now?”

“It’s in the hands of the Mother,” I replied, then stood. “I have a training session to get to. Wild?”

“We need to leave,” he told me.

I shook my head. “No. We won’t abandon our home.”

“Our home is about to collapse,” he answered.

Then it would crush us alongside everyone else. I had no power in what lay ahead. I didn’t want it. I wanted those around me to choose. Perhaps that was idiotic with the demonic magic plaguing and dividing us.

But that was all I could do by refusing to run with Wild.

We must trust in the Mother.

I can’t trust anyone else when it comes to you, he told me. It’s impossible for me.

What about me? I asked him.

Yes, he reluctantly replied. I trust you with us.

Then trust me when I say that the Mother has guided us this far, and that nothing we’ve gone through has been easy. We will overcome this.

And if the coven can’t overcome themselves?

Then we won’t have to leave, I told him. We’ll be marched out.

Wild pulled me up and into his arms. “I want to be so angry at them for treating you this way. I can’t promise to act in the way you wish me to.”

“I don’t want you to act in any way other than what your instincts tell you,” I said up to him. “You think the way you do, and I think the way I do, and both are necessary.”

I peered around the others, who had been silent through our exchange. “We go about our days. Please pass the word to Huxley also, and Varden. When the moment comes, none of you are to interfere. This is between me and the coven.”

Wild may be part of me now, but ultimately it came down to leader and coven, to demon and magus.

Rooke wiped her face. “They’re acting like they don’t know you.”

I smiled, then walked to the door. “They don’t, really. I never gave them the chance.”