16. Cleaving

sixteen

“Just a little longer,” Lou mumbled as she positioned herself behind Milla, so low she almost missed it. “This next bit is up to you.”

“What—” Nails pinched her shoulder. Milla hissed, eyes darting to where Natje leaned against the bookshelf and landing on Darkly instead. He stood beside the advoccultant, hands in his pockets and back against the shelf, his body too stiff for the pose to be casual. The green eyes were back, his face a storm cloud as he glared over Milla’s head. At Lou.

“Not that any of us expect the answer to be ‘no,’ Ludmilla, but do you require assistance recalling the events of the day?” Dina asked, already bored. Milla shook her head. “Blessed be.” She gestured to Lou. “Ready when you are, Agent Simmons.”

Lou pressed her fingertips against Milla’s head and dropped into her Way, the faint Irish of her allure trickling into Milla’s ears like cold honey. There was a rush of warmth across her scalp; her skin tingled, and then that warmth bled deeper, dribbling around Milla’s mind in a suffocating embrace. Her presence felt like the brush of a feather against her thoughts, a tickling, aggravatingly soft sensation deep in the recesses of her mind where no nails could scratch.

Heat flared in her veins as the intruding magick itched beneath her skull. Milla sat on her hands to keep from scratching her arms and closed her eyes to avoid looking at Darkly, hating how he had tolerated this with a detached calm, as if he didn’t feel his sister’s creeping presence like a testing poison in his mind.

She gritted her teeth and pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth to keep from crying out. Lou grunted, a tiny sound, almost a whimper, and then her presence retreated.

“Are you alright?” Maddox asked.

“I can’t—” Lou started, then drifted back among Milla’s memories. Searching and searching and searching and unable to grab hold of any of it. “How are you—”

Milla felt the Lou’s Way slip and fumble. Her touch grew more aggressive, more demanding, and the tell-tale prickles of a migraine began behind Milla’s eyes. She hissed, pressing her palms against the pain in her temples. Lou’s presence grew weighted, the warmth rising to boiling in Milla’s head. Someone panted, tight, pitched breaths that had to be doing more to raise their panic than calm them down. Lou pressed harder, and whoever was panting gave a low, pained groan.

“Objection!” yelled Natje.

“For Horned God’s sake, this is not a trial,” Dina clapped back. “Are you really objecting to your own client’s testimony?”

“This isn’t a testimony; this is torture.”

And that’s when Milla realized she was the someone groaning, held to the chair by Lou’s clawing grip on her head, in her mind. Her migraine throbbed, one wicked pulse, and bile rose in her throat. She hiccuped and slammed a hand over her mouth, frantically searching the room for a trash can. Arctic cold crashed against her chest and neck, crawling up Milla’s cheeks and into her hair. The room went pitch-black even as the ache in her skull was soothed by the chill of a shadowblind.

“No.” Milla hunched over her knees and buried her face in her hands. She didn’t want his help, didn’t want to need his help, didn’t want to be cut off from the room and the witches in it, drowned in the dark. But here he was, throwing his Shades at Milla as easily as he threw her under the bus. “Please,” she gasped.

“ Five things, Milla ,” a voice whispered, and the dark receded, revealing the room and a furious Darkly, his face parchment pale except for two angry red blotches on his cheeks and black eyes raging at Lou. Shadow swirled and curled in on itself, settling in Milla’s lap like a cat.

Her shoulders shook, every muscle in her body taut to the point of trembling. She fixed her eyes on her knees to keep from seeking out that voice, gripping the seat of her chair and digging her fingernails into the wood until they threatened to bend back. She couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t gain control of herself, and oh Goddess , it was still there. Puddled in her lap without touching her at all, and that voice .

“ Five things you can see. ”

“She’s—” Lou rushed around the chair, filling the space in front of Milla. There, right there. A real witch. One she could reach out and touch with a face she could see. It took every ounce of effort to raise her head, to see Lou and register that her eyes were wide and terrified. Her mouth opened and closed, trying to form coherent words.

“Agent Simmons?” Constance called out. “What’s happened?”

Lou looked at the Elder Witch, ran a trembling hand over her perfectly smooth hair, and spoke. “I am unable to pull a Projection from the guilty.”

“And why is that?” Dina demanded.

“Because”—she cocked her head at Milla, mystified—“she’s already been cleaved.”

Maddox jumped away from Milla, joining Natje and Darkly against the bookshelf, and Dina dropped her head, massaging her temples.

“Horned God, this is a bloody PR nightmare.”

“What does that mean?” Rhett stormed up to the desk. From where she sat, Milla had a fine vantage of the sweat sticking his shirt to his back.

“It means that all Soul-bound memory of the witch in question is inadmissible as testimony,” Natje answered.

“B-but—” he sputtered. “She dusted that desecrant, and we don’t have any answers!”

“This is ridiculous.” Dina pointed at Milla. “You, witchling, when were you cleaved?”

“How in the nine rings would I know?” Milla answered.

“I don’t think any witch would know when they’d been cleaved,” said Constance. “No one has ever survived a cleaving, much less been able to answer the question as to how.”

“So ask her and find out,” Rhett pressed. “You’re the Third Head of the Tribunal. Call a vinefica up with some veritas brew and make her talk.”

“And what would that resolve?” Lou asked. “Her Soul-bound memory is irretrievable, and even if I could grab hold, her apparent cleaving renders it inadmissible. Short of gathering the shorn pieces of her, we are treading into the unknown, the Forbidden, and the Foule.” Rhett blanched, leaning away from Lou. “Interested in a cleaving of your own?”

“N-no, ma’am.” He scurried away, whisking the pocket square free to pat his brow.

“How do we proceed?” Constance laced her fingers under her chin, regarding Milla sharply.

“You could acquit her,” Natje suggested.

“Not a trial,” muttered Maddox.

Natje smiled dotingly at them and continued. “The testimony of several witnesses shows that the guilty acted in self-defense, utilizing a Fine and Faire application of a chronomatic hex. Ms. Probuditna is guilty under suspicion of utilizing magick Forbidden and Foule in the destruction of a desecrant creature, and the evidence shows that my client is innocent of the charges levied against her. By Rite of Invocation and Manipulation of the Ways, my client is entitled to an acquittal.”

“So it’s clear,” said Constance, “no cleaving.”

“It’s not as though we can exact a punishment the witch in question has already suffered.” Dina mused. “Proven innocent by dint of not drowning. Just like the old days.” She hit Milla with a hard stare, eyes flitting over her form. A frown pursed her lips, her eyes narrowed in thought, and then she slapped the desk. “C.R.O.W. is satisfied. The witch did not perform magick outside of regulation, and she has already suffered a cleaving. The problem now is the optics of it all.”

Lou cleared her throat, drawing the attention of the room. “If the Tribunal is willing, I believe I have a solution that would satisfy C.R.O.W.”

“Oh?”

“As you know, Third Head, my field partner, the younger Agent Simmons, is a Dark Witch.” Darkly surged from the wall with a snarl, halting midstep when Lou threw out her hand. Across the room, Rhett whimpered, earning a glare from Constance. “His record in the field is sterling, and, barring the events in St. Augustine, he has yet to fail an assignment.”

“Lou, no,” Darkly snapped. She shot him a quick look, lips pursing in response, and Dina cut her off.

“What about the Harlingen Incident?” Her shrewd gaze leveled on Darkly, and she poked the air as she asked, “Weren’t you benched after a run-in with a lorelei?”

Milla whipped her head around, along with half the room, to see Darkly’s already gloomy expression darken further. He dropped his eyes to the floor, his lip twitched, and when he looked up, the cold, stony mask was firmly back in place. “The desecrant I hunted was destroyed.”

“But weren’t you benched?”

“Hospitalized,” he answered through clenched teeth. When his lip twitched again, the mask cracked, and Milla saw the tic for what it truly was: pain. “And placed on probation.”

He had never told her what landed him in the hospital, only that he’d been placed into a coma, which explained why he wasn’t managing the Shades when Milla and Ezra attempted their ritual. But he had mentioned an incident in the Netherlands and that when he’d woken, the Shades warned him there was someone at the Gates.

Someone Milla had left there.

This additional knowledge added a piece to the puzzle Milla had been trying to assemble for years, sending a chill racing down her spine. Darkly had been injured in the field and placed into a coma. At the same time, Milla and Ezra had been told everything was ready, which begged the question: was Darkly’s injury truly an accident? Or had he been caught in the same manipulative web as Milla?

She scanned the room and the witches in it, seeking the weaknesses in the facade. Lou, Dina, Constance, Natje. Powerful witches at the top of their respective fields, and none of them had been surprised to learn Darkly was a Dark Witch.

Images of that night in New Orleans flickered through her mind. Masked witches in a decadent hall embracing and welcoming Milla as one of their own, their identities hidden behind masks and a drunken haze from the alcohol continually placed in her hand.

She couldn’t trust the memory. So much had happened so fast, and Milla had run, hiding away in that apartment, in Czechia, and finally in St. Augustine, where Darkly had found her. Darkly, who had lied to her and betrayed her and was somehow the only witch in this room she knew without a doubt had not been there that night.

And his absence had made it all possible.

She bit the inside of her cheek, silently willing him to say more. To help her understand why he’d betrayed her and turned her in to C.R.O.W. because none of this made sense. Not his memories with its curious blanks, not her cleaving, not this mockery of a trial that wasn’t a trial.

“My brother suffered a fall in executing his task,” Lou cut in. “Injuries in the field cannot be held against the agent, especially when sustained in completing an assignment.”

“Too true.” Dina clicked her tongue and shook her head. “Dreadful injury it was. The First Head and I were rooting for you, Keir.”

“Thank you, Third Head.” His reply was quiet. Restrained and unsettling. Perhaps it was the familiarity between Lou and the Third Head; more likely, it was that she’d just admitted another member of the Tribunal was aware of Darkly, his role, and his Way.

But then there was that twitch of his lip. The tiny little tic she recognized as a wince he was trying to hide.

Natje clapped her hand on Milla’s shoulder, jarring her from her thoughts. Her grip was tight, a warning as if the Nachthexe were aware of the direction her mind had run. A crescent of moonlight glowed in her eyes, and she tipped her head forward with a whispered, “Shh.”

At that, Milla saw the room for what it was: an elaborate performance in which only half the actors knew the script. Her attention swerved to Dina at ease in her chair, nudging this not-trial in her desired direction, and then her eyes found Darkly.

His lip twitched, one eye half winking closed in a tiny wince. A flutter of confusion danced across his face and he looked away.

Which—what in the nine rings did he have to be confused about? All of this was his fault, and it wasn’t like he was on trial. He’d been allowed to live and practice his Way. Been allowed to become an Enforcer while Milla had been hidden like a dirty secret and manipulated by witches using her Way to achieve their aims when all she had wanted, all she had dreamt of being was an Enforcer like him.

Heat flared again in her arms and spread across her breastbone. A noxious mixture of Waybound magick and rage. The unfairness of it all, the hypocrisy. Raise a Dark Witch and use him as a tool while condemning a Death Witch for merely existing.

“I will fix this,” he had promised, but he was a liar—he had been from that very first day. Darkly couldn’t fix this, not when the system was inherently broken and biased against her. He could make all the promises he wanted, but in the end, he was a conniving, controlling little witch. Even if he managed the unthinkable by lying to C.R.O.W. to get her out of the mess he had caused, she refused to bend in her anger.

“I think I see where Agent Simmons is going with this,” said Dina. She leaned closer to Constance. “Keir was initially mentored by his sister,” she told the Elder Witch. “It was at her pestering—”

“Requesting,” said Lou.

“Pestering,” Dina smiled at her fondly, “that we agreed to the initial trial run.”

“A trial run that has run for what?” Constance eyed Darkly. “Twenty years?”

“Nothing so egregious,” said Dina. “Agent Simmons trained as an Enforcer with the coven at Grim Ness, and has served as an Enforcer for, what has it been, love? Eight years? Nine?”

“Ten,” Darkly rasped. “Ten years.”

“There, you see?” Dina wagged her finger at him. “A decade we’ve had a witch with a Way Forbidden and Foule serving as an Enforcer. And not just any Enforcer, one of the highest rated and regarded in his field.” She pursed her lips and frowned at Darkly the way someone frowns at a dog who just shat the carpet. “Minus the Harlingen Incident, of course.”

“Horned God, Dina.” Constance looked from the Third Head to Milla, to Lou, and back. “Are you suggesting that we—”

“I’m only offering backstory. Agent Simmons is the one making the suggestion.”

“It’s unheard of!”

“Quite the contrary,” Natje replied, “and the living proof is haunting the corner of this office.”

At that, every witch’s attention landed on Darkly. Shadow seethed from his shoulders and billowed at his feet, and a very angry, very black-eyed glare shot over Milla’s head.

A heavy beat of silence followed before Constance exhaled and addressed Lou. “What exactly are you proposing, Agent Simmons?”

“I—”

“Lou,” Darkly barked, his voice a thunderclap. In an instant, Milla was back beneath the barrier ward, barefoot in her bathing suit, as the Dark Witch and the Light Witch argued. Only this time, Lou did not beg her brother to stand down. She simply threw up two fingers, gesturing for her brother to remain quiet while the grown-ups talked.

“I propose that you assign Ludmilla Probuditna to my team as a Junior Enforcer, call it probationary if you must. It would be a similar arrangement to the one we made so long ago with my brother and a responsibility for which I have proven myself more than capable.”

“Luminescence,” he warned again. “We talked about this.” Milla felt a tendril of night circling her leg like a manacle waiting to be snapped closed. She lifted her feet from the floor and hooked them around the legs of her chair. Darkly let out a soft, broken sigh, and she glanced back, immediately wishing she hadn’t.

His mask cracked, black eyes lightening enough for her to catch the rim of his iris. Enough for the hurt to show, and then it was gone again, buried beneath the anger of the Shade.

“The way I see it, this solves your PR problem,” Lou continued. “Harlingen and St. Augustine aside, my brother is a testament to not only the firm hand of C.R.O.W. but the importance of regulation among our ranks.”

“The proposition has merit,” Dina mused.

Rhett scoffed and spat bitterly, “I can’t believe you’re even considering—”

“ Master Marchand. ” Constance boomed, slapping her hand against the desk. The sharp sound ricocheted off the walls along with her voice. Milla jumped, and the Banker’s Box slid out of her lap, papers scattering across the floor. “Leave.”

“Elder Witch,” he protested, “I—”

“You heard me,” Constance hollered. “Leave, or I will have you removed from this room and your post.”

The younger witch huffed, but a moment later the door of Constance’s office slammed closed. She dropped her head into the crook of her hand, taking a few deep breaths, and then added, “You as well, Maddox.”

“Ma’am?”

Constance raised her head, looking closer to her true age than the vague fifty-something Milla had known for nearly two decades. “Thank you for your assistance; I know you must be exhausted, so please, take a break. Nine rings, take the rest of the day off.” Maddox edged away from the desk, hesitating behind Milla’s chair. “Grab something to eat before you leave, hm?” Constance added. “Tell the kitchen witches in the commissary to charge it to my account.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Maddox rushed away, closing the door far quieter than Rhett had.

Another tense silence spread over the remaining witches, broken by Dina’s chuckle.

“Well played, Connie.” She patted Constance on the shoulder, a slick smile brightening her expression. “I wondered when you’d send them off.”

“Goddess, with any luck, Rhett is already fuming in the secretary pit.” She rubbed her temple and grinned at Milla. “I hope you’re ready, girl.”

“Ready for what?”

“For the big leagues,” Constance answered. “We’re trying to soft launch a Death Witch, a certain amount of finesse is required.”

Milla’s mouth fell open, the anger and rage that had been simmering beneath her skin cooling by an uneasy degree, and she said the only thing she could.

“What.”