Chapter 6

Chapter 6

" A gain."

Fey braced herself for the hit, arms raised to shield her face, feet planted in a defensive stance.

Willow was already dripping sweat, and it gave her skin an ethereal shimmer under the artificial lights of the training room. Fey knew she was pushing the younger Witch too hard, but this was the only way to be sure she could be one of them and make it as their fourth.

Lilith and Joy watched from the benches, their faces betraying nothing. Fey remembered that same masked indifference from her induction into the Queen's Blades. She hadn't appreciated back then just how hard it must have been for Joy to sit there, still as a statue, and watch.

" Again, " Fey hissed, and this time Willow complied, gnashing her teeth together and shifting her stance to deliver a solid punch aimed at Fey's right cheek. Fey blocked it easily with her forearms, and Willow snarled in frustration.

" Again! "

Grain by grain, the sand slipped from the top of the hourglass until barely a few minutes remained. Willow was exhausted, shaking, and barely able to stand, but she kept it up, kept trying to get even one good hit in. Pride might be the only thing keeping her on her feet at this point, but if pride could keep you going when nothing else did, then it could be a powerful weapon in a fight.

Willow had heart. She could fight. And she could wield her power better than any of the other recruits Fey had sparred with before. But that wasn't enough to be a Blade.

To be a Blade, you had to be merciless.

You had to be a killer.

Willow's next punch didn't even land, her fatigue getting the best of her and slowing her down. Fey saw the swing coming a mile away and only had to move a fraction of an inch to avoid it.

"Come on, you worthless little Witch, is that all you've got?"

Willow's face twisted with rage, but Fey only laughed, a harsh mocking sound.

"Tick Tock, little Witch," she taunted. "Time's almost up."

That did it. Fey saw the panic hit Willow as she twisted to check the hourglass. Sure enough, the last few bits of sand were filtering toward the bottom.

A minute left, maybe less.

Fey moved like a snake, striking out hard. She had spent the hour on her back feet, letting Willow tire herself out trying to land one good punch. But they were out of time. Her fist cracked against Willow's jaw, and the Witch fell to the ground with a scream that was equal parts pain and rage.

"Tick Tock," Fey repeated. "You better think fast if you want to live."

Fury filled Willow's face as she stared up at the Witch above her. The last grains of sand slid down the hourglass curve, racing toward the bottom.

Willow moved faster than Fey expected, throwing herself from the ground and toward…

No, not toward Fey. Toward the hourglass.

With a snarl, the young Witch snatched the hourglass from the chair before the final grains could fall and slammed it hard against the metal seat. Glass shattered, wood splintered, and Fey barely had a moment to react before Willow made her move.

Fey didn't have time to dodge the next swing, barely even had time to register the surge of energy as Willow instinctually called Earth, pulling the sand toward her and wiping it toward Fey's face. Swearing, Fey tried to cover her eyes, but the ground shifted beneath her, jostling her off balance, and?—

Bam .

When Willow's fist connected with Fey's jaw, it connected with far more power than she held in her well-toned muscles; it connected with the force of the Earth pushing her, the combined force of her power and her rage hitting Fey like a brick.

Pain exploded in Fey's face, and she hit the training mat before she had even realized that she was falling. Through a haze of white-hot agony, Fey curled onto her side and groaned, spitting blood onto the padded floor. The red was sickeningly bright and shiny against the puke green of the exercise mat.

All at once that surge of power dissipated, and through the ringing in her ears, Fey heard Willow gasp. Just like that, her rage, her power, was gone in an instant as she realized what she'd done.

"Oh, fuck!" Willow dropped to her knees next to Fey. Her face was pale. "Fuck, I am so sorry, I didn't mean to?—"

Fey held up a single hand to silence her, propping herself up on an elbow and spitting out another glob of blood onto the floor. She probed her mouth with the tip of her tongue, ignoring the new flood of pain the movement generated. Willow hadn't managed to knock out any teeth, thank the Goddess, but when Fey's tongue prodded the split in her bottom lip, she hissed.

"Now that?" Fey told her, each word sending a jolt of pain through her jaw. "That was a fucking punch , little sister. "

Willow's eyes widened, and on the other side of the training room, Joy squealed, leaping to her feet and bounding forward to scoop Willow into her arms for a hug. Lilith approached more slowly, a smile blooming with slow deliberate care on her face.

"We knew you could do it, little sister!" Joy squealed, her arms crushing little Willow to her chest. "I knew you had it in you!"

"I... I did it?" Willow asked, her voice slightly strained from the strength of Joy's embrace. "Do you… do you mean it?"

"Welcome to the family," Fey confirmed, shifting up to her knees. Smiling split her bottom lip open even further, and she could feel blood starting to drip down onto her chin, but Fey couldn't stop the grin from spreading across her face. For the first time in over a month, she felt close to being complete again. One of four.

"That was clever," Lilith said, a trace of pride sparkling in her dark hooded eyes. "Using the sand like that. Very clever."

"Fey used the chair," Joy told her excitedly, still squeezing Willow tight to her chest. "Barely even waited for the hourglass to start timing before she picked it up and bashed Alice right in her face with it. It was brilliant ."

"I really am sorry," Willow squeaked, staring down at Fey.

"Don't be," Fey reassured her, slowly coming to her feet. The training room tilted dangerously in her vision for a few seconds, but she managed to stay standing. Fey touched her jaw tenderly with the tip of her fingers and immediately regretted it when a blast of pain shot through her . Great… the little wolverine might have fractured it . "Trust me, little sister, Lilith has done much worse to me, before."

Lilith laughed. "And I'll do worse to you again."

"We need warriors who will act on that instinct," Fey added. "We need warriors who can harness their power in unexpected ways. You did exactly what you needed to do, exactly what the Crown will need you to do when on an assignation."

Joy squealed again, and Willow giggled helplessly against her, caught up in her boundless enthusiasm. Joy was infectious. When she smiled, the whole world felt it and smiled alongside her.

Fey left them to their celebrating and made her way to the healing station in the corner of the room, where a large basin of clear filtered water waited next to their stock of healing elixirs. As the only Water Primary, it should have been Fey's job to prepare their elixirs. But Dameon knew too well to ask that of her. Healing didn't come as naturally to Fey as it did to the others in the Water Coven, and whoever he outsourced their elixir-making to did one hell of a job. Why mess with a good thing?

Pulling a cork from one of the bottles, Fey upended the entire elixir into the basin, watching as it swirled and danced, giving the water an opalescent sheen. She whispered a quick activation spell to strengthen the potency, one of the few Healing spells she had little trouble with. Fey felt her power purr to life as she drew on the water's surface. She loved that feeling, the promise of power as Water's energy filled her.

Fey was an anomaly. Before her induction, there had only ever been one Water Witch in the Queen's Blades. She had been one of the original Four, the founders of their order appointed by the First Queen herself. And even she had been a healer.

Young Witches are taught that each of the four elemental powers gifted to us by the Goddess are powerful in their own right, and no one power is greater than any of the others. Fey knew it for a lie, of course, and had recognized it as such the moment she'd had her Awakening ceremony. The elements are not equal. Of all the powers gifted to us, Fire is the strongest. In the old days before the war, a powerful Fire Primary could bring entire cities to their knees.

In the last two hundred years every member of the Queen's Guard had the gift of Fire, as either their Primary or Secondary Power. It was the element of battle, the element of death.

Water was the element of healing. Of love.

Not the way Fey used it, of course.

Fey scooped a handful of healing drought from the basin and placed it gingerly on her cheek. It was cold, near freezing, and the sudden sensation made her to suck in air through her teeth. She could feel her bones shifting back into alignment, feel the bruising under her skin stop spreading and start to recede. Her jaw clicked, and the pain disappeared completely, leaving nothing but a dull icy chill where the ache had been. Fey dipped her fingers back into the basin and ran the elixir over her bottom lip, shivering as the skin re-knit itself. It would be tender for a bit—healing elixirs were never perfect on open wounds—but she knew it should be fully healed in the next day or so if she left it alone.

Behind Fey, Joy was busy telling Willow all about what was going to happen next, her words running together with excitement. There would be a ceremony, Willow's official induction, by the Queen herself. And, of course, before that there would be a final test—an official assignation, given to her by Dameon on behalf of the Crown. One last obstacle to prove her mettle.

Fey looked back over her shoulder to smile at them .

The test wouldn't be a problem. She could tell already that Willow was the one. Not just a potential member of the Queen's Blades, but another sister. This was the family she had needed when she was a little girl, growing up in that hell. This was the family all of them needed. And little Willow, fierce and determined, bringing Fey to the floor with a combination of pride and rage, fit right into their hearts. Fey loved her already.

Willow would become one of them and she would be good, Fey knew.

No, not good—Willow would be great .

But she could never replace Alice.

It had broken something inside of them, the night Alice died. The night someone had planted enough explosives in her safe house apartment to nearly take down the building.

Alice was working alone on an assignation in the week leading up to her death. Dameon had hinted to them it had something to do with devil dust, an out-of-fashion party drug that was suddenly seeing a revival in the club scene. The Crown wanted it handled, wanted it gone, and that was their job, after all. No matter what the problem was—or more often, who the problem was—the Queen's Blades handled it. Quickly and efficiently.

And when the four of them finished a job, no one found the bodies unless they wanted them to be found.

Lilith, Joy, and Fey had been working together to take down a rogue Lesser Demon on the outskirts of the city, one that had already left two young Witches dead. Alice told them she could handle her assignation on her own, without their help. Fey believed her, of course. They had always believed her.

And they kept believing her right up until her apartment in their safe house exploded and she was wiped from the face of the earth in one horrible moment of fire and pain.

Dameon had been the one to break the news to them, but in truth, they'd known the moment it happened. The four of them were linked, so close that each of the remaining three had felt her sudden absence like the loss of a limb. Fey knew she'd remember that moment until the day she'd die—the tightness in her chest, and the sudden feeling like something had been ripped out of her, leaving a hollow void where there had once been light. She'd heard Joy's scream and felt the loss and devastation coming off her like a wave. And they'd known. Known Alice was gone.

Alice wasn't even supposed to be at her apartment that night. When they're on the job it is protocol to return to the palace, to their connected rooms. There's safety in numbers, in staying hidden and together. That was protocol, and Alice was a stickler for protocol.

But she hadn't come back to the palace that night. She'd gone to one of their shared safe houses in the city, her favorite little apartment, the one with the veranda and all her plants. The one they all thought of as hers . Alice had broken protocol, and in doing so she'd gotten herself killed.

She left behind nothing, no clues about her investigation, no evidence to point them toward her murderer. Just a gaping hole in their chests where she'd once been. A hole Fey wasn't sure could ever really be filled.