Page 25 of Warrior Witch
Despite preparing for this day my whole life, I never thought it would happen this quickly. I’m only in my sixteenth year. If it were not for Mother’s condition, I would insist on continuing my training first. Leading the coven is a sacred duty. I do not take the calling lightly, nor do I feel ready at this time, but it seems the fates have their plans. Mother does not have long left, and she wishes to induct me into the role herself, before it is too late.
It is an honor to have her support, even for a short while. I’ll covet every scrap of knowledge from her and use it to guide me as much as possible. Truthfully, I envy my mother. She had my grandmother as her advisor for twenty years. We only returned her to the earth three years ago, and the memories still pain my heart and the hearts of the many who treasured her.
I don’t know how I’ll fare when Mother succumbs. I’ll have the town elders, but none of them has truly led the coven. They’ve never had the future of the town resting on their adolescent shoulders. Verity and Royce think I can handle it, but doubt creeps into my mind and spins its twisted web. I find myself trapped in thoughts of failure, destroying the legacy of the Nightshade witches before me.
I’m haunted by dreams of the town in flames, curses consuming my people as my loved ones scream for me. They should have been safe here. I should have been able to protect them.
How can I shoulder this burden alone? Without my mother or grandmother to guide me, I’ll need people I trust. Not just the elders, but people I choose for qualities I value. If I’m to bring about an era of prosperity, I shall embrace the changes necessary to grow this coven.
After tonight, Spells Hollow will be my town. I can feel the sun setting, giving rise to the blood moon, calling me to my power and my people. I don’t feel ready for this, not at all, but I believe in the guiding hand of the land my ancestors chose.
It’s time for everything to change.
Harlow
I blew out a breath, closing the cover of Melisande’s journal and leaning back on my hands. My feet dangled over the cliff edge, the expanse of air below them a small thrill as I breathed deeply. Below me, seagulls pinwheeled over the water, calling to each other before diving into the wash of the waves over and over. Something about the sea air had the electricity that crackled in my veins feeling both stronger and slightly less wild than normal. Melisande wrote of her connection to the land, and the odd sense that I could feel the link, too, rode me hard.
Why had I been brought here?
While we explored the town the day before, I’d held my breath, waiting for… something to tell me what I had to do. The fact that twenty-four hours later I still wasn’t any closer to learning the answer was setting me on edge. An hour earlier I’d snapped at Addie for something ridiculous that had already slipped my mind and had to excuse myself to cool my head with the ocean breeze. Kylen had been a godsend since we arrived in the town, encouraging Addie to get outside and hunt for the elusive plant he’d been searching for, leaving Lindsay free to scour the house for any information that could be of use.
My mind drifted back to Melisande’s diary entry. She’d taken over the coven when she’d been sixteen, and even then, she’d known it would be destroyed. You didn’t have to travel far in Spells Hollow to spot the fire damage and decay of a broken community. The most disconcerting thing was in the first line. The blood moon heralded her change in fate. Was it a coincidence? I desperately wanted to think so, but unfortunately, magic loved its signs and preordained destinies. As much as I would have loved to play ostrich, it wouldn’t have done me any favors. Despite the warmth of the day, a cold shiver worked down my spine.
Suddenly, my position on the edge of the cliffs felt too exposed. With a glance around to ensure I was still alone out on the grass, I found my feet and decided to check in on Lindsay. Bruin had spent the morning trying to break into the other houses in town, but last I’d checked, he hadn’t had much luck. I wondered if his plan was to pillage and plunder while he was biding his time to take me out. Not that I cared about his plans outside of surviving the ones involving me dead.
That was future-Harlow’s problem, though. Present-Harlow needed to see if her bestie was going to do what he did best and save her ass.
“Honey, I’m home,” I called as I stepped into the cool interior of the house with a smirk pulling at my cheek.
“Hey, Harls, I’m upstairs. Come up here. I think you need to see this.”
“That sounds ominous.” The bottom step creaked beneath my shoe as I ascended to the first floor.
“Where are you?”
“In here.”
I followed his voice to my left and found him in a dusty room with wall-to-wall shelving and a heavy desk sitting in front of a brick fireplace. The shelves were full of books. Leather-bound volumes with gold detailing that looked hand painted.
“If you’re looking for shiny things, you should have gone looting with Bruin,” I joked, stepping up beside my bestie, who seemed focused on the book in his hand.
“What’s up?”
Lindsay shook himself, as though coming out of a trance, and cast me an indecipherable look. I furrowed my brow, waiting for him to say something, but instead of answering, he handed the book to me.
It was immediately evident that I was holding a grimoire. Even without reading what was written on the pages, I felt the shift of energy. The volume was almost too hot to touch, a fact so distracting that it took me a moment to notice I was looking at a family tree of some sort. Generations of names branched out cross the pages documenting births, marriages and deaths.
“This is pretty cool,” I said, still not sure what was making Lindsay so damn twitchy.
He hadn’t even made a joke about hitting on Bruin when I brought him up. He grunted, pointing at a name in the middle of the page.
“Donahue Torann,” I read.
Doing some quick math, I realized his birth date was three-hundred and ninety years ago. Beside his name on one side, it showed his relationship with Melisande Nightshade, on the other, his sibling, Levina. According to the tree, Melisande and Donahue had died in the same year, and the cause of death was noted as the same. Curse. Levina had survived ten years past that. She had a partner listed and children branching off beneath. A shiver ran through me. Under cause of death, she also had the word curse. Back-tracking, I confirmed that their mother had died of natural causes, and their father by gunshot, but every generation after Donahue Torann had succumbed to only one form of death.
“What does this mean?” I asked, tracing over the word as it appeared again and again on every branch of the tree down to the last entry. Harlow Davis.
“What the f—?” I jerked violently, barely avoiding dropping the book as the shock of seeing my own name on the page sank in. I’d heard of enchanted family trees like this, but never seen one. They weren’t exactly common in foster homes.