By the ritual.
Snap my broomstick, had it worked?
For the first time in over a century, the ghost like paleness of a barn owl swooped across the glade, before frogs croaked out their song. Then tears did streak my cheeks because maybe I wasn’t lost, if the glade that I’d loved with Robin (and that had been murdered by my mother), could be reborn.
“I never thought that a mage could help create something so beautiful.” Fox shook, ducking his head. “But understatement of the century: something bad happened here. It screams through my magic that it murdered these trees and Magenta too. Okay, I know that I’m a brilliant kisser.” I tried to smother my laughter, especially as he lifted his finger and pointed it above my head, “And no denials, future Mrs Fox.” Well, that shut me up. Was that how men proposed nowadays? “But Hecate’s Tree should be trying to burn me, whacking me in the face, or spanking me. The Hecate statues in the bailey had a lot of fun playing Hurt the Fox.”
“What if the House of Crows are controlling the ones in the academy or this is the true Hecate?” Bask offered.
“Then what if the goddess saved Magenta and trapped her? Maybe we should touch—”
“You’re suggesting we become tree huggers?” Sleipnir’s gaze met mine with a dancing amusement.
Fox strode to the tree, encircling it with his arms. “Who’s a gorgeous hunk of wood, hmm?”
Bask sidled next to him, resting his cheek on the trunk. “You can spank him now, Hecate.”
When Sleipnir strode to join them, resting his hand against the blackened wood, I concentrated on pulsing my magic through it. He jerked, panting. Then he wrapped himself more fully around the trunk.
I shuddered like a thread was winding too tightly around me. My eyelids fluttered.
Was it working? Would I finally be saved?
Candles and broomsticks…
The glade lit with an eerie light, and my breath caught.
“I guessed that you’d have the shortest student record before being sent to my study, mage,” Damelza’s enraged voice boomed out of the shadows, “but even I didn’t imagine that it would be for violating such a sacred place.”
I shook, staring at the academy’s Principal, as she swept towards my Rebels who were still hugging the tree. Her feather coat was ruffled up in her outrage. She trampled on the newly born snowdrops. I hated both the way that she glared only at Fox like he must’ve been the corrupting influence (my mother had always thought the same about Robin), and that I felt too weak to stand.
Echo and Flair hopped in front of me protectively.
“Awkward,” Bask mock whispered.
“Why do we always get into these situations?” Sleipnir groaned.
Fox tilted his head. “Perhaps because we keep hanging around with our dicks out…?”
“Silence, Confess,” Damelza snarled. “Didn’t you think that your brands would’ve alerted me that you were outside the castle without permission? Tomorrow you’ll come to my study for punishment. I knew that the shimage criminality ran too deeply within you. I wonder if the taint can be cut out.”
“Sorry, but I’m bad to the bone,” Fox smirked.
“Let’s test that, shall we?” Damelza’s eyes glittered with malice.
She plucked a feather from her hair and shot it flying at Fox. When the feather sliced Fox’s cheek, he gasped, hugging the tree tighter. He rested his bloody cheek against it, squeezing shut his eyes in pain. His blood trickled down the grooves of the dead tree.
Bask gasped, snatching Fox to his chest and backing away, as Sleipnir stepped in front of them. Damelza stalked closer.
My eyes widened, as that winding sensation began in my middle again but more intensely this time. The tree pulsed brighter and brighter. I was fading.
Would I be freed or die?
It turned out that Hecate had demanded both love and blood. She was an ancient deity, after all, and Fox had been the lamb.
Ah, irony.
“You promised not to leave me,” Echo wept. “Promised.”
All of a sudden, my vision grayed. My stomach lurched. I faded to nothingness, and then…
The trunk of Hecate’s tree cracked open like a womb, and I slithered from its insides at Damelza’s feet.
At long last, I was reborn as a living witch.
Chapter Twelve
MAGENTA
In all the excitement of being freed from Hecate’s Tree and reborn again as a human (well, more of a witch and ghost hybrid, but it’d been the Rebel’s first ritual, these things happened), I’d forgotten how it’d felt to be alive.
How had I ever survived? My stomach growled like I’d already eaten a bear cub, a twinge of pain lanced through my lower back, and my nose itched. Plus, had my bosoms always been this big…? I jiggled them in my corset.
I would not be defeated by my own bosoms.
But then, I glanced up and caught Fox watching me with an amused expression. With a tilt of my head (because a lady must always act with grace and elegance), I gave a final wriggle, before focusing back on Damelza, who sat behind her study desk. Fox and I stood on the other side because there were no comfortable seats for chastised students, of course.
Fox and I had been called at the punishment hour of 5 a.m. to present ourselves to the Principal. I’d heard my mother summon plenty of Rebels to her like this, but it’d never happened to me before. Being a witch of the House of Crows had some perks.
Last night, I’d been assaulted by such a sudden burst of sound, smell, and touch that I’d been lost in a haze. I hadn’t even been able to talk, as someone had bundled me in warm coats and then carried me as carefully as a new-born back into the castle. I’d woken up in the morning in the middle of a tangle of Immortals, to the cawing of crows who weren’t mine and a summons to the study like I no longer deserved the protection of belonging to the House of Crows.
My nose wrinkled at the powerful aroma of garlic from the shrine to Hecate, which had been built under the narrow window. Dawn struggled to light the shadowy study. I studied my descendant, who reclined with such authority in the blood-red leather chair that would’ve been mine, if I’d married Titus. But even for a chair as spectacularly special as that, nothing was worth marrying a fae.
Damelza’s mouth turned up in a sly self-satisfied curve, although the skin underneath her eyes was purpled like she hadn’t slept at all last night.
My heart clenched at the sight of the obsidian desk that glittered like Damelza’s dress. Its top was cobbled with crow skulls. I remembered running my hands over them as a child on the few occasions that Byron had been ill, meaning that Henrietta had grudgingly allowed me to play in here as she’d worked, rather than in the Bird Turret nursery.
It hit me then, stronger even than the stink of garlic that pervaded the dark room that was stacked with books and potions, that the people I’d once loved were dead.
Of course, after a hundred years I’d known that they had to be but…being back here…it didn’t matter that I’d been granted life again.
Robin and Byron were still dead.
When my knees buckled, Fox caught my elbow. The shock of his touch tingled through me. My skin was aflame. How incredible it was that such simple contact, after so long being denied to me, could now send tears tumbling down my cheeks.