Still, any witch who did that risked almost certain death. Others would come. Others would do the same to them. Eventually, another witch would try to take from her what she took, the power that was never rightfully hers. Apparently, corrupt witches abound.
Those who did manage to hold on to the power were usually protected by a dark coven who used the magics for their own gain. The witches themselves were essentially chattel. Very well-guarded chattel with a startling lack of free will. Thus, either road led to tragedy.
It was all so new to me. Six months ago, I would’ve sworn magic wasn’t real. Witches didn’t exist. Warlocks were a myth. Admittedly, I still had a lot to learn, but I couldn’t help but wonder about the term king. And why Serinda would be addressing me as such. And how I could get her to stop immediately.
“Defiance is fine,” I told them both. “I’d rather not be addressed as royalty.”
“Defiance,” Gigi said, my turn to be admonished, “you cannot deny your heritage. Or your destiny.”
“Destiny?”
“To do so would be suicide.”
“Nobody said anything about a destiny.”
“I doubt the sorceresses called their creations king—”
“Or suicide.”
“But over time, they became known as such by those they protected. For the members of our coven, of any coven, to address you otherwise would be impudent.”
“Gigi,” I said, trying to keep the frustration from my voice, “I’ve only just come into my powers again.”
“Which is why I didn’t bring it up sooner.”
“How about I get used to them before we start throwing titles around willy-nilly?”
She pursed her elegant mouth. “Fine. But there is something we must consider. The other two charmlings—”
“You mean the faux charmlings?” None of the current-day charmlings, save me, were from the bloodline. For decades, the other two charmlings had gained their powers by stealing them. One after the other. The stolen powers were passed from witch to witch. At least, that was my understanding. So, there were two other charmlings out there, but both were murderesses and servants.
“Be that as it may,” Gigi said, “they are protected by very powerful covens and even more powerful warlocks.” The sideways glance she directed toward her best friend contained more than a hint of worry. “You are now part of our coven whether you like it or not, and the other members need to know you are to be protected at all costs. They must be prepared.”
I tugged on an ear, trying to wrap my head around it all. “I thought the whole reason for my creation was to protect you, my sister witches.”
“It was,” Serinda said, “thousands of years ago. The rules have changed.”
Gigi agreed. “You are simply too powerful, Defiance.”
“Then I should be able to protect myself.”
“That power,” Serinda explained, “is something witches and warlocks alike would do anything to get their hands on. The black arts are nothing to take lightly.”
“Once the powers are stolen from a blood heir—”
“Exactly,” I said, interrupting my grandmother. “Maybe that’s been the problem the whole time. The witches who stole them aren’t powerful enough to protect themselves, because the magics weren’t theirs to begin with.”
They exchanged perplexed glances before Gigi asked, “What do you mean, love?”
I straightened in my chair, trying to figure out how to make my point. “Maybe once the powers are stolen from a blood heir, they’re even easier for another witch, one less powerful, to steal? Because that witch was not a true charmling. And the more they’re stolen, the less powerful the witch has to be. Like, the magics become diluted. If the witch who stole the powers wasn’t terribly powerful to begin with—”
“Oh, but she would’ve been,” Serinda said. “In order to pull off something like that, she would’ve been very powerful.”
“Probably more powerful than either of us are,” Gigi agreed.
I had my doubts about that. My own mother had tried to steal my powers when I was three. She had to have gotten her powers from somewhere. Then again, I’d killed her. According to Gigi, I’d somehow known what she was doing, and I defended myself. In the process, I’d killed my own mother. That knowledge was still new. Raw. Abrasive. Thankfully, that was not a specific memory I had access to.
“In any case,” Gigi said, lifting her chin majestically, “we are your coven and you, whether you want to be or not, are of royal blood. You are sarru, and we are prepared to lay down our lives to protect you.”
I held up a hand to stop her. “I’m sorry, what?”
She drew in a deep breath. “Defiance—”
“No.” I stood and walked to the island to look through the offerings for something to do. An excuse to buy a few moments to absorb what they were saying. After deciding two sandwiches had been plenty, I turned back to them. “That is not acceptable. I didn’t sign up for anything like that.”
“I can see why you didn’t tell her,” Serinda said. “Sarru—”
“Dee. Fy. Ance.” Though I stressed each syllable, I said it softly. Lovingly. These amazing women were willing to give up their lives for me. As far as we knew, my grandmother may have done that very thing.
What if her death was all a ruse to find out my identity? Gigi had kept me hidden for over forty years. She’d somehow suppressed my powers to the point that even I didn’t know about them. Didn’t remember them. And no one else, witch or warlock, could use them to find me. The fact that she had the power to do something like that proved how strong she was. How powerful.
Serinda held her ground. “Sarru,” she said, with a soft bow of her head, “you are a charmling. You simply must get used to the idea. And you, like all charmlings, are vulnerable to the most wretched of our kind.”
I sat back down and only then realized Minerva had awakened. Her breathing wasn’t deep anymore. I spared her a quick glance. Her eyes were barely open, watching me from behind a mass of long dark hair, her brows drawn in concern. As a member of the inner circle, she had to have at least a trace amount of power herself, and I wondered exactly what she was capable of.
I turned back to the two elder women. “Odd how those who are supposed to be the most powerful witches are the most vulnerable.”
“The bigger the target,” Gigi said.
But the words that Serinda said percolated inside my brain—of royal blood—and I remembered what the beauty in my Mesopotamian vision, her ebony skin decorated with bright, iridescent paints, had drawn on the air when we met. The symbol she’d christened me with: of royal blood.
What the actual hell?
Annette rifled through her notebook. “I don’t think they always were. Targets. Then a warlock in the… oh… maybe the 1600s, figured out how to force another witch—a witch he controlled—to siphon a charmling’s magics, subsequently killing her. There’s a book…” She tore through her notebook faster as she got closer to her goal. She stopped and pointed. “Yes. An ancient text that talks about charmlings, only the author doesn’t call them that specifically. The text was translated many times, however. It could be a bad interpretation. Add to that the fact that the author wrote in riddles for fear of being labeled a heretic, and you can see the conundrum.”
Both Gigi and Serinda eased closer as Annette read from her notes.
“A book?” Gigi asked, struggling for a look at the notes. “What book?”
“Oh, let me find the title.” She thumbed back through several pages as Minerva gave up the charade and craned her neck for a peek as well. “It’s… here… somewhere. Oh, here. It’s from one of several books called Centuries by Nostradamus.”
“Nostradamus?” Serinda said, stunned.
All three women—Gigi, Serinda, and Minerva—dove in for a better look, almost knocking their heads together.
Annette frowned and eased the book closer to read. “Okay, according to this Nosferatu guy, who wrote i
n these really cryptic quatrains, three daughters born on the sands of the Tigris will know great adversity and the victories of man. No clue about the victories, but I figure he could be talking about the original charmlings.” She glanced at me. “They were Mesopotamian in your vision, right, Deph?”
I nodded and couldn’t help but lean in for a better look.
“The Tigris. It fits perfectly.” She read some more. “Okay, next he says, no true sorrow will touch their breasts, until the beasts descend and sup on spirit and flesh. So, ew. But the beasts descending?”
“The warlocks,” Gigi said.
“My thoughts exactly. From what I can tell, that refers to the original change of the power dynamics. But the second quatrain starts with the real clue: For five thousand years, the daughters of the crescent will wait.” She tapped the notebook. “Mesopotamian civilization was dominated very much by the Sumerians in the early Bronze Age. The first written history begins almost exactly five thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, which sat in what is called the Fertile Crescent.”
I shook my head. “Annette, how did you find all of this?”
“Oh, but wait. There’s more.” She turned the page. “The concealed queen rises first, seized by fire.” She looked up at me. “It’s you, Deph. Your powers were concealed, and then you caught fire—”
“I didn’t actually catch—”
“Then Roane put you in the shower and, you know, quenched it.” Four women sighed dreamily. Five if one counted me.
Annette snapped out of it first. “But get this. Her sisters of half-blood follow, of taint and of time. Again, no idea what taint and time means. But it has to be metaphorical for your sister charmlings.”
“Maybe,” Serinda said. “But the other charmlings are not true blood heirs.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “They’re faux charmlings.”
Annette waved a dismissive hand. “Again, this guy was super cryptic. There’s just no telling. But the last line of these two quatrains states that When eternal sands divide and all sisters unite, the final beast will fall.” When she gazed at us expectantly and no one said anything, she added, “Don’t you get it? The final beast. The last warlock. And it says when all sisters unite. Not just the three. I think all of the witches will have to unite to bring this guy down. The covens will play a part.”
“This is all so fascinating,” Gigi said. “How did you even find it?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Google. The next quatrain goes into kings and swords. He was super into that sort of thing. These were the only two quatrains I could find that I feel pertains to the charmlings.”
“I’m astonished you found that much,” Serinda said. “Who knew Nostradamus would prophesize about the charmlings? And I think this only reiterates the fact, Sarru, that we are your coven now. We are your protection, and we will be diligent in our endeavors.”
“Calling me sarru, putting me on this pedestal, is still not acceptable.”
Gigi laid a flattened a hand on the table in front of me to emphasize her point. “Defiance, it is. It must be.”
I took it into both of mine. “It’s not, and it never will be.”
Annette, ever the wordsmith, pushed her glasses up her nose and said, “Then I guess it sucks to be you. Can I call you Sarru?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“If we may get back to the business at hand,” Gigi said, getting back to the business at hand with a saucy toss of her silvery-blond hair, “Serinda, our coven must be strong. Now more than ever. It cannot have an absentee leader. Therefore, I am no longer the doyenne.”
“Of course you are.”
“I need to make that clear.”
“There’s nothing unclear about the situation.”
“The coven needs to move on.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Serinda,” Gigi said, exasperated. “The position is yours.”
“Teflon,” Serinda blurted out, and I almost burst out laughing.
Both Gigi and Minerva looked confused, and Gigi proved that fact by asking, “What does that even mean?”
“It means I’m Teflon, and your words won’t stick to me.”
I couldn’t help but see a little of Annette and me in their banter. In fact, when Serinda lifted her cup and took a long draw while batting her eyelashes at my grandmother, I had to hold back a giggle.
Annette coughed suspiciously as well.
Gigi looked away, refusing to fall for her friend’s ploy at levity. “The position is yours now. And it’s about time.”
“Posh.” Serinda set her cup down and waved a dismissive hand. “You were gone a few days. You are most certainly still the doyenne.”
“Serinda, I died.”
“I am very aware,” Serinda said, her voice cracking. “But if you think that paltry excuse will be enough to shirk your duties, you’re mistaken.”
Wow. They had a really rigorous breach-of-contract clause.
“Paltry?”
“You are still very much the doyenne.”
Serinda’s chin quivered, the emotion almost too much for her, and she picked up her cup again to hide behind it, splintering my heart, spiderwebbing it with hairline fractures. Her best friend’s death had surely devastated her. Had it been Annette, the vivacious and bubbly love of my life… I couldn’t imagine what she went through.
Gigi took a moment to gather herself as well. It was a wonder they didn’t have this conversation while I was out, and I was curious as to why. “But, Serinda,” Gigi said, her tone exposing the fact that the words saddened her deeply, “even if I wanted to, I… I can’t go back.”
Serinda turned a curious brow on her.
“The inner circle knows what happened, yes. How I died. The fact that Defiance lifted me out of the veil, but the others. The novices. If word gets out about what Defiance is capable of… It’s already almost cost Defiance her life. And Annette. And Roane. And I won’t let it happen again.”
Minerva winced at the reminder of recent days. “I’m so sorry,” she said to Gigi before turning to me. “I am so, so sorry.”
I wrapped an arm around her blanketed shoulders and decided not to tell her about the waffle impression on the side of her face. “Minerva, that was not your fault.”
“Yes, it was.” She sloughed the blanket off and stood, her head bowed in shame. “I’m part of your coven, part of the inner circle even, and I let it slip that you brought Ruthie—the doyenne!—back to life.” She looked at Serinda, wringing her hands like a child waiting for punishment. “I understand if I’m out.”
Serinda dropped her gaze. “Minerva, that was partly my fault.”
“What?” Minerva crossed her arms and eased back against the island. “Why would you even say that?”
“I knew what a horrible man your uncle was. I knew you could not be happy, but I had no idea he was so abusive. I wanted you to find your own way. To… to learn to come to me—to us, your sisters—for help when you needed it. I had no idea how much he’d beat you down.”
She chewed the tip of an abused thumb. “You couldn’t have.”
“I could have, actually. I should have seen the signs, Minerva. The mistrust. The skittishness. They were all there. You had PTSD practically stamped on your forehead.”
Minerva curled into herself, her shoulders concaving, and I saw it then. What she was searching for. Her heart’s deepest desire. And, as happened so often, it was nowhere near what I expected. I may not be able to brew a love potion, but I could, at the very least, hook her up with the man she’d been pining after from afar for years.
I quirked an impish brow at Annette. She questioned me with a quirk of her own. I nodded toward Minerva, and her face brightened, knowing we were going to have some fun in the near future. To do some good. To help the girl get the thing she most wanted. Or, more specifically, the man she most wanted. Well, if he wanted her, too. I wasn’t a monster. Or a pimp.
Admitte
dly, Annette could never have discerned all of that from my quirk, but she would find out soon enough.
“Please accept my apology, Minerva.” Serinda rose and took the girl into her arms.
“It’s okay. It’s hard to separate the PTSD from genuine weirdness.”
I laughed softly. I knew I liked her. “Then you are definitely in the right place.”
“And,” Gigi added, “in the right coven.”
Minerva fought a wave of emotion by ducking her head and letting her long dark hair fall into her face. It was a tactic I’d used several times in my life, too.
“Still,” Annette said, crinkling her nose in thought, “I think we need a name.”
Gigi pursed her mouth to keep from grinning. “We don’t need a name.”
“All the cool covens have them.”
“Which explains why we don’t have one.”
“I know you’re dead set against calling it the Salem Arc of the Coven-ant, but what about Easy Bake Coven?”
Gigi looked at me, helpless.
“Or the Lovin’ Coven? You know. Because of our policy on inclusivity.”
People already suspected witch clans of having all-night orgies. That name would not help. I elbowed my bestie. “How about we table that for now, Nette.”
“Okay, but I’m on it.” She held up her pencil as though it were a sword and she was vowing her allegiance to the cause. “I’ll come up with the perfect name. Don’t you worry.”
This was the same girl who came up with Breadcrumbs, Inc., so I had to remind myself she did have some aptitude for such things. “Okay, you think about it.”
“For a long time,” Gigi said. “Think on it long and hard.”
Annette nodded. “Right. Like meditate on it. Really let it simmer. Gotcha.”
Gawd, I loved that girl. But there was still something niggling in the back of my mind. We’d brought Serinda’s granddaughter around, but what about her grandson? From what I’d gleaned when I delved into Belinda’s thoughts, he would not give up the quest to have his grandmother committed just because Belinda had switched sides. Quite the opposite. He would possibly double his efforts.
He wanted the woman’s money. He’d been the one campaigning to have Serinda put into a home in the first place. There was something horrible about a person willing to commit their own grandmother against her will to get at her savings.
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