Coven Keepers (Dark Fae Hollows Book 10)

by Thea Atkinson

  “I made a deal with the general,” I said. “Safe passage to Avalon for me and… for you.”

  “Not helpful at the moment.” He gave me another pull, but ended up letting go when I resisted. If I was getting up, it would be on my own steam.

  “No?” I said, rolling over onto my knees, thinking I could push myself up that way. “I’d say it’s pretty damn helpful considering how hard it is to get there without me.”

  “And how can it be helpful?”

  “Have you ever heard of the kraken that protects the isle?”

  “How could I?” he said. “Until now, I didn’t know of Avalon.”

  With his steady hand, I managed to find a tottering stand. When I thought I would fall again, he tucked me into his side and wrapped his arm sturdily around my waist.

  “Just lean on me,” he said.

  I felt a tiny hand brush my cheek and realized Uriel was still in his other arm.

  “No,” I said, using my hands against his hips to balance. “I’ll be fine.”

  Instead of letting me go, he tightened his grip. “You don’t seem fine,” he said. “Some savior you turned out to be.”

  It was another tease, but it struck me the wrong way. I ignored it in favor of hitching forward, testing the strength in my legs.

  “Careful,” he said. “I’ve still got you.”

  “I know,” I said, irritable because I wasn’t used to being so helpless. Plus, the truth of the matter was that playful little dig of his hurt.

  “If you know, then why are you stepping on my foot? Holy heavens, you really are heavy for a little thing.”

  “Well, if you weren’t so damn clumsy,” I said. “I might be able to move without stomping on your delicate toes.”

  At that, Uriel’s fingers tangled in my hair and tugged hard. I got the feeling he was trying to tell me to shut my mouth, but true to form, I couldn’t.

  “If you hadn’t run off like that, I might have enough strength to find the docks.”

  “What?” he said. “With magic?” He sucked his teeth. “Don’t be stupid. Why do you think I keep my light hidden?”

  “Because you’re some sort of freak?” I said. In the same instant, I wished I could bite off my tongue. I had meant to say that even the Fae didn’t see in the dark as well as he seemed to, and it should have been a teasing sort of compliment, but it had come out so terrible that it stuck the rest of the words to my palate.

  As I might’ve expected, he let me go so abruptly I stumbled, catching myself just in time against the side of the building.

  “You know, there was a name for women like you back in the day.”

  I leaned against the building, my face burning with shame. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t be grateful for his kindness? Why did I have to make everything so difficult?

  “What word?” I said, challenging the very notion that he might dare call me anything at all. “Witch?”

  He might think it a derogatory term, but I owned it. I would always own it. I thought of Freya and the delicate strength she owned, managing to stand against an entire coven for a tiny, squalling thing. She taught me what it was to be a witch, not the coven. Not the hours of training I’d spent alone, trying to live up to that word with physical skill because I could never quite trust that one woman’s love would be enough. That one small woman with her long, graying hair had shown me the word witch was not derogatory. It was a thing of power to be feared with loving respect, not the terror that had put us on the isle and away from humankind in the first place.

  I managed to push off the bricks and brace the backs of my heels against the wall. I swayed a little, but I kept on my feet.

  “Well, I am a witch,” I said. “I’m a damn good witch, and better than that, I’m a pretty decent fighter.” I had to blink to force the wash of dizziness back down.

  “Not witch,” he said. “Bitch.”

  I gasped at that. Not because of the word, but because the tone was so hateful. I expected such things from the rest of the coven, but not here. No one knew me enough here to hate me that much.

  I threw myself at him.

  It wasn’t going to go well, I knew that, but with all my heavy, unfeminine muscle, maybe I could knock him over and then fall flat on his face and smother him. At the very least, jam my hand over his mouth to stop him from talking anymore and saying hateful things.

  But I didn’t knock him over. Instead, I tripped on my useless feet and fell in front of his boots. I scraped my cheek against the asphalt. It hurt like someone branding me with a fire torch. I bit my tongue to keep from crying out.

  I heard him smother a chuckle as I hissed in my breath. It made me so mad I reached up to squeeze the back of his knee with pinching fingers. He yelped and shook his leg free of my hand.

  I pretty much crawled up his legs and gripped his waistband to pull myself to my feet. He was laughing. I could hear it rumbling in his throat.

  “Fuck you,” I ground out, and it felt deliriously wonderful to curse him that way. It was both filthy and aggressive and I said it again for good measure because of all things I’d ever had in my mouth, this was the most delicious.

  I had a good grip on his throat by then, and he clutched my elbow with one hand while he leaned to let Uriel down. I waited patiently, letting my energy coil in my spine. When I heard the boy’s feet touch the ground, I gripped Ari by the ear and twisted as hard as I could.

  He must have thought that was all I had in me because he snorted. In response, I sent a finger behind his earlobe, jabbing in the tender spot there, hard enough it sent him to his knees. I crabbed over him, searching for his eye sockets. He grunted before my fingers found the soft flesh there. Before I could brace myself, he had flipped me over onto my back.

  He was full on me then, holding my hands down beside me, his thighs pressed tight against mine.

  I twisted and wriggled beneath him. I wanted free. I felt like I was in the belly of the kraken all over again, the inky dark finding ways to smother me that the lack of air couldn’t. It was in my ears and in my throat. I burned with the need to be free. I wanted to scream, but I felt as though the kraken’s tongue would find its way down my throat and cut off my air.

  I flat-out panicked then, flailing with all I had, but got nowhere. My legs wouldn’t move beneath his weight. My hands were stuck to the asphalt. I mashed the back of my head against the ground, trying to see where his nose was so I could head butt it and blind him with pain.

  His face loomed over me, but I couldn’t see anything but deep shadow.

  “You want me, bitch?” he said, but the tone wasn’t angry, not even teasing. It held something else entirely. Something I’d never heard before. “You ready to take me?”

  Everything in me went slack.

  “Where’d your fight go, little one?” he said in that same smooth tone, and it was in that instant that I realized his breathing had shifted. His hips ground into mine, and I understood the current beneath his words.

  “Holy Miriam,” I blurted out, aghast. “You’re hard.”

  He shifted ever so subtly, but it wasn’t to move away; rather, his erection dug deeper into my hips, finding a tender, and horrifyingly responsive, spot beneath him.

  “Can you blame me?” he murmured. “A cute writhing body beneath mine. A man could lose his mind.”

  “Get off me.”

  “Scared?”

  “I fear no one,” I said.

  “No one,” he said. “But maybe something.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not scared of your little erection.”

  “Little,” he growled. “What kind of monsters do you have on that isle?”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

  And in that moment, everything changed.

  Chapter 18

  We sat together, Uriel on one side of him, me on the other, tucked into a small space left by a crumbling stairwell. We leaned against the building with our knees to our chins, presumably out of sight. He had in
sisted on carrying Uriel and me both, and I had insisted he not. I was tired, yes, but not tired enough to look like a weak little thing that needed saving. I was supposed to be saving him, not the other way around. I wouldn’t have it, and had crawled away from him until I’d found the crevice between the stairwell and the building.

  He said he let me win because I was too damn hard to deal with, but I suspected he was just as tired as I was. Neither of us had slept in hours. We needed to recover. I wasn’t sure if I could, but it wouldn’t be smart to troll the grim ones in just by the time we reached the water’s edge when we didn’t even have a boat to cross.

  I couldn’t tell him that, though. Best to wait to see if my energy came back and deal with the impossible later.

  We sat in a long, but strangely comfortable silence for a while until my stomach gurgled so loud it made Uriel stir.

  That smoky voice of Ari’s burrowed through the rumbling sounds. “You’re hungry.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I was smart enough to eat.”

  “And when would I have had time to do that?”

  I thought of my time in the shelter, the time after that when we were running from the bus. Running from the Dark Fae. Maybe he’d had time to eat, but I’d been busy.

  I felt him rummaging into his pockets next to me, and then I caught wind of the unmistakable smell of nut butter. I grabbed for the sandwich without so much as a thank you. I imagined I looked very much like the boy as he’d crammed his sandwich into his cheeks, and I tried to slow down so I wouldn’t look so gluttonous, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “You got some on your cheeks,” Ari said, and I felt his thumb smear a glob of something from my skin. I swallowed convulsively on the dry bread, twisting away from him at the same time. What kind of savior needed to have her cheeks cleaned like a little child?

  “Why do you see so well in the dark?” I asked him, shoving the last of the sandwich between my teeth and chewing. Get the focus off me at least.

  He was close enough to me that I could feel a shrug. “I guess because I’m a freak.”

  So much for getting the focus off me. I was grateful for the dark then. What had I been thinking to even try to tease anyone, make friendly banter? I wasn’t made for that sort of thing. I’d almost screwed up my only chance to be a hero. I squirmed at that. I wasn’t going back to Avalon. Not now.

  He must have taken my squirming for embarrassment. “No harm done,” he said. “It’s closer to the truth that you would think. I’ve always been able to see perfectly in the dark. I always assumed everyone could.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be mean,” I mumbled because I wanted to apologize now and didn’t know how. “I just… Don’t know how to be nice.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said, reaching for my hand in the dark and squeezing my fingers. “I’ve seen it. You saved the boy from Gus and that Fae tracker, didn’t you?”

  I had to fight the urge to pull my hand from his. It felt too safe there, too good. Nothing could ever come from feeling good. I leaned my head against the building, easing my eyes closed. I did not want to enjoy this. I shouldn’t.

  He prodded me with his elbow when I didn’t answer. “This is new, you being quiet.”

  “I was thinking,” I said.

  “I wasn’t sure you could do that,” he said, a chuckle cocooned in that smoky tone. “He certainly seems to talk more than you think.”

  I elbowed him back. Playful. Easy. I marveled that I could feel either of those things. Careful, I told myself. I had the awful urge to look over my shoulder when I knew all that was there was brick building. No good could come of it.

  “Being nice to the boy and protecting him is not the same thing,” I said.

  “In your case,” he murmured and shuffled closer. “I think it is the same thing.”

  I swallowed down the fluttering feeling in my throat as I felt his torso meet mine. The heat of his chest reached out for me, and I had to resist pressing closer.

  “Fighting comes easy,” I told him, thinking all the while that what I was doing now was fighting of a different sort.

  “You agreed to look after him,” he countered. “You kept insisting I call him by his name rather than an it.”

  “Because I thought he was the chosen one,” I said, petulant.

  He sighed. “You’re not making this easy,” he said.

  I sighed along with him. “I never do.”

  “Why?” he said. “What turned you into such a scalded cat?”

  I shrugged. How could I tell him that the place I was trying to bring him to was the place that had turned me into something with its hackles constantly raised?

  “Tell me about this Avalon, then,” he said as though he had somehow plucked the train of thought right from my mind.

  “It’s not as dark as there,” I said. “We have magical sconces to light the shadows. This place is much worse. It reminds me how close to darkness we all are.”

  He went quiet for a moment. I was beginning to think he had fallen asleep when he spoke again.

  “And you think achieving balance is the right thing to do?”

  “It’s the only thing,” I said.

  I looked up at him, knowing he could see me. I wanted him to know how serious I thought this was.

  “It was one of my coven who both saved the hollow and brought it to full darkness in the first place,” I said. “We call her the Benevolent Miriam. She used up all her own magic to keep the Fae goddess’s daughter from rising. You know the old tale.”

  He murmured agreement. “It’s a folktale we tell children,” he said. “Back before the time we knew true magic existed. It was said that there was a great war between the Light and Dark Fae that ruined the earth.”

  “You do know it,” I said.

  He splayed his feet out in front of him. “It’s an old story. It’s said we humans created lumens with Fae magic to fuel the technology when the apocalypse came.”

  “You know that means humans hunted them,” I said. It wasn’t an accusation, just fact.

  “And now they hunt us.”

  Neither was his bitter comment, just a statement. However uncomfortable both truths were, it was now possible to put a stop to all that. Bring balance.

  “I imagine they feel their power running out. It’s a wonder they haven’t overrun your kind and stolen every bit of energy.”

  “Where do you think all these grim ones came from?” he said. “Who do you think the brigands were selling the derelicts to?”

  “But you are one of those brigands.”

  “Was,” he corrected and squeezed my hand. “I just let the others take the ones who were already too far gone, the ones who couldn’t be saved anyway.”

  “The three-quarters lit,” I said, remembering him rounding up all the destitute but still plentiful lumens. “What were you planning to do with them?”

  I felt him shrug. “I was going to take them to some wealthy houses I know. People rich with light willing to hire employees for various tasks. They would’ve paid them in food and shelter and let them keep their lumens.”

  “Kind of a barter system,” I guessed.

  “Sort of. It was the best I could do. I’d been on my own so long and I’d seen so many of my kind being sold to the Fae by people likes of Gus or other humans while my light just stayed bright. I thought I might be able to do something to help.”

  I murmured something even I didn’t hear, but it might have been praise if I understood what it sounded like.

  “Fae magic is peculiar in its way,” I said to cover up my awkwardness. “It needs a natural source. That’s probably why they tap into your life forces, to use it to fuel their magic. But we can’t let it continue. It’s what Miriam sacrificed herself for. The Dark Fae will always want more. She knew this.”

  I splayed my legs out next to his, feeling the warmth of them. I wanted to throw my leg over his and scooch in close but resisted.

  Every witch on Avalon knew t
he story like they knew their own names. The story was in our holy tomes. We were taught that one day it would be our coven who brought the light back because we had been the one to take it when that black energy had coiled itself again, ready to strike.

  “Miriam had a unique gift,” I said. “One that allowed her to strip the hollow of all its remaining untainted energy—that included the energy that gave the hollow light. She wrapped it in magic and sent it away, sparing it from the darkness in hopes that one day the light would return.”

  I knew I sounded like I was quoting, and I was. In the end, the Fae goddess’s sacrifice had been for nothing. The Dark Fae god’s energy merely twisted her daughters’ power into something far worse. Something that almost ended humankind and the Fae with it.

  “You’re that light,” I murmured, and his leg twitched next to mine.

  “Fairy tales,” he said.

  I reached over Ari’s chest to touch Uriel’s hair. I once thought he was the chosen one, and I’d been willing to do anything to bring him home. Somehow, it was easier thinking the one human child was actually that… a child. But this man. This strangely intoxicating and infuriating man was something I hadn’t counted on. I felt him looking at me as I stretched across him. I wet my lips. Nervous. I wanted to convince him, but more than that, I wanted him to understand.

  “It’s why we have to be the ones to make it right,” I said. “My coven.”

  “But I’m human,” he said.

  I knew he wanted me to look at him, but I also knew he’d be able to see me far more plainly than I could see him. He’d read every desire in my face—that I was happy in this moment and I couldn’t for all my days say I was ever happy.

  I should be terrified of being found; I should be anxious of getting him back across the waters. But all I could think about was how good it felt to be sitting there with him.

  “Your light never dims,” I said. “Unusual for a human, don’t you think?”

  “But how did you know it was me and not the boy?” Uriel shifted in Ari’s hold, straining, it seemed, to allow my fingers to run through his hair. He made little sucking sounds on his thumb.