Coven Keepers (Dark Fae Hollows Book 10)
Page 1
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Coven Keepers
The Dark Fae Hollows – Hollow 10
Thea Atkinson
Rebecca Hamilton
Charmed Legacy
Copyright
Coven Keepers: The Dark Fae Hollows – Hollow 10 © 2017 Thea Atkinson & Rebecca Hamilton
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Description
Coventina Hollow is doomed to darkness. And so is Everly…
Abandoned by her family on the shores of Avalon—the heart of Coventina Hollow—Everly becomes a peculiar fosterling in a legendary coven afraid of her natural magic.
* * *
When a fiery streak across the sky signals the arrival of the chosen one—a child who can bring light back to a shadowed world where Fae, human, and witch alike have learned to live in darkness—Everly’s life goes from bad to worse.
* * *
Now her coven has the opportunity to rid themselves of her and test the veracity of the prophecy all at once. But even if she can survive the kraken that protects the isle from rest of the hollow, she’ll still need to travel through the most dangerous territories of Coventina to find the chosen one.
* * *
What she finds in the human realm, however, will make even the darkness seem pale.
COVEN KEEPERS is a standalone contribution to the Charmed Legacy Dark Fae Hollows collection. Stories can be read in any order.
* * *
To learn more, visit CharmedLegacy.com
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Also by Thea Atkinson
Also by Rebecca Hamilton
About Thea Atkinson
About Rebecca Hamilton
Chapter 1
The kraken came for me just before dawn.
It had been a long, tiresome night already. While I was more than ready for it to be over, I’d begun to think the beast would never come, and I would be stuck forever in the limbo of magic that protected the isle I was trying to escape. A witch didn’t try to leave Avalon, and certainly not to seek out the human realm. Yet, here I was, trying to catch sight of a horizon to that other world through the darkness. I knew it was out there. Legends said there were a dozen other realms, hollows carved out of the world by magic as a means to keep it intact, if not divided.
The only light that relieved my eye of pitch as I sought that horizon was the filigree work of plankton as it swam below the murk of water and cast its light upward, muscles lighting from within. There would be no more light than that. Not ever. The darkness was something the whole hollow lived with and hated. Even the Fae realm and its more secret cousin, the Dark Coalition, wanted to rid the hollow of its eternal shade. I expected the darkness as much as I expected the kraken.
The beast found me standing of course, with feet planted against the ribs of my dory, watching the sky as it paled from the inky blackness to the subtle shade of gloom that passed for sunrise in the hollow.
At first, all I knew of its coming was an unmistakable whiff of sour magic, tasting its tang as it slid from the roof of my mouth to trickle down my throat with the oily residue of a greased eel. I told myself it was nothing to be concerned about. Probably just a leftover of darkened power leaking through a fissure in the hollow. We caught the stench now and again on the Isle, and although it was a rank and unwelcome thing when it wafted to our shores, we’d grown accustomed to it. Just as we’d grown used to the darkness we lived in. None of us: fae, witch, or human in the Coventina Hollow had ever seen true light. Darkness was the cost price to be paid for its salvation in the first place.
I’d been seasick for the last three hours and so I wasn’t the most aware I could be. I needed to either lie down between the ribs of the boat and lose myself to the unending body ache of illness or stand and fight the nausea with my dying breath.
I chose to stand. A mistake that, by nature, I seemed to make far too often for my own good.
But when the brine wove its fragrance into the waffling spaces that the magic didn’t already occupy, I knew it wasn’t residual sour magic causing the stink. No, the beast had come at last.
“Wait until I’m good and seasick before you come, you bastard,” I muttered in the general direction of the oil-slick water.
I peered into the murky depths, the hairs prickling at the back of my neck. It was down there. I knew it. “Come on, then,” I whispered. “Bring it.”
I expected a burst of water to spray toward me as it rose to attack. Instead, only a bubble broke the surface, hissing into the air as it popped. In the next instant, a frigid tentacle slipped around my waist. The damned thing thought me unguarded—figured me blissfully oblivious to its presence.
I would’ve laughed if I could have done so without retching up the last of my supper.
A pulse moved through the arm, a signal to its muscles to squeeze what it held. I waited, breath scorching my lungs, as the oxygen raced through the lining to feed my tissues. I couldn’t move—not if I wanted the kraken to believe it held me fast in its grip. It would rise then, and if I held the spent air in my lungs, it would give me extra room to slip free as it heaved itself to the surface.
Don’t struggle. Stand still. Let the damned thing rise as it should.
Waiting. Another thing that wasn’t a strong suit of mine—not even under the most ideal circumstances.
With my scalp tingling and my knees wobbling from my effort to balance against the roll and ebb of the tides, holding onto that breath and waiting was about as enticing as heaving my supper onto my boots.
But despite the exhausted oxygen setting flames in the bellows of my lungs, I did hold that breath. I stood there on my awkward land-legs, letting hisses of
air leak from my nose. Just enough to relieve the pressure. I waited through the roar of wind that pulled itself from a funnel of water and lashed my face with brine-drenched lake. I waited until thunder tore itself from the sky.
Every synapse in my mind told me to attack, but I waited because that was what the crones had said I should do. Yet, things weren’t right. Not the way they should be. Not the way they said things would happen.
In fact, things looked downright wrong. The kraken should have risen by now. Instead, he lurked unseen somewhere off the bow, and I was left balancing against the violent rocking of my dory, hell-bent on staying upright when everything around me worked to knock me flat.
I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and keep my legs at the same time. Blackness seeped into the edges of my vision, darker than the night sky that surrounded me. I swallowed. Swayed.
Wait, Everly. Fight the pressure.
If I could just hold onto consciousness a little bit longer, he would surely rise at any instant. He had to.
Unless…
Unless he was waiting, too.
I let go of the trapped air with a rush that made me stagger with relief, and my vacuous lungs clawed at the fetid air. It would all change now. I needed to be alert. The stench of magic gone sour flung itself at me in clots from places too deep in the darkness to see. Spatters of it stuck to me, dribbling down my neck and arms.
When my moment came, I barely knew it for what it was. I was too aware of the sound of another heavy arm landing in the skiff as though it were a fish to focus. Of that awful squelching as it snaked toward me over the boards.
Holy heavens, the kraken was right there.
I thought I could just make out a mound in the murk that seemed to loom upward from the surface. A pool of plankton skittered in all directions, but not until they had lent enough light for me to see that the fetid stench wasn’t just the bloat of bad magic; it was the rotting flesh of a small child the kraken grasped in its coils. It pushed the babe at me and pulled it away. Taunting me. That poor, tiny thing. No one to avenge it out here but me. My eyelids burned. I yelled toward where I imagined the kraken’s head loomed.
“Son of a goddamned blasphemous goat,” I yelled, searching for the creature again with a frantic eye, finding nothing in the darkness but more darkness. An archaic quote came to mind as my stomach tightened into a ball. “You shall not pass.”
What was it the crones had said? Get clear sight of its head before you stun it, and the going will be easier. Let it rise. Let it look you in the eye. Let it want to pull you in.
The kraken was coming, but it wasn’t rising fast enough. With my heart lodged so far into my throat I could taste the blood it pumped, I prayed to catch the bilious gaze of the beast.
There wasn’t a near or clear enough shot at the thing. I wasn’t sure there ever would be, not in this darkness. I needed better vantage, better visuals than the scant bit of light my eyes could take in from the luminescent plankton that milled about the brackishness. No matter what the crones’ warnings had been as I’d left the quay and pushed my dory into the waters of the hollow, this was my chance. I had to take it. If not, I would never reach the human realm.
I thrust my arms out sideways, unbalancing myself momentarily before grounding myself once more. With every throb of my pulse, my fingers strained for the magic that waited to slam itself home. Twitching fingers buzzed with current as the magic entered, and the hum of it rode my veins. I went rigid with power, and only lighting my flesh with residual magic kept me on my feet.
I had it. I had more than enough, more than I’d ever collected on the isle where magic was a ripe thing ready to be plucked from the air on a mere whim.
A burble of laughter skated its way from my chest. I was electric with power, lighting the darkness that had drawn its perpetual cloak over the hollow. I could see through the black for the first time in all my twenty-three years as clearly as if the long-dead sun had been reborn at that very moment from my own chest.
Everything was alight, from the dory and my stumbling feet to the greasy water and mashed potato clouds. I laughed again, buoyed by the feeling of seeing full, grace-laden light out as far as the horizon.
I thought I would hold onto it forever. The magic was mine. I owned it. I could command it however I wanted. Giddiness warbled about my chest.
Then I caught sight of a dozen tentacles waving in the air, sizzling beneath the light I cast. A gasp escaped me. Those arms were far thicker than I’d imagined, with cups that quivered in the light and strained away from their beds. I had the feeling they ached to grapple me and pull me under.
No matter what the crones had prepared me for, this was not even remotely close. It was just me and this thing, and it was far bigger than I’d been told. I could hold all the magic in Avalon and it still wouldn’t be enough.
“Sweet merciful Miriam,” I whispered, and then the magic started to buck through my tissues.
It was too much. I couldn’t hold it. The magic throbbed in my hands, wanting release. I tried to hold onto it, but with one final ache in my fingertips, they let go of the remaining power with a submissive throb. A crackling sort of light hopscotched over the water as it left me.
I had waited past the prime moment when I could cast the light at the beast and stun it motionless. And in the heartbeat after that, I realized the kraken didn’t plan to rise at all. I’d wasted the light, and it had already begun to lose its reach. The magic that fueled it waned as the light retreated. My knees went weak as I realized I’d lost my chance.
A gentle thrum went through the kraken’s arm then, and it gave a firm but testing tug that rippled with tension. Damn. With that little test, it now knew me for what I was. Witch. A runaway.
Before I could even brace myself against the force, that questioning tug became a yank, and then the creature flat-out pulled.
I staggered, but caught my boot against a wooden rib just enough to keep from falling. It wanted to pull me into the brackish water with it for all eternity, and there I was, still standing like a fool with my arms outstretched, wasting what little magic still rested in my fingers.
I had to grab more power, and I had to do it now.
In a panic, I hauled in a lungful of air to fuel the attempt, squeezing my eyes shut so I could focus. All I managed was curdled balls of sour magic that coated my palette and made a greasy slick of the saliva in my mouth. I tasted deep sea and murky lake bottom. Instead of thrusting the magic out through my fingers at the creature, I doubled over in a shuddering, retching mess.
The kraken paused as if in good humor at my sickness. It waited while my stomach finished heaving itself onto my boots. The damned thing wanted a challenge. It even waved the dead child at me with one of its arms, dangling it in front of my face.
“To hell with you,” I gasped out when the last dregs of bitter food had purged itself.
My stomach trembled as it tried to find equilibrium. My head swam. Doubled over, my hands on my knees, I was nothing to the beast. A bit of an annoyance and no more. It might play with me a while longer, but then it would grow tired and simply swat me dead or pull me in.
I might have preferred going in. At least I’d be free of the seasickness. Trouble was, I couldn’t swim.
The creature tugged more persistently, as if trying to nudge me just enough to lose my balance and fall overboard of my own accord.
“Over my dead body, beast,” I muttered, half-fearing that might very well be my reality if I didn’t do something soon.
The waves had begun to dig at the gunnels, piling in sideways so the hand that still ached with residual power now clutched at the curb. The boat rose onto one side, and a flood of water ran the span of wood. I fell into it, my cheek striking hard onto a rib of the boat. I thought I heard my skull crack, and I coughed. My boots filled with the stinking cesspool, and it ran up to my thigh as it burrowed beneath my pants.
The clutch of the kraken was like the gasp of a dying crone—frighten
ing, sudden, and too damned inevitable.
Another tentacle. This time, a taut suction on my ankle, pulling my boot free from my foot. The writhing arm slithered up my calf as though it were on a trek up a mountain coast to find its pinnacle. It was both dogged and ruthless. Death. That was what the grip felt like as it ranged upward.
I groaned. All this way from the witches’ isle, and I would die here in a wet-bottomed boat at the hands of the warding meant to keep the isle safe. How many centuries had gone by that the kraken had forgotten its original duty and began keeping things in as well as out?
I wouldn’t give in, though. Not until my last breath.
I came alive in that moment, half sopping, my clothes hanging on me like lead weights as I staggered to my feet and lost my footing again. Giving it everything I had, I scrambled to find purchase as the little boat lifted and fell on the waves.
I squirmed onto my back, kicking out at the side of the boat. Bracing. Seeking. Using my bare toes to find the ribbing bands that held the sides of the boat into its shape. My foot fell on nothing but air.
The kraken gave me one more hard yank. I ended up face-first in the water again. Sputtering. Gasping. Frigid, swampy, and downright brackish water branded a path up my nose and sent water trickling down the back of my throat. I coughed and gagged. The boat tilted at an even sharper angle. My fingers scrabbled for the curb.