Coven Keepers (Dark Fae Hollows Book 10)

by Thea Atkinson

  My fingernails screeched against the wood. For an instant, I thought I might manage to hold on.

  Except the weight of my body was too much, and too much of it labored under gravity’s pull. I gasped from the shock of the frigid water reaching my warm midriff, knowing it was instinct that bade me drag in that one final breath.

  My muscles tensed of their own accord, bracing for the spill. Even my fingers seem to understand the peril and crabbed their way to the gunnels. I flailed about as I searched for safety, rolling unto my stomach and reaching, straining for some hold. I expected at any second to feel the kraken’s arm about my ankle.

  I was going in. Sweet Miriam. I was going in.

  I sobbed and swore. And then I found purchase. One loose board met my palm, and I held on, not daring to so much as breathe as I waited to see if it would hold.

  As if by some miracle, the boat leveled out, rolling from the side onto the bottom and planting me on my back with the revolting and viscous fluid of the lake draining from my sinuses into my mouth.

  The boat rocked twice before it came to rest. Even the wind paused to inhale.

  I froze, uncertain. Was it a reprieve? Had I won? I didn’t dare hope. Hope had always been such a spiteful thing to me.

  Once, when I’d been small enough to remember what true hope felt like, my mentor Freya had taken me aside. I was maybe six or seven at the time, and I’d been at the hollow’s coven ever since my mother had left me on its banks as a newborn. I knew the way of the place. A child with wild red hair and the rare peculiarity of blue eyes instead of the inky black that was the norm was a thing to be feared at best, shunned at worse. But I was different. I showed promise—even Freya said so. Training would make me better. I knew it. I wanted it.

  “It’s time you understood your place here, Everly,” she had said.

  The hope grew. I felt its flutter beneath my ribcage. I could barely breathe for the ache of it.

  “That hair of yours, and the uncontrollable power within you,” she said. “They aren’t normal. Things that aren’t normal make the ignorant afraid.”

  I remembered running my hand down the length of my hair, flipping up the ends so I could stare at it. It was red, yes, so bright it might have been fire unleashed in dry grass, and always in such a tangle. It had a knot in it then, I recalled. I tried to pick individual strands away from the matting.

  “I’ll comb it,” I said. “And I’ll stop running around so much.”

  Twisting her fingers into my hair, she found a way to unlock the stubborn strands. She smoothed them out and pushed them behind my shoulders. Her small, black eyes, so like every other witch from the coven, roamed my face. In that moment, I realized the kindness that rode her features held a note of sadness.

  “You may stay with us for now, Everly,” she said. “But you will train with me alone, and not with the others. The isle is not your home. Don’t push down roots where your heart doesn’t belong.” She gave me an encouraging smile to buffer the words.

  I understood then. Their fear of me was stronger than the coven’s reverence for Freya’s skill and wisdom. They had probably asked worse of her, but out of that respect, they had allowed her to continue training me. I imagined she fought well in my defense, and it pained me to realize she felt shame over a decision she couldn’t change.

  When Freya died, my hope went with her.

  I felt the same way lying on the bottom of the dory with the kraken lurking somewhere off the bow. There was a lingering, almost heavy certainty to the air. I rolled over onto my side. Dare I hope it was over? I sent a tentative palm against the ribbing. No movement nor flesh met my touch. Yes. Over. I heaved a sigh and elbowed myself to a half-prone position, my sleeve an inch under water.

  “About fucking time something went my way.”

  Long-ingrained habit made me cringe at my language; curses were serious business on the isle, but for just one moment, I relished the words as they left my tongue. I even said it again just to taste it on my lips.

  Fuck.

  Even the gods couldn’t have devised a better reply to that curse than the kraken gave me. No longer was the word in the air, hanging there like a peach and just as savory, when I smelled the magic again.

  Tentacles rose around the boat in a lattice-like embrace. Two of them lumbered over both sides of my head, so close the leathery skin skimmed my lips. I heard the undeniable crackling of wood beneath the pressure of its arms, and then the splintering of boards letting their mates go.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, more because I needed to hear my own voice just once more before the entire boat rolled over into the water with the kraken’s arms fast around the frame.

  When it broke apart above me, I spilled easily and noiselessly into the water.

  Then I sank.

  Chapter 2

  I’d started my journey with a frenetic prowl of the coven’s outer sanctum while the elders held court in the main hall. It had been one of the rare times I’d been allowed to enter that auspicious building at all since Freya had passed away.

  In truth, I’d been allowed admittance only precious few times before that in my entire twenty-three years. The main hall was for the elite of the coven, led by the coven keeper herself, Ianna. She kept court with half a dozen council elders and two crones who were respected on the isle for their wisdom and age but held no real position of power.

  Freya had been one of those crones—the second one in nearly three decades. I’d always believed it was her fostering of me, an abandoned infant with the suspect blue eyes so feared in the hollow, that kept her from being voted in as coven keeper. The thought of it always stung, making my cheeks burn from the ache of missing her.

  Her loyalty to me had come at such a deep price; she must have regretted saving me from the foggy shores of Avalon in the first place. I couldn’t imagine what kindness bid her rescue an infant who was no doubt some sort of changeling born to the other realm, one who didn’t fit the hollow it was abandoned to any more than the one it had slipped through.

  Because there were many hollows, we all knew that, even if there weren’t so many portals through them anymore. Ages ago, we had all lived in ignorance of the other realms: fae, witch, and human alike thought their world the only one, with only the occasional slip through until Acura, the Dark Fae Lord tried to win possession of it all. He’d broken the seals and evil seeped in through the cracks.

  It was only with the aid of the queen of the good Fae that the world managed to survive at all, and even then the battle took its toll. Evil dissipated, yes, but into the very ground and air that sustained life and dark magics crept back in. Each hollow, named for the thirteen princesses that were sacrifice to the victory, became victim again to the dark magic. Ours, Coventina, named for the youngest’s final resting place, became sour with black magic and so too, did she. Some said she rose from her slumber and was out there somewhere, waiting to gather enough dark power to rid the world of all light.

  I chewed at my nails as I paced the outer sanctum, almost unaware I was doing so until I bit into the quick of my little finger and the pain made my hand pull free of my mouth. I tasted blood and had to make my way to one of the wall torches that some witch had thoughtfully spelled with light. There, right at the quick of the nailbed, was a bead of fluid that, in the hazy blue light of magic, looked almost purple. I sighed for the dozenth time since I had started pacing. How many minutes had gone by? I was sick of waiting.

  “Sweet Miriam,” I muttered to the finger. “Those old biddies must want me to die out here.”

  “Is there something wrong with you?” came a voice from the shadows.

  I perked up, realizing I wasn’t alone. Someone had heard me. More interesting, that someone had actually spoken to me.

  “Just that I’m tired of waiting,” I said as I peered into the depths of darkness that puddled in the corners where the light from the spelled torches couldn’t reach. I couldn’t make out more than a black cloa
k and a pale hand reaching up for a guttered sconce. The hand paused before it could spell the sconce to light again.

  “Who are you?” A wary question from the owner of the hand.

  The voice was juvenile, the hand I caught sight of too low to be that of an adult. Great. I was talking to one of the young witches.

  “Everly,” I said, half expecting that to be the end of it.

  But the girl came out from the shadows and waved her hand awkwardly over the space in front of her eyes. A brief bit of light conjured from the air and flared just long enough for me to see her face. It was customary when greeting another witch outside the reach of a magicked sconce or torch to feed the darkness with enough of her own energy to light her features. Like the archaic practice of shaking hands with the weapon hand, it showed who was there and that they could be trusted.

  I didn’t conjure any light for the girl. She’d only balk at the sight of my flaming red hair and scuttle back into the shadows when the light made my blue irises almost purple in the face of the magic. After all, that was what happened every other time. I could have imagined it a neat parlor trick if I hadn’t grown so weary of scaring the children.

  “What are they doing in there?” she said, inching so close I ended up backing away from her. “I mean, they’ve been in there way past natural magic tutelage.”

  I sighed and took to pacing again. I didn’t need full light to make out where I was going anyway—none of us did—but I ended up jamming my boot into the leg of a table I’d not expected to be there. It clattered and toppled, and I staggered over the upended thing as I tried to maintain my footing.

  Sure. Look bad in front of the novice. I was better than that, usually—far more graceful, due to the daily asatanas I practiced. But it was the fact that the kid had kept talking to me even after she knew my name that disconcerted me. I imagined everyone on the isle of Avalon knew of me. Her insistence on being friendly made something in my chest burn.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. This time, her hands touched my bare arm, and I nearly bolted like a skittish squirrel. I swore in surprise, and she clucked at me the way one of the elders would.

  “I’m peachy,” I said, yanking my arm away. “And who the hell knows what they’re doing in there. They certainly didn’t think I was worth telling.”

  “The tutors said they were talking about the twin falling stars.” Her hands reached out to grip the legs of the table. In short order, I felt the edge of it brush against my thigh as she righted it. “Do you think that’s what they’re doing?”

  I groaned and turned on my heel, heading for the door. I’d be damned if I’d explain what was going on. It wasn’t as if I really knew, after all. I’d been commanded here, and for the last three hours, I had done as was bid. That didn’t mean I had to go over the details—the few I knew—with a juvenile witch just because she didn’t run off at the mention of my name.

  “Twin stars mating in the sky to light the darkness with fire,” I said, almost by rote.

  It was a portent we’d repeated for years in our classes, in our worship and remembrance of Miriam. Miriam was the Coventina witch who pushed back against the blackest of magics and managed to protect what goodness there was by siphoning it all from the hollow. Goodness lived and was in harbour somewhere, no doubt with the light that went with it. I could never understand why that was a good thing.

  All I knew was that our hollow shared darkness with fae and human as well as the witches of Avalon, and the tale was on every witch’s tongue the same as the prophecy that spoke of light streaking across the sky to announce a saviour.

  Except this harbinger hadn’t been twin stars that had fallen from the night sky. It had been a streak of red light that swept the horizon from one end to the other. Some said the stars had collided. Some said the human realm had let go some awful weapon meant to steal the rest of the hollow’s light and use it to banish their darkness for good.

  Here on the isle, the oracle said it was the sign she had been waiting for. The one that portended the child who would bring light back to the entire hollow.

  Everyone gasped at the words—even me. The Tale of Miriam was old, but no one really believed the prophecies within it. Not anymore. We’d grown too callous as the darkness edged inside each of us, infecting the same way it did humans and Fae. No one was immune.

  Imagine it. Just hours ago, I’d begun the day as I started most—alone in my stuffy chamber where I slept far too little for my liking and practiced my asatanas far too often for anyone else’s. Like most days, I ate before I trained, swallowing down an early breakfast of a single darkheart pear that we grew on the isle under the light of magical fire, a thick slice of black bread with honey spread so heavy it made the dry crust stick to my teeth, and a tall glass of goat’s milk. I waited until it was good and clotted in my stomach before I used the sense of full-bellied nausea to bring out the training sweats.

  Nothing trained a warrior better than forcing her body to react and obey when all her energy was being spent on digesting. It was a grueling, disgusting exercise, but it hardened my resolve better than the bitterness of facing my peers every day.

  I was sweating and hissing focusing breaths to remind my body who was boss when the lesser of Ianna’s minions, the sour-faced Aline, came to me. No one cared anymore if I ate, slept, studied my arts, or practiced my much-maligned warrior skills. They thought those activities wasted on the likes of a witch. No witch worth her salt needed to know how to fight when she had her magic to protect her. My rigorous and solitary devotion to the asatanas was just one more excuse for them to ignore me. So, when she came and caught me sweating in the middle of a pose—one that very nearly took her eye from her socket as she burst through the door—I knew something mighty big was up.

  When she smiled, I knew I was screwed.

  “Screwed,” I said, spinning on my heel and prowling back in the direction I’d come.

  The young witch shifted to the side as I swept past her, forcing her back into the shadows as I advanced on the door to the main hall. “What?”

  “Screwed,” I repeated as I faced the door. I put my palm against it. “But the oracle isn’t always right. She can’t be.”

  I was talking to myself in hushed whispers, fully absorbed in listening for voices on the other side. Did I hear my name in there? Had someone just said I would need to face some deadly peril? I leaned closer, laying my ear against the wood.

  The girl’s voice came from directly behind me, startling me.

  “You saw the oracle?”

  I barely registered the sound of awe in her voice. I was trying to listen to what was going on inside the room.

  “I did.” I waved my hand at her to shush her. She’d feel the movement if she didn’t already see the currents running along my fingers, making wavering puddles of light to illuminate the edges of my body. “She came out of the cistern for five whole minutes. We all saw. But she has to be wrong. There’s precedent for it, actually, now I think about it.”

  “That’s a big word,” she said, and I blew a blast of irritable air out my nose. Someone thumped the wood on their side, no doubt catching us trying to listen.

  I whirled around to face the girl. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  We were the only two in the outer sanctuary, and that had to mean every other witch was inside while the young ones had been left to sleep their last few hours before tutelage. Remnants of magical light still swept over her features. She was cute in a way, but so much like every other witch in Avalon that I was a bit disappointed.

  “I had to pee,” she said evenly. “I saw them all come in here. Do you really think the oracle made a mistake?”

  “I hope so,” I muttered.

  Every witch on the isle knew as much about each oracle as they knew about their own histories. It was part of the training for them to know, and if a witch ever wanted to enter the guild hall, she had better be able to recite the history.

  So, yes. There
had been a time during the eons that an oracle had made a mistake. Take, for instance, the child oracle who foretold Coventina’s rise from her death, bringing about an evil energy so great it rooted itself into the ground and spread to human and Fae alike. That disaster would spread in its wake until the hollows of the world would be left bereft of civilization.

  The oracle had been wrong then. She would be wrong now. She had to be. Except as I paced the outer sanctum with the fortuitous words of today’s oracle playing across my lips, I realized with horror that the child oracle of an eon ago, branded as a false prophet, had been correct after all.

  The hollow was a mess. Despite the sacrifices and wardings of the benevolent Miriam, things had got worse. Darkness had infected too many in the Fae and human realms, and even on the witch’s isle—where the legendary Avalon had been said to reside—they could feel the approach of everlasting darkness like a virus that left the soul black as pitch.

  Things were going exactly the way the child oracle had said it would. And that meant the precedent I was clinging to was, in fact, no precedent at all. And that meant I was in trouble. That all the Fae realm, witch realm, and human realm were in trouble.

  I heard my own nervous laughter as I came up against a plinth that no longer held a statue of Miriam because the nose had fallen off and such defacement made the witch coven look shabby. I had managed to hear some fortuitous words before I’d been evicted from the main hall. Even in the outer sanctum now, I felt giddy when I thought of them.

  One single human child to light the darkness. A human with the gift to cleanse the world of darkness and hold the long-siphoned energy Miriam had bottled up for the hollow. Darkness could retreat in the face of light once again. Let balance of day and evening fall back over us.

  I’d been elated when I heard it, even murmured the ecstasy prayer along with the rest of the coven. I even said the words aloud as I clicked across the tiles now.

  One single human child. Those words had a ring to them. A witch might giggle with the delight of knowing the world she had lived in for so long might finally be free of eternal shadow.