Coven Keepers (Dark Fae Hollows Book 10)

by Thea Atkinson

  “How old are your parents?” I asked.

  “Dead by the time I was ten.”

  An orphan then, as I expected. I thought about those two markers I was told to look for, and how the oracle had been wrong about the savior being a child. Might she also have been wrong about a savior in the first place? Was I just clinging to a ridiculous hope?

  “I was told to look for an orphan with natural light,” I said, shoving the doubt back where it belonged. “I thought it was Uriel, but your light—”

  “My light is painful,” he said. “There’s too much energy in it.” He shifted suddenly as though a thought had occurred to him.

  “What?” I said. “Are the grim ones here? The Fae?”

  He must have let go of Uriel because he gripped my shoulders in excitement. I felt his face hovering just above my own. “My light,” he said. “If the Fae want it, if the Fae can use it, maybe you can too.”

  “No, it won’t work,” I said, shaking my head.

  As pleased as I was to think he cared enough to feed me some of his energy, I knew it wouldn’t work. Like the Fae, a witch’s power could only be renewed from the thing that it sprang from. We didn’t have the same sort of life force humans did. It was why the Fae chose to steal energy from the humans and not the witches. There was something unique about a human’s life force that the other covens did not enjoy.

  “Thanks,” I said, almost shyly, “But it won’t work.”

  Uriel stretched and climbed over Ari’s lap to find me, then wrapped his arms around my waist. He snuggled in tight, and I found my arms going around him. I didn’t want any of this to end, so I had to get us moving.

  “So will you go?” I asked, testing HIM. I thought perhaps by now, he might’ve been softened enough to agree.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But you have to pay me.”

  “I don’t have anything.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  He lifted Uriel from my lap, and I thought I could see him place the boy on his other side. I was certain of it when he pulled off his jacket and snapped it open. His lumen shone through his shirt enough that I could see him laying the spread jacket over the boy like a blanket. He turned to me then, reaching for me and pulling me up onto his lap the same as the boy had been. I meant to resist, but didn’t. In fact, I was surprised to find myself helping him where I could, wrapping my legs around his back.

  I thought he might kiss me again, and tiny ants were crawling over my skin in anticipation. I wanted it. More than I cared to admit. If this was what he asked for payment, I would gladly give it. It might be all I would get to enjoy in this entire life, and knowing I’d never make it back to the isle made me crave it more.

  “Put your arms around me,” he said. “You’re shivering.”

  I hadn’t realized it until he said it, but it was true. Now that I was enclosed in his embrace, with the heat radiating out from his chest, I knew exactly how cold I was.

  “What do you want?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “Not now,” he said. “You can pay me later. Now you need to rest.”

  He lay his palm against my ear and pressed my head into his chest. I could hear his heart beating in there, rapid and thunderous. I thought I might never be able to close my eyes, not in this realm, not with the feel of his arms around me, but I must have.

  As dark as it was, it went darker still as I snuggled in and let unconsciousness take me.

  Chapter 19

  I woke to a kink in my neck and discovered that at some point I had burrowed so deep into Ari’s body that I had wrapped my legs around his and wormed my arms around his torso. Realizing it, I lay for several long moments, not daring to move, hoping he would think I was still asleep. What was he thinking as I’d snaked halfway around his body like a lover might? Did he put up with it because he knew it would be over soon? Had he woke me up because he was tired of my heavy legs twined in his?

  Sweet Miriam, if I’d done anything in my sleep that I would be ashamed of…

  “You’re not shivering anymore,” he said.

  So much for pretending. The man seemed to know everything. I sighed, running ran my hand over the back of my neck to rub at the knot. It rebounded against the pad of my finger and coiled itself tighter. A dusktree nut, that was what it felt like, all rippled and hard.

  It might have stuck to my neck for hours if he hadn’t quietly followed the trail of my fingers with his. Calloused fingertips rested over my hand and burrowed beneath my fingers to find the knot. I moaned out loud as he kneaded it free.

  That dark and smoky chuckle again. I imagined he could feel how hot my skin flushed beneath his fingers and was mocking me. I yanked his hand free of my throat.

  “Don’t do that,” I snapped. “Where’s Uriel?”

  “Curled up like a kitten and snoring happily in his little burrow.”

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Not long, really,” he said. “About an hour if I had to guess. Did you know that you kick in your sleep?”

  “Kick?”

  “Yes, kick,” he said. “I had to pin your legs down with mine so you’d stop ramming your boots in my shins.”

  I wasn’t sure whether I should be mortified or relieved. I settled on relieved because at least I knew that it hadn’t just been some unspoken desire that made my legs seek companionship with his.

  “Habit, I guess,” I mumbled, trying to extricate myself from him and failing. At first, I thought it was because I was still too exhausted and spent, but then I realized it was because my legs were asleep.

  I planted my palm against his chest, thinking to ease myself off him slowly as my legs regained oxygen. He snared my wrist and pulled it back around his waist. I ended up half lying on his chest, my face close to his. I had the feeling he could see everything in my face as I tried to pull up some sort of stoic mask.

  “What’s the hurry?” he whispered. “There hasn’t been a single grim one in the last hour.”

  “Still, we should get going,” I said, twisting away so he couldn’t see me struggle to keep my expression clear of all the emotions racing through me. Not the least of which was anxiety.

  My heart was already hammering in my chest. Lying here with him was far too unnerving to think at all. Each thud of his heart against mine just made things worse. I needed to get off him and get on my feet. Get moving. Things would be better then. I could think. Focus.

  “Get up,” I said, trying to roll off him and ending up stretched halfway across his chest. “We can’t just lay around here like shadow-slugs.”

  He gripped me by the shoulders and eased me backward so I could find a seat next to him on the ground.

  “I liked you better when you were sleeping,” he grumbled.

  “You and a hundred other people.”

  “People don’t like you?” he said with a drawl. “I find that hard to believe.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was teasing or not. I thought it safer to believe the latter. I shook my legs out against the pavement, trying to ignore the warm sensation that ran over my skin at his words. That he liked me at all—even sleeping—made a small thing flutter in my chest.

  “I can’t think of a single person alive who likes me. Not even in my coven.” I picked at the material over my knee. “They’re scared of me.”

  It was a difficult admission, and I couldn’t believe I had said it out loud. And to him of all people.

  His palm went to the top of my head, sending down an incredible blast of heat. “Because of this hair, no doubt,” he said. “This awful beautiful hair.”

  He said it with such a longing in his tone that I couldn’t bear the way my chest ached hearing it. I had to push myself to my feet and turn away from him. Everything hurt in my body. Even something deeper than tissues ached.

  “My hair,” I said, testing my voice because my legs didn’t seem to want to obey me. “I wish it was something as simple as that.”

  I flapped my arms aga
inst the outside of my thighs. There, the feeling was coming back. Prickles were already shocking their way through my muscles. That would help. I stomped my foot, trying to force the oxygen all the way down. For a second, I thought I might faint as something swam behind my ears like they were filled with water.

  I had a quick image of the kraken, the way it had slid its tentacles up over my boat, seeking me in silence, waiting to grab for me when I least expected it. I arched backward, cracking my spine. It was just stiffness, that was all. I wouldn’t think about the kraken.

  I had the feeling he had propped himself up on his elbow and was looking at me with his preternatural vision. “So what makes them hate you so much?” he said.

  I didn’t want to think about it, let alone talk about it with him. It made me uncomfortable, and I was already feeling strangely weak. The last thing I wanted to do was think about something that made me all angry and squishy inside.

  “Well?” he said again.

  My arms flew out to my sides, agitated. I stomped my feet and started to pace, testing the strength in my legs and finding them unreliable. That wasn’t a good sign. Of all things I could count on, it was my muscles. I trained long and hard for hours to make sure that if I could do nothing else, I could run.

  I spun around too fast and had to put my hand out to steady myself. Another bad sign.

  I would have to hold back any power that I had left if I wanted to get back to the water’s edge. I still didn’t know how I was going to get back to Avalon. If I had any strength left to call to my magic, I’d better reserve it

  “Who knows why they hate me? Everything. One thing. My eyes, my hair, the fact I can pull magic to me without using incantations or tricks.”

  “You can do that?” he said from somewhere around my feet. I imagined him lying on the beach when I’d arrived, no doubt watching me struggle my way to shore, waiting until I pretty much stepped on him before he let me know he was there.

  I tilted my chin, thinking he might see that, too. I was pretty proud of my skill. Even if everyone on Avalon hated me, I’d always had that.

  “Yes,” I said. “And they can’t. They’re jealous. That’s all. Freya always told me so.”

  It was dangerous territory, and I knew it. I’d been avoiding thinking about the specifics of the people in Avalon all this time, only letting myself get so far as delivering the chosen one and imagining myself accepted. But I knew the truth. They did hate me. They were jealous. After all was said and done, I knew that even if I managed to bring the chosen one back to the isle, they would find a way to steal that victory from me, too. I felt cheated, and I hadn’t even got a chance to finish the game.

  Just saying those things reminded me how hopeless the endeavor was. It was one I could never truly win. In the end, I hadn’t come because I wanted to save the world. I knew that as clearly as I felt the needles stabbing into my muscles.

  “They were supposed to love me,” I said. “I was supposed to bring you back, and I would be lauded and accepted and no one would care = I had the hated red hair and the evil blue eyes. I would be one of them because I had brought the chosen one home.”

  I wasn’t aware I was sniffling until I felt his arms go around me. I stepped into his embrace without thinking, clinging to him even though I heard myself sobbing. I came up to about his collarbone, and I fit perfectly against him. I felt like I belonged there. It was such a despairing thought that I cried harder.

  “I don’t want to feel this way,” I mumbled into his neck. I wasn’t sure if I meant the hatred of my coven or knowing how badly I wanted him to like me.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, laying his lips on the top of my head. “You came here, didn’t you? You found me.”

  I nodded, still miserable.

  His thumbs found the crest of my cheeks as he tilted my face upward, and he smeared my tears into my hairline. I knew he was looking at me, maybe looking all the way through me, but I didn’t have the energy to resist. All I could do was stop up the well of water running from my eyes. I had a tough time swallowing down past the tight feeling in my chest. I wanted Freya in that moment. I wanted my cell in Avalon with my uncomfortable bed and space to train. I wanted this all to be over.

  Most of all, I wanted him to enclose me in his embrace again and tell me he was going to be okay.

  “You know,” he said. “You’re thoroughly annoying.”

  He might as well have backhanded me across the cheek. It was the absolute worst time to insult me. And after all I’d gone through, baring myself like that. Trusting him. Well, fuck him.

  I struggled to get away, but he pulled me closer. The palms cupping my face held me tight as his heel hooked the back of my calf. Pinned there under his callous gaze, damn it, while I couldn’t see what he was doing, what his face might look like. I squirmed and thrashed, trying to get my foot free. I wasn’t going to just let him hold me there and listen to his insults.

  “To the holy hollows with you,” I said.

  He held me fast, even making a sound deep in his throat that indicated he was enjoying my discomfort.

  “And spiteful,” he said. “Damn, you’re spiteful. I’ve never met someone so damned spiteful,”

  “Bastard,” I said.

  His voice went all smoky again. “And so naïve it’s painful. I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop wanting to—”

  I froze, because something in me shrieked to stay still. I almost wanted to hear the rest of his declaration, but he finished it by planting his mouth on mine. At the same moment, I inhaled and breathed in the taste of him. It was like tasting candy floss and darkheart pears just coming into their season. Like I had the first time, I melted against him, fitting every crevice of my body to his, straining for the heat beneath his clothes.

  Before I could even process the searing way my skin felt all over, the way my mouth burned as he explored it with his tongue, his hands left my face and went to my thighs. Slowly, ever so slowly, those fingers whispered up to my bottom and he cupped it the way he’d cupped my face.

  I couldn’t breathe for the ache in my stomach. Everything swirled in the backs of my eyelids as though light existed right there in that small space we created. I saw prisms of color.

  Then everything went white.

  I thought I might be transformed, lit like a fire or turned into a legendary phoenix, but then the light went black again and I realized I was passing out. I sagged in his arms just as the sounds of clicks and wails sounded in the darkness around us. I heard a Fae horn cut through the black.

  I had time to hear him mumble ‘shit’ against my mouth, and then I knew no more.

  Chapter 20

  When I came to, it was to the stink of low tide and the sound of hammering peppering the darkness to my left. Ari, obviously, pounding on something with enough panic that he didn’t care how far sound carried.

  I struggled to stand and found Uriel clinging to me so fiercely that I could barely get to my feet. I elected, instead, to crouch there, letting him hang on to me.

  “How far is it?” Ari said. Of course. He saw everything. He would’ve noticed Uriel hanging onto my leg, trembling. Whatever had happened in the space of time I’d been unconscious, it terrified the boy.

  “What?” I said, trying to work out what he wanted from me.

  “How far? Avalon?”

  I tried to heft Uriel onto my hip, but he danced away from my fingers. I ended up crawling along the sand, patting the earth as I sought to find his leg or his arm. I gave up in favor of standing. Still dizzy, I tried to orient myself by the sounds of Ari’s pounding.

  “You didn’t answer,” he rasped out, and I turned to the sound of his voice. Left. Just ahead of me. If I walked my hands along the pier, I’d find him.

  “Uriel,” I called out.

  Ari shushed me impatiently. “He’s with me.”

  “How did we—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “How far is it?”

  I had
the horrible thought that he planned to make us run like fools into the waves.

  “Too far to swim,” I asserted. I didn’t need to see the water to know that.

  I needed to say that. If he thought I was going to swim to the isle, he could think again. I quailed as I imagined trying to navigate the waters where the kraken no doubt waited for his revenge.

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “We’re not swimming.”

  I heard wood splitting and a great thud as something large struck the beach. In seconds, my mind put me right back on the waters just after I’d left the isle. The kraken was tearing my boat to splinters again. I was coughing up inky blood and putrid water. I was so busy trying not to gag at the recollection that I almost missed Ari pushing his way past me.

  There was a lot of grunting after that, quite a bit of huffing and puffing, and the unmistakable sound of something being dragged across the beach.

  “You can’t be serious,” I said, realizing what he was doing. “Not a raft. Please tell me were not traveling on a raft.” We might as well serve ourselves to the kraken on a platter.

  “Do you have a better idea?” he said in a tone I was beginning to dread, one that indicated it didn’t matter if I did have a better idea. This was the way we were going.

  His hand snagged my bicep and tugged me. “Grab Uriel.”

  I almost fell but managed to catch hold of the small hand that reached up for mine. With Uriel’s hand in mine and Ari’s hand on my arm, we were tearing for the water. At least I thought it was the water. I could hear the surf somewhere in the dark.

  “It’s low tide,” I said, protesting because the thought of navigating that inky blackness terrified me even more than what might be behind us. “We should wait—”

  “We can’t wait,” he said. Listen.”

  I strained to hear in the darkness and understood finally what his harried activity meant. I could barely hear the keening sound, but I knew exactly what it meant. Not just grim ones, but the Dark Fae. All coming for us.