by Cole, Tillie
“I knew he wouldn’t hurt me,” Noa said, voice bored.
“How?” Jo shook her head. “I love you, Noa. We all do. But despite how well you can fight, Diel’s height and build alone could have taken you down. If he’d wanted to, he could have killed you.”
“He wouldn’t have hurt me,” Noa said again, knowing in her cold heart that it was true.
“But how did you know?” Beth asked, all big brown eyes, soft pretty features and pink cheeks.
Noa reached for the fruit bowl in the center of the table and took out a red apple. She bit a chunk from it, letting the sweet juice trickle down her throat.
Dinah lifted her hands from the table, eyes still fixed on Noa. She closed her eyes, sighed, then opened them again. “It’s back, isn’t it?”
Noa just chewed on her apple, slowly, measuredly. She swallowed the chunk that was in her mouth then wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “It never went away.” Noa placed her half-eaten piece of fruit on the table. She smirked as she thought of the Garden of Eden. The Fall. The introduction of sin to the world. Eve, the so-called temptress who brought paradise to its knees.
“What didn’t?” Naomi asked, her soft lisp sounding like a whisper.
But Noa’s attention was still fixed on Dinah. “It lives in them all too,” she said, knowing Dinah understood exactly what she was saying. Noa leaned back in her chair. “I buried it. Pushed it down deep, you know I did. But it still lived. It was still there.” Noa tapped her ear. “I could still hear its heartbeat.” She tapped her chest. “Could still feel it breathing down deep.” She looked at the apple again, her head tipped to the side. “Like a coiled snake, waiting … just … waiting …”
“What the hell are we talking about?” Candace asked, her focus snapping back and forth between Noa and Dinah in confusion. Their other sisters were no different.
“You can fight it.” Sympathy shone in Dinah’s dark eyes. Noa huffed a humorless laugh. Dinah ignored it. “You can fight it. You have done before.”
“I’m tired.” Noa lowered her eyes, her voice breaking as she let a sliver of vulnerability burst through. She was safe with her sisters.
It was safe.
She heard Dinah’s quick inhale. Tears filled Noa’s eyes, and she looked up to see that Dinah’s were shining too. “They embrace it,” Noa said, talking about the Fallen. “They don’t shy from who they are.” A lump gathered in her throat. She tried to swallow, but it hurt. Noa felt the ice around her heart thaw; she felt it crack. “Is it so bad?” Her voice was now a whisper. “Who I really am? I would never hurt any of you.” She blinked fast, just to clear her vision.
Dinah shook her head as she brushed wayward tears from her cheeks. “No,” she rasped. “Of course not.”
“It’s been eating me alive,” Noa said, referring to the darkness that lay within her. “Like a wound that wouldn’t heal.” She rubbed at her throat. “Like a scream that couldn’t escape, couldn’t be heard.”
Dinah’s eyes squeezed shut. “Noa—”
Noa cut her off. “He understands.”
She thought back to the folly. The fight. The clashing of wills. Her inner darkness melding itself to his.
Noa met Dinah’s stare. “He’s like me.” Noa’s neck felt heavy as she imagined being under the metal collar that had controlled Diel for so long. “He’s exactly like me. I may have only just met him, but when someone gets you, truly gets you, recognizes the fucked-up thing inside you and shares it too, you may as well have known them a lifetime.” Noa blinked, grounding herself back in the here and now, in the kitchen with all her sisters watching her. She sat up straight.
“Things are changing.” Noa glanced out of the window. The sun was bursting through heavy gray clouds, illuminating the grounds in a dusky yellow glow. The mass of tall trees swayed in the wind, and she could almost feel its coldness against her face, feel the elements swirling around her, infusing her with energy—air, water, fire, wind and the aether.
Her hand moved to her chest, to the pentagram that had been burned onto her skin by the Witch Finders. Her fingers traveled along each point. The brand seemed to heat beneath them as she let an echo of her past into her heart.
The Lady will guide you, she heard a voice whisper into her ear. The familiar female voice brought comfort. Her tone settled any frayed nerves in Noa’s body. Follow your senses …
Noa had been pulled to Diel. Something had instantly steered her toward him.
The boy … the collar …
Had it been a guide? Had it been part of a grander plan that was yet unclear?
“I should never have pushed it down inside me.” Noa met her sisters’ gazes. “Priscilla warned me not to. She told me not to shun who I was, that it would be as corrosive as acid poured straight onto the flesh of my heart. That it would hurt more than any pain I’d ever felt, to suppress myself. She told me to embrace all parts of me. No matter how fucked up they were. She told me to be completely myself … especially after years of being punished for who we were, how we were raised, our families.” Noa’s voice shook as she said that, but she cleared her throat and finished, “Pris told me to be Noa, and nobody else.”
“And who are you?” Beth asked gently.
“Both good and bad,” Noa said. Just speaking those words aloud freed something caged inside her. “Both darkness and light.” Like Diel. Just like Diel. Diel had worn a physical collar to curb who he truly was. Noa had worn one too—hers had simply been internal and invisible.
Dinah rounded the table and crouched down beside Noa. She searched Noa’s face—for what, Noa didn’t know. Dinah took hold of Noa’s hand. “You think because you have darkness within you, we would love you any less?”
Noa scanned Dinah’s beautiful face, her dark skin and deep brown eyes. “You helped me drown it. Suppress it.”
Dinah shook her head. “No.” Her voice was steel, the grip on Noa’s hand growing tighter. “You were falling apart. You were letting the guilt consume you. You shunned that part of yourself to protect your heart from shattering. We only wanted to support you. Help you in whatever way we could.”
Noa refused to let her mind wander back to that day. To the way she had crumbled, to the self-hatred that had made her break apart. She had sliced herself in two, and the only way to carry on had been to bury the violent side of her deep down. Because that anger, that pure rage that she had channeled into destroying the Brethren, had only helped take an innocent life. A young life she was meant to save. One just like her … like Diel …
“I can’t drown it anymore,” Noa confessed. Her sisters gathered around her.
Dinah lifted her chin. “We love Priscilla. Not despite of her darkness, but because that’s who she is. The darker side to her soul doesn’t make us love her any less than we do each other.” Dinah looked at each member of the Coven. “What we went through, what those men did to us … There’s no judgment for who we are, how we turned out. They condemned us. They punished us for who we are. We, this so-called Coven, will never judge anyone. That’s not who we are as people.”
Noa’s taut body began to relax as she drank in Dinah’s words. She thought of Priscilla and wondered what she was doing right now. How many Brethren had she had taken out on her own? Priscilla had always believed her path was one to be walked alone. Noa had known otherwise. Priscilla had seen herself as too different from the rest of the Coven to stay. But she had been loved by them all, unconditionally. Priscilla thought she could never be among them and truly be herself. But from the second Noa had seen Gabriel with the Fallen, seen the love and understanding that existed among them, she had known it was possible.
Priscilla belonged with them. They all shared the same goal. They had all experienced the same fucked-up childhoods.
She was their sister. It was time she came home.
Noa wanted Priscilla back. Especially now she knew she would never hide the darker side of herself ever again. Especially now that the Coven had found the Fal
len—men just as ruthless and fucked up as Noa and Priscilla were.
“We love you,” Dinah said at last, and Noa smirked at her sister, and some of the frayed fibers of her soul seemed to seal themselves.
“And I love you witches too,” Noa said, humor in her voice, and her sisters, one by one, kissed her head. “Okay, that’s enough.” She shooed them away. Her sisters stepped back, laughing.
Candace waggled her eyebrows. “What’s wrong? Now you have Diel, do our kisses no longer measure up?”
Noa got to her feet. “Speaking of …” She headed for the kitchen door, then looked back. “I’m going to find him. Don’t wait up.” Noa had barely made it into the hallway when she heard footsteps behind her. When she turned, Beth was there, face pale and her teeth worrying her bottom lip.
Beth had always been the one Noa had wanted to protect most of all, the one who felt most like a little sister to her. The seizures and severe panic attacks she endured, the timidness that plagued her, only disappearing when it was time to rescue the children from the Brethren.
“You feeling okay?” Noa stepped closer to Beth and searched her face. Beth’s eyes were huge like a doe’s, dark pools shimmering with worry and fear. She was reserved and meek, as if her spirit was displaced, lost, searching for a way out of this underground world they had been thrust—unwillingly—into. Beth ran her hand over her slender neck.
Noa’s eyes narrowed. “Do you feel sick? Feel another episode coming on?” Beth ducked her gaze and shook her head. Noa stepped close again, putting her hand on Beth’s arm. “Beth, talk to—”
“What did feel like?” Beth asked quietly. Her cheeks blazed. Noa frowned, not understanding the question. Beth’s eyes flicked up, trying to look at anything but Noa.
“Beth?”
“Being with Diel …”
It took Noa a few seconds to realize Beth was asking about sex. Noa’s heart fell and she was immediately filled with sorrow. Beth feared romantic intimacy.
Beth took a deep breath. “Did … did it hurt? Like the times they took us in the Circle?”
The sorrow Noa had been feeling soured, then heated into molten fury. This is what the Brethren had done to her sister. All her sisters had been affected somehow. Every time they had been taken against their will, every time they had been hurt—mentally, physically, emotionally—it had stolen something from them. Something that they would never get back.
Noa steadied her breathing, keeping calm. Beth was waiting for Noa to speak. Slipping her hand into Beth’s, Noa said, “It was good.” Noa smiled. “No pain. No force.” She lowered her forehead to Beth’s, and Beth relaxed at the contact. “It was by choice, and that …” Noa trailed off as she realized the truth of her own words. Her heart started beating too fast, her pulse drumming a new kind of rhythm. She thought of Diel—she hadn’t felt any fear being with him, no trepidation. She hadn’t felt in danger. She hadn’t felt any kind of hesitation …
“That what?” Beth whispered, pulling Noa from her thoughts.
Noa took a deep breath. She’d needed Diel. And she hadn’t fought that want. She hadn’t run from whatever unseen force was drawing them together.
Listen to your senses … Noa heard that distant voice again, and she let it seep into her soul. She let her heart trust what had been taken from her, the precious voice that had been silenced when Noa was still a child.
“Choice.” A lump built in Noa’s throat. But she didn’t chase it. She let it sit there, let it carry the emotions she had held back as they built within her, to be explored, not pushed away.
Never to be pushed away again.
Noa cupped Beth’s soft cheek and met her eyes. “It’s choice, Bethy. You get to choose to be with someone. Choose how to do it. Choose to stop if you want to.” She inhaled, letting the cool air quell her anger. “It’s choice. It’s always been about choice. And, last night, I chose him. He chose me.” Noa ran her finger down Beth’s cheek. “One day, if you ever find someone you like, you will have that choice too. The Witch Finders can never take that from us again.”
Beth smiled, and it just about broke Noa’s heart to see it. It didn’t happen often. Despite the darkness that existed in her, Noa loved her sisters. She adored them completely and would protect them with everything she was.
“You were always the bravest one among us,” Beth said.
Noa shook her head. “That’s far from the truth.” She kissed Beth’s head, then stepped back, moving closer to the tunnel to the manor.
As Noa reached the door, Beth asked, “Do you trust them? The Fallen?” Concern shone on her pretty face.
“Do you trust me?” Noa asked, knowing Beth would understand the unspoken additional question—even with darkness in my veins?
Beth’s face softened. “Of course. Priscilla too. You’re my sisters. My family. I never cared that you both were different in that way.” She shrugged. “We all have demons, things that haunt us. Not a single one of us is ‘normal’ after what we’ve been through. Look at me.” Beth stared down at the blue veins on her wrist, ghosting over them with her fingertips. “We’re all plagued with something …” She shook her head, pulling herself from whatever poison she felt swelling the cages of her veins. “Are … are they simply that way too? The Fallen? Plagued in their own individual ways?”
A weight in Noa’s chest lifted as she listened to Beth’s unique way of explaining the fucked-up ways their personal traumas had manifested in each of them.
“You can trust them.” Noa turned, and she heard Beth walking away back into the kitchen. Noa opened the door and sealed herself inside the tunnel. She had only taken four steps around the first corner when she saw movement ahead, someone rushing toward her.
Her body stilled, instinctively bracing to fight, but as she observed the shadowy figure darting toward her, she recognized the broad shoulders, the tall frame and the messy hair.
Her body relaxed, and suddenly Diel was in front of her, eyes wild in the low light. He pressed her up against the wall, and she allowed it.
She welcomed it.
Diel’s body crushed against her. Just as it had been in the folly last night, she was smothered by him, completely consumed. He still wore no shirt, still wore the same jeans as last night and this morning. It was clear that he hadn’t showered yet after the gym, after their joining. He had been waiting for her to return. That thought made electricity sizzle in her chest.
Diel pressed his nose into her neck, then he moved his head until his face hovered before hers. “You were taking too fucking long.”
Noa smiled and dragged her hands through his hair, her nails scraping along his scalp. He growled. “Poor pretty monster,” she mocked. But she kept a smile on her face.
Diel’s eyes twitched, then on a long groan, he crushed his lips against hers. His tongue plunged into her mouth, and Noa became lost to his taste, to the control he exerted. Her back scraped against the wall and she yanked on his hair.
His hands dropped to her ass. He squeezed, and she felt his hard cock pressing between her legs. She moaned into his mouth as his hand lowered from her ass cheek to her thigh. Gripping the back of her leg, he hoisted it up around his hip. She couldn’t take any more. The heat between them was rising to scalding temperatures.
Ripping her mouth from his, Noa grabbed his cheeks to stop him from taking her lips again. Diel’s pupils were blown, his skin flushed and damp. “Take me to your bed,” Noa said. Diel didn’t even pause, not a single second of deliberation as he scooped her other leg around his hips and headed toward the manor as if Noa was as light as air.
Noa slid her arms around his ruined neck and laid kiss after kiss along his scarred skin. She could feel his hardness against her pussy. She ground her hips against him, and pins and needles spread over her skin, lighting her up like a torch. Diel groaned, a snarling, savage sound. She ground harder against him. She glanced behind her and saw the door to the manor just in reach.
But they never made it that far
.
As Noa pushed against Diel’s cock, he turned and lowered her to the ground, ripping the leathers off her legs. Noa yanked open the fly of his jeans. There was no waiting, no foreplay, no sucking or licking; Diel lined himself up at her entrance and slammed inside her.
Noa’s nails sliced at his back, making him bleed. But she knew Diel lived for it. His inner monster would be yearning for more, for the heady mixture of pleasure and pain.
She could feel him everywhere. It was as if he wasn’t just a body. As if it was not only his cock that was inside her, thrusting and fucking and blowing her previously guarded world apart. In that moment, Diel became the sixth element to Noa. His energy was more than air, fire, earth, water and the spirit. He was the very center of the pentagram; he was its throbbing heart.
Diel crashed his lips to Noa’s, and she savored his tongue against hers, the feel of his stubble against her cheeks. They were a cocktail of grunts and groans and slapping flesh. Warmth wrapped around her as her orgasm began to build. Diel pulled back and looked directly into her eyes. She was trapped in his gaze—he was all she could see.
“Noa,” Diel whispered as his jaw slackened and his eyes lost focus. Noa’s skin burned, then as she broke apart, he spilled inside her, and she felt complete. Her tensed body relaxed, and she fought for breath as she lay on the cold stone floor.
She closed her eyes, and all she saw was a full moon in her mind’s eye. She could smell incense; she could see flowing gowns of white. She heard the crackling of a roaring fire, gentle feminine chanting and laughter, and feet padding on soft grass.
Then there was red. There were screams, fear and desperation.
Blood … so much blood …
Noa snapped open her eyes. Diel was watching her with furrowed brows. “Where did you just go?” he asked.
Noa’s heart thudded in warning, and she cleared her head as she had been so accustomed to doing throughout her life.
