A pulse of raw magic shoots through the air and someone older, darker, and far more powerful than the High Mother or the enforcers is here. The wards are being triggered. The Senior Circle is awake and aware.
I don’t run. I won’t.
I stay rooted to the ground, letting my magic swirl around me like a protective shield, even as my breath catches in my throat. This was the plan—to tear down the wards, to break the system. But the cost is higher than I expected. The price is them.
And they’re coming.
Agonizingly slowly. Deliberately slowly, their footsteps heavy with power, and their eyes sharp and full of judgment.
I hear more screams coming from the coven house on the hill, brought to me in the breeze of change blowing through this world. My sisters are panicking and rising, preparing for an onslaught that isn’t their doing. They’re readying themselves for whatever comes next, and their magic surges around me, passing by me like specters spiriting through a graveyard.
The High Mother’s voice shouts over the chaos, her fury a crackling thread in the air. “Zara! What have you done?”
I glance up, meeting her gaze, but it’s not the High Mother I’m worried about now. She’s just a puppet of the system, a woman who’s forgotten what it means to be free. I’m watching the shadows, waiting for the flickers of movement that will be too fast to track—warlocks, senior enforcers, the actual leaders of the coven who can destroy me with a single word.
They’ll surround me, and their power will contain me. I can’t withstand them, not all of them. I might have stood a chance against one, but not if the entire circle comes for me. My end is inevitable and the only question is how long it’ll bebefore they finish me.
I’ve left them no choice but to retaliate, and now I must face this.
“All Hail the Queen of nothing,” I chant, waiting for my coven to appear. The shadows swirling around me solidify as my sisters emerge from the ether. The first to step into view is Aleris, her dark hair flowing behind her like a shadow of her fury. She’s the one who taught me everything about control—her cold, calculating gaze, her ability to bend magic to her will. I used to think she was wise, but now I see nothing but a traitor in her eyes.
“What have you done?” she demands, her voice tight with rage. “You’ve destroyed everything we’ve worked for, everything the coven has built. You’ve ruined us.”
I stand taller, my chin raised.
“I’ve freed us,” I snap, my voice ringing out with the strength of my defiance. “You lack the courage to see it.”
Her lips curl into a sneer. “Freed us? We were never meant to be free, Zara. We’re bound to each other, to the coven, to the magic that sustains us. This is the way it’s always been.”
I shake my head, feeling the magic crackling around me, demanding to be unleashed. “I’m not bound. Not anymore.”
The others gather behind her, the entire coven; their faces are masks of disappointment, anger, and betrayal. They move in closer, circling me like wolves, their magic flaring, wrapping around me in suffocating coils. They know what I’ve done. They know the cost of it. But I can’t stop now and this cannot be undone.
The air thickens, the magic pressing down on me from all sides, and I feel the weight of their combined anger bearing down like a physical blow. Their eyes flare and their fingers flick, each of their breaths a hiss that spits their anger at me as I refuse to yield or show any remorse.
“Better a fleeting dream than a lifetime of chains,” I snarl at them.
The High Mother steps forward, her eyes darker than I ever seen them. “You’re a fool, Zara,” she hisses, her tone venomous. “You’ve tried to break order, but you’ve condemned us all instead.”
