Kade turns a slow circle in the middle of the entry. “Okay. So what the hell do we think we’re going to find in here?”
“I don’t know.” Aaron looks down at himself and grimaces at the gray film drying on his shirt. “Can I please clean up first?”
I take the room in while they talk. Josiah’s already got his hands on something—an old book, the cover cracked and dark. Kade crosses and pulls it out of his grip. “Put that down.” Josiah lets her have it without a fight.
“The Witching Glen is spectacular.” He says it to the room, his gaze traveling the high ceiling.
“It’s a wasteland,” Aaron mutters.
“Is it?” Josiah turns those eyes on him, slow and interested. “And I wonder what a Blackwood could do with such a wasteland. Make it a paradise, perhaps.” He lifts a brow. “‘There is no wasteland. Only a garden that’s forgotten it was ever planted.’”
Aaron groans. “I don’t even know how well my magic works in here.”
“I could clean the two of you myself, if you’d let me.” Josiah spreads his hands, gracious. “It would take no time at all.”
“I’ll find a bathroom,” Aaron says. Josiah snaps his fingers.
The sound cracks through the dead room and my whole body jerks, my lion lunging up hard, because I know that snap. The last time I heard it, it ended with a warlock bursting apart all over us. I flinch back, half-braced for the spray of it.
Then I feel it leave me. The goo lifts off my skin all at once, every drop drawing up off my arms, my hair, my clothes in a fine gray dust. It breaks into smaller and smaller flecks, thinning into the air until it’s simply gone. I let go of Aaron’s hand without meaning to and stretch my arms out, turning them over, watching the last of it sparkle off my skin and vanish. I’m clean, not a trace of it left on me.
I look over and watch the same thing happen to Aaron, the gray lifting off him in the same shimmer. He isn’t marveling at it the way I am. He’s watching me. It’s like I was never drowned in warlock glue at all, and when I lift my eyes to his, he’s grinning.
“I feel clean,” I tell him. “I still want a shower.”
Kade snorts from across the room, flipping through the book she took off Josiah. “There’s nothing in here but pretty boy Eric’s treasures.”
“Did my mother have contact with him?” Aaron asks. “When she came here?”
Kade doesn’t answer right away. She turns a page she isn’t reading. “Yeah,” she says. “Here and there. Not a lot. She did her best to stay clear of him. The council, too.”
“Council?” Aaron’s brows pull together.
Kade huffs. “I don’t get why your mother never sat you down about any of this. She had her reasons for keeping you out, sure—but you should at least know how the place was run.” She taps the book shut against her palm. “A council ran the Glen. The oldest, strongest witches in the realm, generations of them holding it together. Then the dark magic drained away, and with nothing left to rule, they turned on each other. The whole realm went to war with itself, and the council didn’t survive it.”
Aaron takes a step toward her. “Who runs it now?”
“Nobody.” Kade meets his eyes. “Which is why they wanted your mother so badly. A realm with no one left to lead it, andAngie the only one who ever made it better. You heard the rest from me already—they wanted all of her, or nothing.”
Aaron’s hands curl at his sides. “I don’t understand why she didn’t take it.”
Kade gives him a hard, flat look. “Because your mother chose Seth. To lead the Glen, you have to live in the Glen. All of it, all the time. You don’t get to keep a foot on each side and call it a life. She wasn’t giving up Wintermoon, and she wasn’t giving up him.”
I cross to Aaron and lay a hand on his arm. He looks down at me, and I can see what it’s doing to him—a whole side of his mother he never knew, dropped on him at once. He drags his clean hands down his face, slow. He’s got too much in his head and nowhere to set it down.
“You’re welcome, brother.” Josiah drops it into the silence, and we all turn to look at him. He’s propped against the wall, far too pleased with himself over something the rest of us aren’t in on.
I let out a breath, and my lion eases—the first time she’s let her hackles down since we crossed into this place. With a vampire standing this close, it’s the last thing I’d expect. But this one’s different. He shoved himself into this with us, and he’s done nothing since but help—even if he enjoys it a little too much. In my pride, what a man does counts for more than what he says.
It surprises everyone, me most of all, when I dip my head to him. “Thank you, Josiah. For everything.”
He just looks at me. The grin slips off his face, and what’s under it is startled, almost shy, as if no one’s thanked him in a long time. Then he gathers it back up into a smile, real this time, and bows his head, slow and formal. “Gratitude. From a lioness.” He clears his throat and turns toward the far wall, like he’d rather I hadn’t caught that on him at all.
I look back to Aaron, and he’s already smiling at me. “I’m glad you came with me, baby.” He takes my hand again. “You’re my other half. You catch me everywhere I fall short.”
I squeeze his fingers. “I’m your partner.”
“You both know time runs different in here, right?” Kade’s gone back to the shelves, pulling books down and pushing them back in. “The longer we stand around, the more of it burns off out there.”
