“Your blood means nothing to me, witch. I’ll have your loyalty or your bones—you choose,” Lara threatens, voice a low, lethal promise.
But Seren won’t suffer another day of being submissive to the rule of others.
“What’s my first question?” she grits out.
Lara huffs a humorless laugh. “Walk into The Harrows with arrogance, child, and you won’t walk out at all.”
Seren sets her jaw. “It is not arrogance you see in my eyes. It’s readiness.”
Lara doesn’t speak for a heartbeat. Two.
She slowly lifts her nail from Seren’s lip, and another bead of ichor falls down her chin.
Seren runs the tip of her tongue along the cut, the metallic tang blooming in her mouth.
“Words mean nothing if they are not confirmed with action, witch,” Lara tests, spinning on her heel and stalking around the circle of her witches again.
She waves her hand over the body of water. “These are The Widow’s Waters. Made of the tears of the first witch.”
Lara does not look at Seren, her boot steps projecting through the cavern in a steady rhythm.
“Tears she cried after the death of her lover.”
The space grows heavy with silence. And Seren knows it isherwho is expected to fill it.
So she asks what everyone wants her to ask. “How did her lover die?”
Lara rounds the final bend of the body of water, arcing wide to approach Seren from behind. Seren’s breath becomes an audible whisper. Her body tingles with Lara’s approaching presence, every hair standing on end.
Lara’s steps approach.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
A war drum.
And Seren understands instantly why they are The Dreaded.
Lara’s beautiful mouth presses into Seren’s ear, a dark, seductive thing.
“The Widow slit his throat.”
Seren’s skin breaks out in gooseflesh as if begging her to run. Run.Run.
She swallows down her fear, but her heart gives her away—it thunders through her chest.
“Do you want to knowwhy, little witch?” Lara taunts.
But Seren has come too far to back down now. Too far to let an old story be her undoing.
“Yes,” she says, with more confidence than she feels.
“Because witches are loyal to no one but witchkind, and it is our duty to prove it—The Widow knew it, and she proved it.” Lara’s words crawl through Seren’s veins and bleed into her bones. “So must you.”
Seren understands now: love is not forbidden here. But it is never allowed to come first.
