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The six of us sprawled together in a haphazard version of our earlier ring, every one of my consorts with me skin to skin. In those first few moments, as our passion settled from a bonfire to a steady but heady burn, none of us spoke. But we didn’t need to. Their joy hummed through me as clearly as my own.

I was theirs and they were mine, down to our very souls.

Chapter Sixteen

Rose

The closer we got to downtown Portland, the more the afterglow of the ceremony faded. I snuggled closer to Seth in the backseat of the car, breathing in his warm bronze-y scent and reveling in the tingle of bright energy that passed between us just with that innocuous contact. He hugged me closer with his arm around my shoulders. At my other side, Jin rubbed my knee.

My spark burned to hide away with my five consorts and bask in our newly strengthened bond all day, all week. The ache ran even deeper than when we’d first committed to each other. But if we gave in to that impulse, the demon might have ravaged the city around us by the time we emerged.

I didn’t know if I could summon enough power now to overcome that monster, but I could feel I had more. The magic humming through my chest with each sway of my spark had a stark brilliance to it that I’d never felt before. My spark wasn’t just a flame now but a miniature star.

We hadn’t heard any news about the demon while we’d been on Thalia’s estate, but the Assembly wouldn’t necessarily have reached out to her or me at this point. Who knew what destruction it might have wrought in the last few hours? My stomach knotted at the thought.

When the car pulled up outside the Assembly building, I took a small comfort in the fact that the buildingwasstill standing, and all the ones around it on the street too. The medic yesterday had said at its current pace, the demon might reach the city later today. Steeling myself, I climbed out of the car with the guys. The rest of my consorts spilled out of the second car that had been driving with us.

The gray face of the Assembly building loomed over us, looking solemn and impenetrable. I motioned my consorts to me. “Come on. Let’s talk to them together. They’re going to have to start accepting us as a package deal, especially now.” And the idea of my newly soul-bonded partners traveling even blocks away from me down the street made my heart wrench.

We filed into the building. Thalia gave my hand a squeeze and moved down the hall to check in with the other recovering witches. I turned to one of the enforcers on guard near the doors.

“Are the Northcotts in their office?”

“Lady Northcott is on the premises,” she said. Her eyes slid over the guys, with a wariness I couldn’t help noticing. How many times had we come and gone from this building in the last week, and that tension remained.

I guessed that was as good an answer as I was going to get. We headed up the stairs to the Northcotts’ office on the fifth and top floor. The building might look modern enough, but witching society hadn’t thought elevators worth bothering with. It really was ridiculous how much so many of them looked down on the unsparked when we had plenty of backwards habits ourselves.

Lady Northcott was sitting at her desk when we pushed into the office. Her secretary startled, but the head of the Assembly made a reassuring gesture, and he settled back in his station near the door. She took in me and my consorts with an inscrutable expression.

“You’re looking well, Lady Hallowell,” she said. “I’m glad to see yesterday’s efforts haven’t set you back too far.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to contribute more,” I said, with a fresh pang of guilt thinking of my failure yesterday. “I’ll be more prepared next time. What’s the current status of the demon?”

She frowned, glancing at the phone sitting face-up on her desk in a way that made me suspect she’d recently gotten an update from the observers in the field. “It’s continued cutting a path straight toward Portland. Not very quickly, but still faster than before. It looks likely to reach the suburbs sometime tonight if we can’t redirect it.”

“What are your plans at this point?”

Her mouth tightened. “We’re still discussing the options. Our first two gambits seemed like our best bets. We were able to retrieve some pieces of the cage, but they were damaged—it looks unlikely we could have them in working order in time, if we could even hope a second attempt might work.”

“I can get in there and start helping with that as soon as we’re done here,” Seth said. “If that’s where you think I’d be most needed.”

My spirits had lifted. We had some time; we could make this work. “I think wecanhope a second attempt would go better,” I said. “We came right to you so you know—my consorts and I took the soul-bond this morning. My spark has never shone brighter. I can’t promise I’m strong enough now to push back the demon as much as we need, but I’ll have a much better chance of it.”

My voice faltered on the last few words. Lady Northcott’s whole face had gone rigid, her gaze fixed on me in a stare that looked almost horrified.

“You didwhat?” she said in a low choked voice.

I’d expected perhaps some surprise and maybe raised eyebrows at my decision, but not this distress. “We conducted the soul-bound consorting ceremony, with Lady Ainsworth’s help,” I said, as if there was any way she could have misunderstood my meaning. My right hand turned outward instinctively, displaying the scar like a tiny starburst on my palm where Thalia had healed the dagger’s scratch. “The magic we’ll be able to create together now is purer, stronger—I can already tell I’ll be able to do more. Withstand more.”

Lady Northcott pushed to her feet, the wheels of her desk chair rattling over the linoleum floor. She motioned me to a door at the back of the room, the entrance to her magicking room. “I think we’d better talk just the two of us, witch to witch.”

My legs balked. “My consorts are my equals in this decision,” I said. “I wouldn’t be here without them.”

“Nonetheless,” Northcott said, “I would speak with you alone. Consider it a direct order from the highest position in the Assembly. Are you refusing that order?”

The crispness of her tone suggested that if I did, I’d find a host of enforcers taking the decision out of my hands. I swallowed hard.

“No. But I follow it under protest.”

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