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He’s quiet for so long that I don’t know if he’s going to say anything. “Painful.” He finally settles on. “At least for me. Having Blade and Tether as my sect means we would spar with other witches with the same powers. Sometimes someone with less power and knowledge than us, sometimes with the elder himself.”
A flash of the gouges appearing in Gabe’s flesh seemingly out of nowhere moves through my mind and I wince. “So you were a child, and you had… they subjected you to…that?”
He nods against the side of my head. “It’s the best way to learn. Experience it first hand, learn to protect yourself from attacks.” God, that’s awful. I imagine a young Hardin, facing off against a fully grown adult, the gashes appearing on his skin, the blood and pain he must have felt.
“Sounds barbaric,” I mutter, squeezing his hand.
“It was to some extent. But,” he shrugs and I feel the movement. “It also turned me into the badass I am today, so I don’t regret it.”
I hum in my throat and twist my head until I can kiss his jaw. “How did they keep you from learning other types of magic, from being able to harness them?” I motion at the spot on his chest that I know holds the elemental runes Gideon tattooed on him.
He pulls back, eyes running over my face. “What’s going on, love? Why the sudden interest in this?”
I huff and turn back around. “Its hardly sudden, Hardin. I just now have the brain capacity to focus on this. I just want to know.”
“Okay, well, they didn’t really have to keep us from learning other magic. We were all given the books that we needed forourmagic. And we never really thought to look at anything else. Why would we when we were told we wouldn’t be able to cast magic not inherent to us?”
“Who makes the rules about that? Who decides what each of the sects can learn and control?”
He shifts under me and I don’t know if he’s just getting more comfortable, or if he doesn’t like the way this conversation is going. “What do you mean, love?”
“I mean, there have to be witches that are trying new spells, finding new ways to cast, easier spells. Like scientists looking for a cure for cancer. There have to be witches that come up with new spells. Who decides who can have access to that spell?”
Hardin shifts back and away from me, his firm hands turning me so I’m straddling his lap, facing him. His blue eyes run over me, like he’s trying to figure out my angle, what I’m going to glean from this, but really I just want to know now.
“Well,” he says slowly. “Fielder might give you some more insight, but from what I understand, if a witch makes a new spell, then the sect that the witch belongs to gets access. It gets added to their grimoire so others can cast it.”
I hum, pushing a lock of his chestnut hair off his forehead. “I guess that makes sense.” He leans up and kisses along my jaw, over my pulse point. He’s going to try to distract me. I can tell. His hands slip from my hips up to the buttons on my shirt, undoing the top button and then the next.
But I won’t be dissuaded. “The elders, they decide what a suitable punishment is if a witch is caught using magic that doesn’t belong to them?”
He nods as he undoes the top four buttons. “And Blade and Tether enacts them.”
Right, because they are basically the peacekeepers of the coven.
His tongue licks a slow path between my breast right over my raised scar. “Is that the way it is in other covens?”
He stills before he peers up at me. “How do you know about other covens?”
Shit. Was I not supposed to know that? Is that a secret? Then I shake my head at myself, no I’ve definitely had conversations about this with at least one of them. “You guys told me about them. Other schools that can teach me the same stuff I can learn here.”
He nods slowly, brushing his hand over the side of my head. “I don’t know what it’s like in other covens, love. The only coven I’ve had any actual contact with is Seven Stars.”
I frown. “That doesn’t seem right. Shouldn’t there be like a convention of witches where all the covens get together and share their knowledge or something?”
He laughs. A full on belly laugh that has him wiping at his eyes by the time he’s finished. “Oh, love.No.If you learn one thing from this conversation, learn this: witches are greedy and jealous of their knowledge. We don’t share our spells and our castings, we don’t help other covens. The best relationship we can hope to have with another coven is to never interact with them.”
I swallow. “And what’s the worst?”
His eyes spark. “A full on war.”
A shiver works its way down my spine. His hands grip my hips as I drape my arms over his shoulders, nuzzling into his neck. “This world you live in, Hardin, I don’t’ think it’s my world.”
He frowns, one hand drifting up to my face. His thumb runs along my bottom lip. “But it is your world, love. You’re a witch. You belong here.”
I shake my head and make myself meet his eyes. “It’s a world where it’s okay to coerce your children into torturing someone for no good reason. It’s a world where you talk about going to war with other living beings like it’s normal. Expected even. It’s a world where its assholes can get away with rape, because of the power they have.” He growls at that. “It’s not a world I’m comfortable with, Hardin. I don’t think I’ll ever be.”
He nods and leans forward until his nose brushes along the length of mine. “I can see how you’d think that, love. I really can. You are so fucking soft. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. You have a heart, you care about people. Even when Morgan was torturing you, you tried to keep us from going after her.”
