“But—” she went very still as if she were being reprimanded. Frowning and trying to hide it, Ell nodded a bit too much while saying, “Yes, sir. I understand,” over and over.

  The orb went dark as it dropped back into Ell’s palm. Slowly, she put the orb down, she furrowed her brow, and pouted slightly. Her eyes were glued to the glass on the tiny pillow of the desktop.

  “What is wrong, milady?” Bobo spoke while tilting his head at her.

  “I…” she started, but she stopped as she eyed the orb over like it wasn’t real, and this was all some bad dream. Ell looked utterly baffled at whatever the blue cloak’s secretary had told her. Slowly her vision raised to meet the concerned gaze of the group before her. Her voice was soft, quiet, and threaded with pain. “I’ve been instructed to keep you guys here until the Summoners arrive.” She looked at them with a deep frown and reluctantly grabbed one of many bags of premade spells from under the desk and tossed the spell into the air.

  Golden sparks erupted overhead, and the glittering string of magic grew in girth before zipping through the hustling and bustling crowed near the entryway. The magic weaved and dodged through gasping Coven members until it reached the doors where the golden light took form once again. This time, it took the shape of chain links. The front gates quickly were locked up and secured with the spellbound chains. Each large, glowing links that had appeared, crisscrossing in a dizzying path in front of the entrance to the Coven, pulsed with power and warning through the metal handles of the door. No one would get in, and no one would get out through those gates.

  All the Coven members near the doors halted and spun to locate the origin of the spell and readied their weapon. Protocal for a spellbound chain spell within Coven confines. If anyone near Ell’s desk moved, defensive magic was sure to fly. Spells just hit the fan.

  “Was that really necessary?” Vanessa whispered.

  “I’m sorry… they told me to keep you here or turn in my insignia,” she whispered back.

  Leon and Vanessa looked to each other, and their fear was mirrored in the other’s face. All of a sudden, all eyes in Headquarters were on them, not just those at the front gates. A few nearby witches and wizards had their hands dipped in powder pouches, others had talisman in hand, and the remaining were clutching their weapons as they kept a sharp eye on the group at the front desk.

  “So much for this being a routine check-in,” Leon said to Vanessa through gritted teeth.

  Ell looked particularly unhappy at the fact that she had to do this to her friends. The frown wasn’t worn well on the sweet girl. It marred the innocent and soft features she usually portrayed. She didn’t want to do this to them, but work was work. For whatever reason, the blue cloaks were hard up to make sure these four made it into their Council chambers that day.

  Shortly after the embarrassing spell took place and all the active Coven members – new and old – had seen the group responsible for it being cast, the room was informed that the group was to be seen by the blue cloaks. Everyone exchanged glances before locking their sites on the four troublemakers. All the while Vanessa tried not to look as mortified as she felt.

  Lyx huffed and threw her hands up on her hips. “This is not the sort of attention I like,” she fussed quietly to no one in particular. Just as the demoness let out a groan of displeasure, a group of Summoners descended the spiraling staircase.

  Their boots marching over the marble floors sounded like a small army stomping their way toward a battleground. The destination clearly set on reaching Vanessa and the others. She felt her crazed heartbeat attempting to keep up with the slamming of the boots against the hard, well-polished floors of Coven Headquarters. The only thing that she could think while this whole nightmare unfolded was that Leon and Lyx didn’t even deserve to be there with her. Hex, Bobo shouldn’t even be there.

  There was no denying that they were all in trouble, Vanessa could feel it in her bones. Those three didn’t need to be dragged into being disciplined simply because the Coven had paired them together for a short period of time. Any punishment that the High Priest Council would decree wouldn’t be fair to anyone but her. After all, it was she who chose to delve deep into the caverns despite Coven orders, not them.

  Vanessa knew that once they were behind the Council chamber’s closed doors, she would beg their pardon and take full blame for everything … depending on what the Council knew, of course. No sense in gabbing out all the gory details and getting them all in trouble if this was nothing more than a routine checkup from the blue cloaks. From the spell Ell had casted to lock them all in and the sound of the boots hammering away over the Coven floors, Vanessa doubted that was the case.

  She looked at Leon, and he gave her a harsh glare. One that silently told her to say nothing about anything. That only made her worries worse. She drew her thumb to her mouth and bit the tip of it as she thought to herself, trying desperately to think of anything to get out of this whole mess. But she was coming up with nothing.

  The quick, unified clicks of the Summoners’ boot soles over the marbled flooring came to a sudden stop a few feet shy of Vanessa and the others. The silence that drifted in the thick tension that was rising in the air all around them, it was almost enough to send Vanessa into a panic attack. She held her hand over her heart to check the poor overworked muscle and let out a slow, calming breath. The voice that followed thereafter sent her heartrate climbing once again. Dread. Cold and hopeless dread took hold of the poor witch.

  “If you would please hand over your weapons, dust pouches, talisman, and spell casting utensils,” the male Summoner at the head of the group ordered politely in a warm voice. But his features betrayed that voice tenfold. He had cold, slate stained eyes and ginger-blonde hair that was shaved short and tapered off in the back. He was medium in height, but his aura poured out of him in a thick, domineering fashion. His fake smile never reached his eyes and seemed to mock the group before him. Vanessa sneered at the Summoner that was leading the group and who would escort them to the blue cloaks’ Council room. It was the notorious Riker.

  A man decorated in more war stories than he had badges. Singlehandedly, he had taken down a cult of blood mages when out on a routine checkup of the Borlimane district. While outnumbered, he had been hit with an arcane spike. The wound was opened further by another blood mage, causing the gash to rip from just above the eyelid to across the side of his skull and stopping at just at the back of his ear. Riker’s hair being shaved made the thirteen-year-old scar visible to everyone who dared to disbelieve the tale.

  He was well known for his firm belief of the Coven’s laws and knew far too well how to separate personal feelings from professional ones. When he was suited up for work, you stayed on his good side. Not because he was bad… just that he was so good at his job one had to wonder if he was a golem following orders rather than a human being protecting the laws and order of Aeristria.

  The Summoners stood like soldiers lined up behind a trusted general. Riker didn’t seem to look as if he cared one way or another about the whole ordeal. He was simply carrying out orders. And his demands for their spelling items didn’t make him bat an eyelash or give a sympathetic glance toward anyone standing within the cluster of riffraff before him.

  “What?” Vanessa’s voice dropped a few octaves, and her eyes narrowed at the collection of Summoners, especially at Riker. She meant to think it, but the filter between her brain and mouth apparently didn’t get the memo. She half-expected Leon to pitch a fit and tell her to shut up, but he looked as flabbergasted as she did.

  Leon took a few steps in front of Vanessa, and his fury was radiating from him like an out of control fire. “I demand an explanation!”

  “Leon, darling, you should calm down,” Lyx said softly while reaching to grab his arm.

  It all happened at once. Lyx reached for Leon, Leon jerked away from the brush of her fingertips, and all those Summoners were pointing wands, staves, talisman, and dipping their hands into dust pouches, and they were all ready to blast Lyx into the next life. She went perfectly still. Bobo growled, and their attention became divided.

  Swiftly realizing that they were more prepared to blast the two demons out of existence before they’d point a wand at him, Leon slowly raised his hands and relinquished his anger. “She was just trying to calm me down.” Leon’s voice was surprisingly less agitated. The potential threat pointed at his pet had sobered him up from his outburst. “I just want to know why we need to go through such drastic measurements,” he added. Riker, who had made no movement since the initial outburst, snapped his cold and unrelenting gaze to Leon.

  “The High Priest Council has instructed us to bring you before their Council unarmed and unable to perform even the most basic of spells. I’m … we … are just carrying out their orders.” He looked the small group over and continued, “Please, don’t make a scene and don’t make this any more difficult than it needs to be.”

  Vanessa rolled her eyes. “Pfff… telling us to not make a scene when that is all that you’ve done since we came in on the arrival gate.”

  “Vanessa,” Leon snapped.

  “No!” she yelled back at him and then turned her seething rage to the uneasy Summoners stacked behind the coldhearted ring leader. “If I wanted to be treated like a criminal, I would have gone on the run instead of waltzing though the front doors!”

  Riker smiled then, and it seemed almost sinister resting upon his lips. “Is there something that you’ve done that would cause you to be on the run from the Coven, Hunter Peterson?”

  She opened her mouth and instantly shut it. In the moments of silence that followed, Vanessa held a staring match with Riker and, while she did, she imagined punching that stupid grin off his face. “No,” she growled back, finally.

  “Then I fail to see where the issue is. If you’ve done something wrong, I could understand your desire to run… but if you’ve done nothing wrong then handing over your spelling objects should be the least of your concerns.” After he spoke he held out his palm and curled his fingers toward him a few times in a row, coaxing them to hand over their spelling items.

  Right as Vanessa and Leon had started to remove them, two Summoners speedily came over to relieve them of their things before they had time to even contemplate reconsidering complying with them. Promptly, two more came to take Lyx’s whip and Bobo’s battleax.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Lyx snipped while swatting at a Summoners hands that was getting too close to her hips. After realizing they were taking away her weapon, she pouted and huffed as they carried out the action. “Could have asked,” she hissed while crossing her arms under her breasts and rolling her eyes aggressively.

  Bobo stood still and silent as if he had expected all this all along. Vanessa felt the worse for him. He was a towering ogre that most of the Coven didn’t look at fondly since the day she summoned him. Bobo was a high-class demon of the underworld, and not one revered as the usual demon that a Coven member could summon. He was supposed to be a ruthless killing machine that exceled at his job better than all other classes of demons. Once upon a time, he was the guard to imprisoned devils and other convicts of hell. Besides, when a creature his size could snarl and make the masses flee in horror, they’ll point their spells at him before they’ll direct a harmful spell elsewhere.

  Poor Bobo was doing as he should by being a quiet and compliant giant. Vanessa spared a look over her shoulder to him, her lip jutting out in a sympathetic pout, but as soon as her eyes locked with Bobo’s, he just closed his eyes slowly and gave a leisurely, almost unnoticed, nod of his head. A quiet, it’s all right from her trusted pet… no. Her trusted partner.

  “Can we get on with it?” Vanessa couldn’t drop the attitude. She wanted to get out from under the condescending glares from her peers and co-workers. Even if that meant being delivered into the blue cloaks’ Council room.

  The head Summoner gave her a short smile and a half-nod before whirling a finger around his head. Instantly, the group of Summoners circled around her and the others. “Let’s go,” he said in a dark tone.

  There was nothing so humiliating as the countless eyes that watched in silence, or the whispers that were passed between onlookers as they made their way to the Council’s chambers.

  “What did she do this time?”

  “She’s been a problem for the Coven since the day she walked through the front doors.”

  “It’s no wonder she doesn’t have any friends. Who’d want to be friends with a girl that will get you killed or drag you into a situation that will cost you your insignia?”

  “I can’t believe she got Leon in trouble!”

  “What a wicked witch dragging down such a talented Spellweaver.”

  “How could she get Leon tangled up in her mess?”

  “She should have quit ages ago. Why is she even allowed to be in the Coven?”

  “I hope that they eliminate that terrible Hunter.”

  Each whisper that Vanessa heard made her mood sink, her pride deflate, and caused her feet to drag as she followed heartbrokenly behind Riker and his crew. It was like her soul was being sliced by tiny daggers, each slice was a word that was whispered behind her back but left a permanent mark. All the opinions that fellow Coven members thought of her were murmured as she hung her head low while escorted by the Summoners to the Council room. It hurt. It hurt so much. Her eyes blurred with the promise of tears, and a lump grew in her throat. Vanessa fought back the urge to cry by biting the side of her cheek and staring at the feet of the Summoners leading the way.

  She knew ever since she came to the Coven, that people had a hard time accepting her. She never got spells right the first time. She always seemed to get into trouble. She always was in over her head… Now? Now she was dragging down the people that she cared about the most. They didn’t deserve this.

  Her negative thoughts shattered like a pane of thin glass over concrete flooring. Leon’s fingertips brushed against the palm of her hand, breaking her of the self-loathing spiral that she was starting on. Slowly, those large digits crept over the palm of her hand and curled around until her appendage was tucked safely away in his warm hand cuddle. She looked at his hand holding hers and then up to him. A cross of wonder and confusion stretched out over her expression.

  Leon whispered, “Stay with me.” Then he gave her hand a light squeeze. “You’re strong. The strongest witch I know.” He smiled then.

  Suddenly, the whispers didn’t matter and the dreaded spiral up to the Council room wasn’t so bad.

  Chapter 25:

  Darker.

  The hall that led to the High Priest Council Room seemed darker today, somehow. Perhaps the lighting was dimmer, or the shadows from the group of bodies swimming through the tight space made the walk seem more ominous than normal and that had made the illumination seem less vibrant than usual. Either way it went, Vanessa’s poor gut was flipping about so crazily that she was sure she was one more stomach cartwheel away from losing her breakfast right there in the main hall.

  The doors at the end of the hall got closer and closer, much to Vanessa’s chagrin, and it was making it difficult to calm her nerves. She wondered what would happen behind those doors, but even her imagination was too frightened to entertain the nightmare that the blue cloaks could bestow upon the victim of their choosing. And what they could do didn’t hold a candle next to what a Celestial could do…

  They reached the end of the hall sooner than she was ready for, and she was a whirlwind of emotion. Riker turned to halt the group and then knocked on the Council room doors with a thundering fist. After a moment, the muffled voice of one of the blue cloaks told them to enter. Riker opened the door enough to slip through a crack. Vanessa couldn’t see him anymore, but she heard him speak to the Council. “High Priests and Priestesses, I’ve brought the Coven members you asked for.”

  “You may let them in,” one of them answered.

  “As you wish.” After a moment, the doors opened wide enough to let all of them enter the room. Every nerve in Vanessa’s body was screaming for her to run, but she bravely lifted her head, let out a long wind of air, and took a step forward into the room.

  The thirteen members were spread out in their throne-like chairs just like before. Each of them seeming taller as they were seated with their backs completely straight, and their features and clothing looked almost regal in appearance as their hard gazes were fixed on those entering the room. Vanessa blamed the thrones they were all placed upon for their noble aura, but she knew that it was their wisdom and power that they all possessed that made them come off that way. The Celestial was the only one that didn’t come off like that. The Celestial came off as divine, and rightfully so.

  Although she walked proudly into the Council room, Vanessa’s steps themselves were full of doubt and sluggishly slow in pace. Once all of them were fully inside the room, Riker and the other Summoners bowed respectfully to the Council members. Leon, Vanessa, and the others followed suit as well.

  “You may leave us, Summoners,” one of the female blue cloaks spoke, and the Summoners all lifted from their bow and started to file out of the room. It felt less stuffy in there now that they were all gone, but that peaceful image disintegrated as soon as the massive double doors slammed shut behind the leaving party. Vanessa looked back, and to her dismay, the doors were in fact closed, and as her gaze drifted back to the front of the room, she realized that she, Leon, Bobo, and Lyx were all alone before the High Priest Council. The most trusted and powerful people the Coven had to offer…

  And she was scared out of her mind.

  “Do you know for what you were summoned, Hunter Peterson and Spellweaver Zvěrokruh?”

  They all looked to one another hoping that someone had the answer, but they both turned back to the Council and stated in unison, “Uuuh… nooo.”

 

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