“LetItGo”—Seether
“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” I asked Sloane as she sat at the massive wooden table, looking at thirteen locked boxes.
She glanced up and nodded.
I sighed. This whole situation made me nervous, but like hell was I letting her and her mom go into this alone.
Candles flickered, casting shadows on the dark walls. Talk about a gloomy meeting room. The slaughterhouse in Iowa had nothing on this place.
“Annette… it’s been a long time. And this must be Sloane.” The Louisiana drawl was followed by the click of heels on the tile floor. Sloane stood. A latte-skinned woman with sleek, dark hair came in and approached my woman and her mother. I breathed a sigh of relief when the woman fondly hugged Annette.
“Fabi, it sure has been.” Annette gave the woman a bright smile. “You look good.”
“Psh! You’re too kind, honey.” Fabi grinned and flashed her catlike eyes in my direction, where she raked them over me, head to toe. A predatory gleam lit her unique eyes, and I swear to Christ it was as if she ran her hands everywhere her eyes touched. “And who did you say this was?”
“This is Keagan. My fiancé,” Sloane said firmly.
Fabi laughed, full and rich. “Good girl. Stake your claim with this one, becausemhmm mhmm, women must be willing to drop their panties for him at every turn.” Her gaze dropped to Sloane’s rounded belly. “Ahhh, looks like the claim was staked both ways. I didn’t see any of this. Interesting. Will we be invited to the wedding?”
Annette rolled her eyes. “Of course you will.”
I made a note to talk to Sloane about that. We’d decided to have a very small wedding.
Several other voices carried from the hall and then into the room. Three other women and a man with a dark gaze that eerily seemed to read my mind. I also didn’t like the appreciative sweep he gave Sloane’s ass as she stood with her back to him, talking with her mother and Fabi. Greetings were exchanged with each new addition. I later found out that Annette had originally been a part of Fabi’s coven. Well, before she hauled ass in hiding from Sloane’s father.
Once everyone had arrived, there were a total of twenty-one attendees who took their seats at the table. Representatives from each of the thirteen ruling covens, some ruled as couples, hence the large quantity in comparison to the number of ruling covens. Several had brought escorts like me. Men who stood back against the wall behind those they arrived with.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why we requested this meeting outside of the annual gathering. The simple answer is—I need a favor of you.” Sloane spoke from the shared head of the table. She sat there with Annette, as they had called the meeting.
A murmur rose in agreement. Some simply nodded and waited.
“Inside each box is something I’d like to entrust to each of you. As several of you know, we had a situation that arose from Belinda and Neville of the black witch coven,” Sloane continued. Annette said she had reached out to make the powers that be aware of what had happened in case there was backlash about Sloane’s actions.
“I seem to have heard a rumor that their powers were stripped. How could that happen?” the dark-eyed man questioned.
“Yes, Triston,” Annette answered. “Sloane gave up the majority of our family powers in exchange.”
They had explained to me that a witch couldn’t perform “negative magic” against another witch without it coming back to them threefold, which was why she added into the spell that she was allowing a balance.
“That’s all fine and good, but where on earth did you uncover a spell to strip a witch of his or her powers?” Thea, one of the first to arrive, asked.
“You know, most of us didn’t know you even existed. We knew Annette had gone into hiding, and we kept that secret for over twenty years. Then we find out that she had a child—but no one knew you actually still had the scrolls of Rhiannon,” a brunette woman at the other end of the table piped in. I hadn’t caught her name.
“I knew,” Fabi boldly announced. “Her family were a part of my coven since their escape from Salem. When it became necessary for her to leave, we made the choice to have her take them with her. They were safer with a person who no longer existed than with the coven her family had escaped to. It was never made public knowledge because there was a rumor that it was some of our own that stirred up the witch hunt that ensued in Salem. Who that was, was never proven.”
“So that still doesn’t explain what this has to do with all of us,” Darwin prompted. He was an older man who had introduced himself and his wife, Honoria, to me when they’d arrived.
Sloane took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Then she stood, a protective hand resting on the curve of her abdomen. With the other, she made a sweeping motion in reference to the boxes. “These are the scrolls. As the current keeper, I’ve decided they’re safer divided and a section entrusted to each of you.”
Triston laughed, then incredulously asked, “You expect us to believe you were able to open the scrolls and separate them?”
“But the only way they can be opened is…,” Fabi began, her wide gaze bouncing from Sloane to me and back. Murmurs immediately followed all along the table.
“Yes. Keagan is the descendant of Lugh. And as you can see, he and my daughter have mated and handfasted. The wedding will be a formality for his family, friends, and the law.” When Annette made the announcement, a hush fell.
“The scrolls can only be used if they are complete. Separated, they become indecipherable,” Sloane added.
“Yet you have them here for us each to take a portion. Pretty brave to assume one of us wouldn’t get power hungry and take them all,” Triston remarked with a smirk.