Semua Bab Temptations of The Coven: Bab 11 - Bab 20

For one heartbeat, I was still kneeling.For the next, I was gone.The world inverted—sight folding inward, sound exploding into silence. The runes screamed through color I couldn’t name, and then the ground disappeared from beneath me.It wasn’t falling, exactly. It was being unmade.The faint sound of someone shouting my name, boots scraping earth, then someone screaming, “Catch her!” I felt my body hit something hard somewhere far away. But I wasn’t there anymore.I was inside her.Cold. Heavy. Still.The world bled back in shades of red and gray, then slowly focused. I tried to gulp air into dead lungs that had forgotten how to breathe. A groan of caving lungs losing the last of their air filled into cracks in the chaos. Her lungs. My eyes—her eyes— had opened.I was staring up through the weeping willow tree’s branches. The moonlight fractured through leaves like glass. Everything was muted, soft around the edges, as if the air itself was made to comfort the dead.The memories b

The first thing I heard was a heartbeat, yet it wasn’t mine.It thudded steadily and warmly under my ear, loud enough to pull me out of sleep. For one confused moment, I thought it was a drum from the grove, some remnant of last night’s magic still echoing in my head. Then the rhythm shifted and I realized—nope, that was Dylan’s chest.Apparently, I’d fallen asleep on top of him.I blinked at the faint afternoon light leaking through the curtains. My neck ached, my leg was dangling off the couch, and his arm was draped across my waist like he’d been afraid I’d fall if he let go.A blanket—my good quilt, the one I didn’t lend to guests—was thrown haphazardly over us both. His boots were off, but his feet were propped on my coffee table like he owned the place. Typical wolf.I sighed, smirk tugging at my mouth. The living room smelled like smoke, pine, and the faint musk of wolf magic. My mug from this morning sat abandoned on the table, the dregs of coffee long gone cold. Cleopatra sno

The moon had risen fat and watchful above the grove by the time the coven gathered again.Tonight’s ritual would be the first of seven—the opening of the Cycle of Sins.Seven nights, seven offerings, seven chances to pretend that witches could bargain with the universe through poetry and choreography. I’d written half the liturgy myself centuries ago with Darcy; it still felt like a bad joke we hadn’t lived down.Darcy stood at the head of the circle, her staff glowing faintly where it touched the earth.“Gluttony,” she intoned, “for the hunger that drives us to creation and ruin alike.”The rest of the coven repeated it, voices blending into a single hum. The air smelled of roasted meat, honeyed bread, and woodsmoke—our idea of reverence was always a little indulgent. Robes rustled. Candles flickered. The runes along the grove’s edge flared once, acknowledging the start.I took my usual place near the eastern arc, beside Dylan and across from Dakota. Dylan had insisted on joining my

The dream came the way old wounds do—quiet at first, then all at once.I was small again. Feet bare, knees scratched, the forest a blur of green and shadow. The smell of smoke still clung to my hair. Behind me, the world I’d known was burning.I ran until my lungs were knives. Blood sang in my ears, wild and bright; the first spark of what I would later call magic.The forest opened suddenly into a hollow. There—half hidden by fern and moonlight—lay a shape. Too large to be a man. Too wrong to be an animal.A corpse. Fresh.My new magic, raw and curious, reached before I could stop it. One heartbeat, and I wasn’t standing anymore. I was inside.Through its eyes I saw a world built on fear. Angry men. Cages. Whips. Iron that bit into skin. The humans had called it a monster and then made it one. Every breath had been pain; every movement, survival.I remember thinking, even as a child, it deserves better than this. So I did what children do when they don’t understand the cost of mercy.

The world opened like a wound.Thea stood in the middle of someone else’s heartbeat—air too thick, colors too bright, the smell of pine and blood cutting through her lungs. She wasn’t in her cottage anymore. She wasn’t anywhere that belonged to her. When she looked down, her hands were small and unscarred. A child’s hands.A boy’s laugh echoed through the trees. Two boys chased each other through a clearing, barefoot, bows clutched tight. The smaller one tripped over a root and cursed softly. His brother—older, taller, the same bright eyes she knew so well—laughed and helped him up.“Come on, Dylan,” the older one said. “You’ll never hit anything if you keep looking at the sky.”“I was watching the hawk!” the younger protested, brushing dirt from his knees.“The hawk’s not going to save your supper.” The older boy slung an arm around his shoulders and pointed toward a rabbit trail. “Lesson one: hunt what’s in front of you, not what you wish you had.”Then the scene shifted. A boy move