Page 154 of Their Blood Rite

Knowing that my life will never be the same when I wake up.

Chapter 25

Iblink open my eyes. Everything is a blurred mess. The night air is cold, and a drizzle falls like mist.

As I get the world back into focus, the shape of the arch is unmistakable. I’ve spent many hours looking at them in horror. I know it immediately.

Bones.

Death.

I’m at a bone arch, deep in the forest.

I’m on a circular patch of cobbled stone surrounded by dense trees.

I shift. The area is lit with torches, and Archie is busy placing things on the ground.

‘Let me help you. Here.’ Dorian kneels beside me and eases me up, holding me upright as I try not to slump.

I look up at him through a heavy blink.

‘Where am I?’

‘It will be okay,’ he assures me. ‘Honestly, Ashe. It will hurt for a minute, and then everything will be okay.’

‘What will hurt?’ I ask.

A circle has been drawn on the floor. A circle drawn in blood. I see it glimmering beneath the light of the candles and the moon. Around it, Archie is placing blood-soaked items, and Shaw is hammering nails into the palms of the last of four men, securing him to the outskirts of the circle. They all scream and sob, unable to break free. Their blood spills onto the cobbles.

Blood that hums and sings.

I don’t know the men, but I know they’re witches.

One wears orange.

One wears blue.

One wears silver.

The fourth wears green.

There’s a member of every coven impaled to my blood circle.

My gaze falls on the still-beating heart ahead of me.

Father.

Badum. Badum. Badum.

Next placed on the circle are a pair of eyes. They dart left to right, looking all around.

Gideon LeSaint. My coven Leader.

Next to them are a pair of twitching hands.

Kieran.

Then, a wagging tongue.

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