Page 105 of Her Dreadful Will
Had Tarek always been this condescending, this dismissive? Soleil hadn’t seen him face to face in over a year—could a single year account for such a change in his personality? Or wasshethe one who had changed? Maybe the glaze of admiration had melted from her eyes, and she saw him now as he always had been.
She left him in the bedroom and walked along the hall to the kitchen, which opened into a living area beyond. A quick glance at the motley mess of leftover takeout and expired condiments in the fridge told her that Achan was as chaotic in his eating habits as he was with his housekeeping. Not that the place was dirty—it was simply untidy.
She wandered into the living room. Books teetered in tall stacks, lampshades sat at odd angles, furniture was shoved this way and that, as it suited his mood, apparently. Achan had mounted a few shelves on the walls, and then crowded them with knick-knacks of all kinds—tarnished candlesticks, lumpy pieces of pottery, speckled hand mirrors, moth-eaten ornamental fans. Cool, pale mannequin hands bore antique rings, and slim iron tree sculptures dripped with strings of black pearls and copper beads.
A whisper of magic startled her, tracing across her shoulders like a touch, and she spun, heart hammering.
Nothing.
She peered around, wondering which of his odd possessions was responsible for the magic. And then she looked up.
The ceiling glowed with luminous green lines, latent magic igniting in a tornado of complex interwoven symbols. She was caught in the trap, her limbs buzzing with the restrictive force of the magic. She could barely move; every muscle was either slow or completely unresponsive.
“Tarek,” she tried to call, but her voice tripped over her lips and died instantly.
She writhed, working her fingers, trying to activate one of her rings. Then she tried to reach out with chaos magic—but she couldn’t grasp or unwind the net of green light around her.
Panting, with sweat filming her forehead, she yielded for a moment.
A consciousness trickled along the lines of the trap, probing and pressing at her body and mind, reading her presence. The energy of the mind that inspected her was familiar; she had carried it inside her for hours. She felt it—him—recoil in recognition.
What are you doing in my house, love?Achan’s thoughts whispered in her mind.
Why won’t you answer my texts?she threw back.Let me go. Bastard.
His mind diverted from hers for a minute before returning.
You’re not the only one there. Soleil, what have you done?
What you made me do.
Anger flashed through the trap, and the pain of betrayal. The air around her brightened ferociously, crackling with heat.
“Enough!” cried Tarek, appearing in the doorway. He licked one of his rings and made a slicing motion through the air. The cords of magic binding Soleil snapped, and she sensed Achan’s pain as the spell whiplashed his consciousness. And then his presence was gone.
She bent over, gripping her thighs and trying to stop the tears bulging at the corners of her eyes.
Was Achan all right?
“That’s illegal magic,” Tarek said, frowning. “Nothing a novitiate witch should know. What is this guy into, Soleil?”
She straightened, brushing tears from her cheeks. “Did you get into his laptop?”
“Yes. But I thought we’d open the file together, since this involves you, too.”
He crossed to the kitchen and set the laptop on the counter. Soleil leaned over his shoulder.
“Here it is—Achan L. Gilliam.” Tarek opened the file and scrolled through the first sections. “Residing in Alabama when he first enrolled, but they’ve been watching him for years because of his—well. Because of certain past associations.” He scrolled faster, too fast for Soleil to read the part under the heading “Early Life” or “Known Associates.” The “Known Associates” section only had a couple of names, and she breathed a little easier. Whatever Achan had been doing to hide his coven from the Institute and the Convocation, it was apparently working.
Why was she still rooting for him? He had lied to her about a very significant part of his life—the fact that he was also a novitiate, working on a thesis, aiming to become a Highwitch in the very organization he claimed to despise.
“Here it is. Gilliam’s thesis proposal.” Tarek clicked on the interlinked document and read the first paragraph aloud.
The lines that stood out to Soleil came near the end of that paragraph. They seared themselves into her brain, repeating over and over.
“Even a witch with the highest ideals and purest motivation may be corrupted. That is why the most powerful witches should be fitted with restraints and monitored for their own safety and that of other witches and humans. For my thesis, I will document and prove the corruption of a witch with a pure heart—a witch so powerful that she must not be allowed to operate unrestrained in the world.”
A witch with a pure heart.
