Page 81 of This Coven Won't Break
There’s a blade sunk deep in her chest.
And a pool of blood growing around her.
29
I COLLAPSE TO MYknees beside Morgan. Cold mud soaks through my clothes. Hot blood covers my hands. “You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be fine,” I promise, but I don’t believe the words.
She’s a Blood Witch. She’ll heal.
But her face is twisted with pain and the blood is still pouring out and I don’t know what to do.
“Help!” The word tears from my throat, carried farther by the wind. “Someone, please!”
Morgan winces and reaches for the hilt of the knife.
“No, don’t pull it out.”
She keeps reaching. “I have to. I won’t heal.”
“Then let me.” I reach for the handle as the back door bursts open.
Archer rushes into the storm after us, and he falls to his knees opposite me. His eyes are wild with concern, but his jaw is set. “What happened?” He takes the hilt in his hands and yanks the blade from Morgan’s chest in a single, fluid motion. “Who did this?”
I press my hand against the wound, but blood continues to pour out. “Why isn’t it healing? Morgan, why isn’t it getting better?”
Her eyelids flutter. Lightning brightens the sky. Thunderrumbles the ground beneath me. The earth keeps shaking, on and on and on, but it’s not the thunder. It’s me. My power is wild and uncontrolled without Morgan to anchor me. She always knows when I’m panicking. She always makes it better.
“Morgan?” I press harder against the wound, but her body’s gone slack. “Morgan!”
Archer loops one arm underneath her knees. “We need to get her inside.” He stands and lifts her, despite his injuries, and races back into the house. I chase after them. My shoes, soaking wet and covered in blood, slip on the wood floors.
I follow him into the living room, where he’s laying Morgan on the couch. He shouts for Morgan’s parents, and they arrive a second later, Mom and Cal coming in behind them.
“What happened?” Mrs. Hughes kneels on the floor beside her daughter. Archer backs away, but he looks at me. Mrs. Hughes follows his gaze. “Hannah, what happened?”
“Elder Keating...” I fight the emotion that wants to close my throat, that wants to seal off my lungs until I can never breathe again. “She’s the one who betrayed us. There was a knife—”
It’s enough for Morgan’s dad to kneel beside his wife. They reach for their daughter, blood coating their hands. Their eyes glow blue as magic unfurls within them.
“Hannah.” It’s Archer calling my name now. I pass him again and again as I frantically pace the living room. “Hannah, we need to know more. Where’s the Elder?”
“I don’t know! She drove off somewhere. But she’s the one who betrayed us. She’s the puppet master behind all of this.” I turn to pace across the room again, but I slam into Archer.
He winces. “Once more.” He places his bandaged hands on my shoulders, forcing me to stop. “Slowly.”
“She made the Hunters’ drug. She’s the reason my dad is dead.”
Archer whispers something gentle and urgent to me, but I don’t hear him. All I hear is the crash of thunder and the echoingmy fault, my fault, my faultscreaming in my head.
If I hadn’t helped Alice escape from the Manhattan apartment all those months ago, Tori would have taken her magic like she’d wanted to. She wouldn’t have blamed Lexie and Coral, and they wouldn’t have turned her into the Council. Without Tori, Elder Keating wouldn’t have taken drastic measures. Dad would still be alive.
“We have to stop her.” I look up at Archer, cutting off whatever useless reassurances he was saying. “Before she remakes the drug. We have to stop the Hunters before she sends them after us.”
Mom, who’s been lingering at the head of the couch, watching over Morgan, looks at Archer. “But I thought she helped you destroy the drug? Why would she create it again now?”
I answer before he can. “Maybe she didn’t mean for so many of us to die. Maybe some part of her regrets what she—” Another crack of thunder makes me jump, cutting off the rest of my sentence. “God, enough!”
I storm over to the window and throw it open wide. Wind and rain spill into the room.
