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I’ve never been the jealous type, but Josephine is different—everything is different with her.
“I don’t think us outranking the wolves is much of an accomplishment, considering how they treated her,” I point out, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice as I rise from my crouch to take the empty seat on the other side of Josie.
“If it helps, you get the silver as a second place for best captors, not only better than the worst.”
“That’s a fine distinction,” Bastian says.
Josie frowns at him but says nothing. “If I could judge you separately from the other two, I would.”
“No doubt,” our king says, his voice flat.
Josie sighs and if she’s as tired as she looks, we need to wrap this up. My hand cups her face, and she leans into the touch with a soft exhale as her eyes slip shut. I sense the fatigue weighing her down, and it’s worse than I originally thought. “Your energy is so weak.”
Her dark gaze pulls me into its depths until she breaks contact and sits straight in her chair again. “Just depleted after everything that happened today. Going up against a high priestess and a werewolf Alpha isn’t my usual weekend warrior workout.”
Neither is raising the dead, though I don’t voice that thought aloud. Josephine’s newfound ability isn’t something to broadcast to the Moon Witches.
Still, she used a lot of energy to raise her ancestors to help us survive the attack. She needs to get home to rest as soon as possible.
“Would someone explain what the fuck is going on here?” Sebastian demands, still hovering in the doorway as if he’s unsure—a very un-Sebastian-like behavior.
The annoyance and anger that radiates off him in waves, however, is extremely in character. “You spelled Josephine from the mausoleum to this shack more than twenty miles away. That’s not an insignificant amount of magic. So, why?”
He finally takes a single menacing step inside, and I kick myself mentally. I should have been keeping a closer eye on him to make sure he doesn’t detonate and go all Jack the Ripper on the Moon Witches in this cabin.
We’re all a little off today, but it goes past that with Sebastian.
Our trusty leader has been growing more and more unpredictable over the years. I didn’t realize exactly how much of him we had lost until a few weeks ago when he snapped and killed our Moon Witch prisoner.
The image of Sebastian’s empty gaze flashes in my mind. He was a completely different person in that moment. It was as if his entire humanity had been stripped away and all that remained was a monster, far beyond mine or Rune’s reach.
I shake the thought from my head. That is a problem for another time.
“Like I said—no manners,” Josephine says to the Moon Witch leader.
“Did you want me to say please and thank you?” Sebastian taunts with a roll of his eyes. “You’re all acting like this is a goddamn high school reunion, catching up over tea and scones, chatting as if we don’t still have the problem of Egan hanging over our heads.”
He has a point—even if he has absolutely zero tact about it. Egan may have turned tail and ran as soon as he realized things weren’t going his way, but he always comes back. It’s only a matter of time before the wolves retaliate.
Sebastian’s scowl grows. “Egan is probably out there now, resuming his search for the real moonstone amulet while we waste time on insignificant things like manners.”
“Oh, yeah. About that.” Josephine holds up a thin chain with two fingers. On the end of it, swaying back and forth, is a round, milky white stone that shines shades of purples and blues with silver detailing holding it in place.
The moonstone amulet.
The real deal this time—not an illusion.
“How?” I ask, struggling to find words.
Looking at it now, up close and in person, it seems impossible that anyone could ever mistake our replica for the authentic piece. Even someone as dense as Egan would have seen right through it had Adelaide not tipped him off. The two amulets are nearly indistinguishable in look, but there is an incredible aura about the original that could never be faked.
And Josephine somehow has the powerful artifact dangling from the tips of her fingers like she pulled it from the ether.
Sebastian bolts into the cabin, one of the witches squealing at the suddenness of the movement as he blinks from one place to another. “Where in the nine circles of Hell did you get that?”
He reaches to snatch it from her, but Josie pulls the amulet back, holding the magical artifact close to her chest and staring Sebastian down as if daring him to take it from her.
“Turns out the Moon Witches had it all along,” she explains.
