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CHAPTER 1
One of these days, I’ll either kiss him or kill him.
Hazel Murray grimaced and closed her eyes to block out the visual of the very male for whom she harbored conflicting impulses—who currently strolled over to the fridge in her family’s kitchen. She’d always prided herself on being levelheaded and composed. She’d survived an emotionally abusive marriage and fought actual demons without losing her cool. She was the reasonable one in the family.
So why the hodgepodge did she lose all focus as soon as Tallak sauntered into a room, suffusing the air with his devil-may-care attitude, looking far too appealing for a demon, with his summer-tan skin, his blond hair shining like polished gold, amber eyes with razor-sharp intelligence, and lazy tension vibrating about his lean form?
Snap.
Hazel startled at the sound and blinked at the fellow witch sitting across the table from her in the breakfast nook.
“Earth to Hazel,” Merle said, lowering her hand from where she’d just snapped her fingers in front of Hazel’s face. Her sky-blue eyes were narrowed, her ginger hair fastened into a ponytail.
“Sorry, what?” Hazel glanced back at that infuriatingly distracting demon, who now walked out of the kitchen, two beer bottles in hand. He and Basil, his adult son—whom Hazel had raised as her own while Tallak had languished in a fae dungeon—were enjoying some quality time over video games in the adjacent living room. Only once Tallak was out of view did she focus on Merle again.
“Did you hear what I was saying?” Merle asked.
“Of course,” Hazel lied.
“So you agree?”
Hazel bit her lip. “Well…”
Merle raised a brow and crossed her arms over her rounded belly. Now eight months along, the younger witch was all plump curves and healthy glow, reminding Hazel fondly of her own pregnancy. “Uh-huh.”
“Okay, I wasn’t listening.” Hazel sighed and rubbed her chin. “I just have a lot on my mind.”
“Mm-hmm. A lot of someone.”
Clearing her throat, Hazel opted to ignore that comment. “So what were you saying?”
With a deep breath, Merle said, “Just that I’m still opposed to letting the former Draconian Elders back on the council, with full voting rights.”
The air crackled around the younger witch, who was the same age as Hazel’s own daughters, Lily and Rose. Since Merle had become head of her family, however, and claimed her place among the Elders of the witch community, Hazel had come to regard her as more of a friend on equal footing than a daughter by anything but blood. Over the past year, they’d sure gone through enough together, fighting side by side as fellow Elder witches, each carrying the responsibility for their family’s magic on their shoulders, that Hazel now conferred with Merle in a way she usually did with witches her own age.
“I understand your frustration,” she now said to the young head of the MacKenna line. “But it was time we moved forward, and the council agreed.” Even if the vote to let the former Draconians rejoin had barely reached the required majority. Merle wasn’t the only one who’d wanted the punishment to be harsher, longer. “We couldn’t leave them under house arrest and restricted in their magic use indefinitely.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Merle regarded her fingernails. “Seems totally fine by me.”
“Not if we want to stand any chance of moving on and reuniting the witch community.” She shot Merle a stern look. “And I mean really reuniting. With what Maeve told you is heading our way, we can’t afford to stay splintered. You know that, Merle.”
“I don’t have to like it,” she grumbled.
Hazel heaved a sigh. “Believe me, I’m not happy about this either. Knowing the witches I’m sitting down with on the council voted to hunt down Lily not too long ago makes me want to curse each and every one of them with an incurable case of diarrhea—”
Merle spit out the sip of water she’d just taken and giggled.
“But we can’t permanently bar half of the witch community from our leading body and expect the rest of the witches to fall in line with our agenda and close ranks around us when the time comes to fend off whatever other ancient beasts are awakening. Not to mention other gods…”
Merle grimaced and shifted her weight on her chair.
“We need to bring the former Draconian witches back into the fold,” Hazel continued. “And to achieve that, we must be able to let go of the past. If we hold on to our grudges here, we won’t be ready for any outside threats. By the time the next god decides to stroll in here with another monster, we won’t be any help to Arawn in the fight—because we’ll have killed each other settling scores.”
Merle clenched her jaw and looked to the side. “I hate it when you make sense.”
Hazel gave her a weary smile. “It’s easier to cling to the need for vengeance than it is to figure out how to use diplomacy to achieve at least some political progress.”
The gods knew she’d rather have punished the former Draconian witches in a way that was a lot more fitting to the severity of their crimes against the rest of the witch community. Her own need for revenge still burned in her blood, and her heart thundered with rage just thinking about it. And yet, rage and lust for revenge rarely made the best advisors when it came to leading a community, and certainly not when the overall survival of that community hinged on its ability to fight together—and not each other.
