Page 76 of Hallowed Bones

“And what exactly was that?” Ezra leans forward as if he wants to break the circle, but he doesn’t. Not yet.

When Dimitri falls silent, Lyall speaks, backing Ezra’s demands. “You’re holding something back,” he says, not a question but a statement of fact. “This meeting reeks of old history. Of something unfinished. What do you know, old man?”

Dimitri closes his eyes.

“Tell us,” Cameron urges, low and urgent. “Please, Uncle.”

Silent pressure fills the room. Dimitri’s hands fist in the blankets covering his lower half. “Alexander Wardwell,” he finally states, “was exiled from our coven twenty-odd years ago.”

Alexander Wardwell—Haven’s father.

Dimitri’s breath rattles in his throat before he exhales. He opens his eyes once more, and they meet mine.

My spine straightens, but it’s Lyall who speaks first. “Why?”

“Alex was powerful—perhaps even more so than my brother.” Dimitri’s words echo into the quiet of the bedroom, but the eyes that are on mine grow distant, clouded with memories. Images dance across the glassy orbs, too small for me to pick out anything clearly. “Kane hated that.”

I refuse to look at Ezra, though I’m sure the reminder of his father is an ugly one. Out of the four of us, Kane Bishop was the cruelest to his own son. The shadows in the room lean in, and none of us move. My heart thumps against the inside of my chest, swollen and sluggish, a chill forming behind my ribs. Dimitri presses his back more fully into the pillows as his gaze moves to Ezra.

“Alex would never have allowed you to be trained the way you were,” he murmurs, and even if Ezra can’t hear it—I’m viscerally aware of the pain and guilt in those words.

“Why was he exiled, Uncle?” Cameron voices the question of the mystery we all want solved, repeating it—though both Ezra and Ly have already demanded answers.

Dimitri shakes his head. “Were you to ask Kane, it was because he was dangerous, but I know it was because he threatened Kane’s position as coven leader.” He lifts his face, and the hope that floods his features is painful to watch. “Is he…?”

Those gray-blue eyes fall to me, but I shake my head. “Alexander Wardwell is dead,” I tell him. Just like the rest of Dimitri’s coven. The generation that came before us is no more.

That hope fades as Dimitri’s features tighten, but he nods as if the answer was expected. “Magic can be addictive,” he begins again. “The more you use it, the more you think you need it to live.” His lips twist in wry amusement. “A little bit here and there, then more. There’s always more. Alex was the only one of us that seemed capable of managing the massive amounts of power he wielded. Kane hated him for that, but no one was blameless. Alex believed that we, as a coven, were losing our control.”

With each word, Ezra’s expression grows increasingly harder, darker—removed and distant. “Did we?” he asks, the question as sharp as any blade.

Dimitri doesn’t answer immediately. His silence is the answer. Ezra’s gaze darkens until I can’t see a hint of the blue in his irises, only the inky opaqueness of black. Concern drives a spike of concern up my spine, but then Dimitri continues.

“We were using our abilities for insignificant reasons. We stopped all rites, stopped asking for wisdom from the Gods. We felt as if we didn’t need it,” Dimitri admits. “We were young and foolish. We wanted to prove that we were better than humans. We’d been given powers, and we wanted to use them.”

Shame is a sharp dagger. Though invisible, I see the marks that it’s made upon our elder. The blood that it draws cannot be unspilled. The wound remains unhealed until the source of the shame is gone from the earth.

“We wanted to show off our power over life and death.” Dimitri’s quiet confession is a shock to us all. “It is the folly of man and why priestesses are needed. To remind us of the importance of true life versus the power it wields.”

“Uncle…” Cameron’s face is pale, his eyes round and horrified behind his spectacles.

Dimitri bows his head. “We—I—know. We should never have done some of the things we did.”

Cameron’s hissed curse isn’t even half of the emotions swirling in my head. My own father hadn’t exactly been kind. but I’d always been grateful that he wasn’t Ezra’s. For Cameron, though, hearing that his father—the man that he’d looked up to and that had helped me when I’d awoken—had helped to bind an innocent spirit for no other reason than control … it warps the past and our view of the man.

“Alex refused to join us. He condemned us, demanded redress for the things we had done—binding spirits, calling to the Veil—everything was done all because we wanted to prove our power. Kane … was far better at hiding his darker side from the rest of them, but not from me. I knew how he was. I knew what he was. So did Alex. Alex challenged Kane in private. I was the only one who knew.”

The unspoken reality is as loud as a scream. I already know what he’s going to say, but that doesn’t make the words any less of a knife to the throat.

“Kane lost, but Alex never wanted to be leader. He told Kane that he would let him keep his position so long as he promised to never bind another spirit. Kane agreed. A blood promise was made—Kane never broke it.”

He couldn’t. Once made, a blood promise is impossible to break unless one forfeits their own magic and life.

“But you all know as well as I—Kane was a proud sort. Alex’s time in the coven came to an end not long after he overpowered Kane.”

My gaze moves to Ezra to find my friend with a face carved from pure stone. Alexander Wardwell had been cast from the coven because of his father. What, I wonder, will Haven think when she learns that fact?

“I always wondered where he’d gone,” Dimitri says, sounding far away now.