Jegudiel (Deadly Virtues 2)

“And who are you?” Beth asked gently.

“Both good and bad,” Noa said. Just speaking those words aloud freed something caged inside her. “Both darkness and light.” Like Diel. Just like Diel. Diel had worn a physical collar to curb who he truly was. Noa had worn one too—hers had simply been internal and invisible.

Dinah rounded the table and crouched down beside Noa. She searched Noa’s face—for what, Noa didn’t know. Dinah took hold of Noa’s hand. “You think because you have darkness within you, we would love you any less?”

Noa scanned Dinah’s beautiful face, her dark skin and deep brown eyes. “You helped me drown it. Suppress it.”

Dinah shook her head. “No.” Her voice was steel, the grip on Noa’s hand growing tighter. “You were falling apart. You were letting the guilt consume you. You shunned that part of yourself to protect your heart from shattering. We only wanted to support you. Help you in whatever way we could.”

Noa refused to let her mind wander back to that day. To the way she had crumbled, to the self-hatred that had made her break apart. She had sliced herself in two, and the only way to carry on had been to bury the violent side of her deep down. Because that anger, that pure rage that she had channeled into destroying the Brethren, had only helped take an innocent life. A young life she was meant to save. One just like her … like Diel …

“I can’t drown it anymore,” Noa confessed. Her sisters gathered around her.

Dinah lifted her chin. “We love Priscilla. Not despite of her darkness, but because that’s who she is. The darker side to her soul doesn’t make us love her any less than we do each other.” Dinah looked at each member of the Coven. “What we went through, what those men did to us … There’s no judgment for who we are, how we turned out. They condemned us. They punished us for who we are. We, this so-called Coven, will never judge anyone. That’s not who we are as people.”

Noa’s taut body began to relax as she drank in Dinah’s words. She thought of Priscilla and wondered what she was doing right now. How many Brethren had she had taken out on her own? Priscilla had always believed her path was one to be walked alone. Noa had known otherwise. Priscilla had seen herself as too different from the rest of the Coven to stay. But she had been loved by them all, unconditionally. Priscilla thought she could never be among them and truly be herself. But from the second Noa had seen Gabriel with the Fallen, seen the love and understanding that existed among them, she had known it was possible.

Priscilla belonged with them. They all shared the same goal. They had all experienced the same fucked-up childhoods.

She was their sister. It was time she came home.

Noa wanted Priscilla back. Especially now she knew she would never hide the darker side of herself ever again. Especially now that the Coven had found the Fallen—men just as ruthless and fucked up as Noa and Priscilla were.

“We love you,” Dinah said at last, and Noa smirked at her sister, and some of the frayed fibers of her soul seemed to seal themselves.

“And I love you witches too,” Noa said, humor in her voice, and her sisters, one by one, kissed her head. “Okay, that’s enough.” She shooed them away. Her sisters stepped back, laughing.

Candace waggled her eyebrows. “What’s wrong? Now you have Diel, do our kisses no longer measure up?”

Noa got to her feet. “Speaking of …” She headed for the kitchen door, then looked back. “I’m going to find him. Don’t wait up.” Noa had barely made it into the hallway when she heard footsteps behind her. When she turned, Beth was there, face pale and her teeth worrying her bottom lip.

Beth had always been the one Noa had wanted to protect most of all, the one who felt most like a little sister to her. The seizures and severe panic attacks she endured, the timidness that plagued her, only disappearing when it was time to rescue the children from the Brethren.

“You feeling okay?” Noa stepped closer to Beth and searched her face. Beth’s eyes were huge like a doe’s, dark pools shimmering with worry and fear. She was reserved and meek, as if her spirit was displaced, lost, searching for a way out of this underground world they had been thrust—unwillingly—into. Beth ran her hand over her slender neck.

Noa’s eyes narrowed. “Do you feel sick? Feel another episode coming on?” Beth ducked her gaze and shook her head. Noa stepped close again, putting her hand on Beth’s arm. “Beth, talk to—”

“What did feel like?” Beth asked quietly. Her cheeks blazed. Noa frowned, not understanding the question. Beth’s eyes flicked up, trying to look at anything but Noa.