Free Eye of the Coven by Larissa Ladd

Chapter 1
    The green fields rolled out around me, stretching almost as far as the eye could see and there wasn’t a soul in sight, nothing but miles and miles of emptiness. I felt light, airy, like Julie Andrews in the opening scene of The Sound of Music when she spontaneously burst into song because it was all just so beautiful. The walk to the cave was bittersweet, the open sky calling to me and the fields beckoning, but the dark cave looming in the distance never really letting me enjoy it completely. With every step that I took closer to the cave, its heavy atmosphere pushed down harder on my chest until I felt almost suffocated when I stepped through the crevice in the rock.
    The opening was just a large crack in what looked to be a pile of rocks welded together by the ages, but on the other side it opened up into a large round room. The dark rock walls were adorned with torches that were lit as soon as the first of the coven arrived, and weren’t put out until the last left. I looked around, counting the faces that turned around to glance at me before carrying on with their conversations. With me added, it was thirteen, everyone was here.
    Nema noticed that I had arrived, and without a word she brought the room to order, her presence changing the atmosphere and demanding the reverence she deserved as the high priestess. When all the faces were turned to her she looked at each and every one of us, acknowledging our attendance, leaving the silence that hung thick in the air to accentuate what she had to say.
    “Cherry,” she didn’t waste time getting to the point as she looked at me as the first order of business, “You’ve had your time to think about our proposal.”
    I nodded slowly. I could feel the atmosphere change. Nema looked at me, her face an expressionless mask, waiting for me to speak.
    “And what have you decided?” she asked when I didn’t speak.
    “I have decided to decline.”
    My voice was clear and it bounced off the walls around us, pulling gasps and soft exclamations from the other witches. I could feel the disapproval around me. No one said no to Nema, not if they wanted to live. It was a risk for me to turn her down, even if what she had offered had sounded like an option. It never was. But I couldn’t take her up on it.
    I couldn’t be the High Priestess.
    I had known I was different than the other girls from a very young age. When they played with dolls, I was out in the woods changing squirrels into rocks and then laughing at how disoriented they were when I changed them back. I never spent time dreaming about boys or doing my nails at sleepovers.
    Instead, my sister and I were at the meetings with my father, learning how to harness our power and use it when it mattered. I grew up understanding what it meant to be different than the people who surrounded me, better in many ways, and I dealt with it.
    It didn’t take very long before I realized that I had more power than my sister Marlena, that I could beat her at anything, even though I was three years younger, and not long after that, my father realized it too. Power like mine hadn’t been witnessed in centuries, and his pride in me swelled, only to be trampled by the disappointment that I would never take my rightful place as High Priestess, and, as a result, I was constantly in danger. If I wasn’t going to exercise it for the good of the coven, for the good of witches everywhere, then power like mine was a curse, something that should never be released into the world. “Power has to have a purpose” my father had always told me, “and if not for the good of the coven, of the family then what for?” He died not long after that.
    Since my father’s death, Nema had been insisting I take over from her. She had been High Priestess for as long as I could remember, and stepping down was difficult for her, but, by tradition, the most powerful witch had to be in command, and so, it had to be me. She also understood the danger I