Free Eye of the Coven by Larissa Ladd Page B

flames around us. 
    Rebecca launched forward and a string of guttural sounds bubbled from her throat as she thrust her hands forward. The motion was more to scare me more than it was necessary to complete the action. It didn’t. She looked ridiculous to me. I could feel the cold wind of her spell whip around the cave, saw the torch flames buck wildly when it swirled past them before they returned to their lazy dance, but I was able to block her long before her spell had any effect on me. She wasn’t nearly strong enough and even though I hadn’t been able to identify exactly what spell she’d decided to throw at me, it hadn’t done anything. Why everyone had decided she was to be my opponent was beyond me, but then again, there wasn’t anyone in the coven who would have been able to make it a fair fight. Not even Marlena, and she was my sister. What she had was as close to my powers as anyone here would get, and even she was still far from it.
    Rebecca knew my strength, and my quick rebuke of her spell changed her strategy because her movement changed to a blur, and as she passed me, a sharp pain shot into my arm. I grunted, feeling annoyance start up in my chest like an itch I couldn’t scratch. It was ridiculous of her to revert to such childish games in trying to beat me. If that’s how she wanted to play it, so be it. I could feel the blood in my veins speed up, the warm sensation spreading through my body reaching all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes, and I knew that to the others I would become a blur too. It was easy to catch up to her; I was faster than her when it came down to it, and when I reached her, I grabbed a handful of her blond curls and yanked her down. There was no dignity in it, no grace; it was stupid, but she’d asked for it. She winced and cried out like a girl as she fell to the ground and her speed returned to normal..
    “This is pointless,” she said, looking at Nema, who nodded.
    “You’ve done well, Rebecca,” the high priestess said, and Rebecca looked relieved. A duel was always double-sided, a test for the one as well as a ruling for the other. Then Nema looked at me, “we’ll revisit this topic soon, Cherry; you may be persistent but so am I.”
    I turned my back on her. I was tired of playing these games, of being told how to live my life, as though it were the only way my life was meant to be lived. It was disrespectful I knew, and under any other circumstance, I would have treated her the way she deserved. I ignored the gasps and whispers I heard around me and walked out of the clammy darkness that hung in the cave into the bright afternoon sun.
    The grass around me was green and welcoming, and I breathed in deeply, tasting the fresh air, such a sharp contrast to the musty air in the cave. It seemed primitive for our coven to meet in a cave, but somehow the fact that it was so primitive was what made it able for us to keep it a secret. No one looked for covens in caves anymore; no one looked for witches who came together to create spells and concoct witches’ brews. It all seemed so much like a fairy tale that thirteen witches slipping through a crack in the wall didn’t draw attention at all.
    I stepped onto the narrow footpath through the grass that I’d come by and started the long relaxing walk home. A dull aching started on my arm and when I stopped to inspect it I found my sleeve was soaked in blood. I rolled it up and found three deep cuts and a lighter scrape as the forth. Rebecca’s nails. I rolled my eyes. A scrape I would have to bandage, and explain if it came down to it. I didn’t have many human friends and I didn’t see them often, but they were there and sometimes they had questions.
    It wouldn’t take very long to heal; our immunity worked different than that of a human, although I didn’t exactly know how. The wound made me feel like Rebecca had forced me down to her level. She’d forced me to revert to childish games because she was