Page 68 of Our Covenant

Asher flicks Thorne away easily and something behind me cracks. Thorne groans in pain. When Asher refocuses on my red face, I smile. Magic tingles at my spine, and when I don’t send it back to where it erupted from, it rushes to my hands. Water vapor collects and fills the spaces between my clutching fingers on Asher’s wrist.

“Come on, you big baby,” I taunt, willing my lifeline to build into a thick layer of defense. “Is that all you’ve got?”

My magic molds to his body, trapping him in a barrier. He takes a deep breath as it swallows him whole, covering his nose and mouth but leaving his eyes unobstructed. If he’s going to kill me, he’ll be forced to live with the vision of my dying breath forever. His oxygen-deprived face reddens and the veins in his neck start to bulge.

“Fuck! You’re killing him!” Thorne returns to our sides but keeps his distance. “Don’t make me fucking do it, Fox.”

“Don’t get between them, Thorne,” Maddox deadpans. “You remember what happened last time.”

“Sure, Mads,” Thorne calls over his shoulder, his voice rising over the pounding of blood in my ears. “Then you can answer to the coven if they ask why I just stood back and watched two of the most powerful legacies in three hundred years kill each other over a woman who wants us all dead!”

“I’ll have the script written if it comes to it,” Maddox volleys. “Jealousy is a poison they have to bleed out.”

I chuckle at the flash of anger Maddox ignites in Asher’s eyes.

“Do you think I’m jealous of you, Asher?” I grit out. “Do you think I wish I were the last person she cared to touch?”

Asher’s grip has already eased, but he still has me suspended in midair by my now soaked hoodie. But I’m not going to be the first to relent. I don’t need the defeat like Asher does, even if I do deserve it.

Thorne holds up his hands full of flames in his last warning before Asher’s screams. It bubbles to the surface and fills the study with gurgling rage. He drops me unceremoniously, and I crumple to the floor as the wave of water splashes around us.

Asher holds his head high above me. He flexes his arms with his fists at his sides. The puddle collecting around us doesn’t seep into the two-hundred-year-old rug beneath me, nor does it find its way into the seams of the wood planks. It stays at the ready just in case.

“You’re both idiots,” Thorne barks. “This is what she wants. You're giving her exactly what she came here for again!”

“You think you know her so well,” Asher snaps back at him, his quelled anger rekindling.

“Maddox and I know her better than you do.” Thorne crosses his arms over his chest then delivers his last blow. “We’ve certainly fucked her longer.”

Asher raises his fist, and I’m already gathering another arsenal of water to throw at the two of them when Maddox says, “I’ve got it. I know the connection!”

We all turn around to look at him. He doesn’t move or start to explain what it is he found that’s more important than stopping the three of us from killing one another. Instead, he bustles over to a bookshelf near the fireplace and pulls another large family tree portfolio from its eternal resting place.

I reach over to the edge of the couch to pull myself up, and Asher extends a hand down to me.

“I don’t forgive you,” I say, taking his assistance.

“The feeling’s mutual,” he grumbles, and we join Thorne and Maddox at the desk.

Maddox taps his fingers down on the page then looks between us all like he’s already explained his erratic behavior.

“The trials?” Thorne lifts his brow at him.

“The other night. Remember?” The tip of Maddox’s finger slams down onto the fragile paper again and again. “You said their name.”

“Yeah, but Elsbeth can’t be a Hale. She can’t be a Noyce either, for that matter. You just told us⁠—”

“I never said she couldn’t be a Hale.” Maddox sounds triumphant, but his face is crestfallen.

“Mads,” Thorne hedges. “She can’t be a Hale. There are no Hale witches left. Our ancestors made sure of that.”

I swallow hard at the reminder. Not only was the Hale line ostracized, but they were victims of abuse and vitriol until the coven could dispose of the remaining heirs to the Hale legacy. Maddox knows that just as well as the rest of us. It’s one of the only secrets the legacy families have kept from the coven at large.

“Montgomery Ernest Hale was the last Hale legacy. He was killed in 1942.” Asher slides his finger across the decades-worn paper and settles on the box with Montgomery’s details crossed out with a single red dash of ink.

“And her last name is Noyce. Why are you looking at the Hales anyway?” Thorne roughs the back of his neck, his patience wearing thin.

“You can check that, can’t you?” Asher nudges Maddox’s shoulder, ignoring me and Thorne.