Coven: a dark medieval paranormal romance (Witches of the Woods Book 2) by Steffanie Holmes Page A

camp. Bernadine sat in the same place I’d left her, hunched beside the entrance to Aubrey’s cabin, her long pipe stuck between her pursed lips and that all-too-familiar scowl plastered across her face.
    “Aunt, what’s wrong?” My stomach sank. I pushed my basket into Brunhild’s hand and went to help her.
    “She’s not here,” Bernadine murmured, as she sucked on her pipe. Her gnarled fingers clutched at her ancient stick.
    “Who? Aubrey?” That was impossible. She should have returned hours ago.
    “Of course Aubrey!” Bernadine yelled, spitting out her pipe in disgust. “I’m not sitting around here waiting for anyone else.”
    “All right, you don’t have to snap at me.”
    “This is all your fault.” Bernadine sighed. “If you’d gone to the village in her place—”
    “—then I might be the one missing right now,” I shot back. “And you’d be sitting here feeling just as guilty about it. Or maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you’d be glad I was gone.”
    “Don’t be like that.”
    “Don’t tell me what to be!” I screamed at her. I could feel a hot rage rising through my body. All the pent-up frustration at my aunts that had been building over these last weeks came bubbling to the surface. “You and Aubrey think you have to control everything I do. You act as if I don’t have my own mind, my own ideas, as if I’m still some child you need to coddle.”
    “Of course I do,” she snapped back. “You are barely twenty-one years of age, and you seem incapable of doing anything without attracting the most dire of consequences. We send you to the village to sleep with a man, and you end up accused of witchcraft. I had to leave my home, my life, and flee hundreds of miles to this cursed place, all because of your recklessness, your naivety, your reckless pursuit of a man who abandons you here at the first opportunity. And you can’t even use magic to protect yourself. So forgive me if I don’t implicitly trust your judgement.”
    “Ulrich didn’t abandon me! He’s doing all of this so we can be together.”
    “See?” Bernadine’s eyes flashed. “You only care about yourself, about your precious man. Never mind that we’ve lost our home or that Aubrey is out there, probably raped and beaten to death by some randy highwayman, only weeks after she lost her own lover, a man who had cared for her for years. But as long as precious Ulrich comes back to you, then what do you care for any of us?”
    Her words felt like a physical slap across my face. My cheeks stung. My eyes filled with tears, and I furiously blinked them away . I do not have to listen to this . I turned on my heel and stomped away down the path.
    “Where do you think you’re going?” Bernadine called after me.
    “To find Maerwynn.” I snapped back. “We have to go after Aubrey.” See? I wanted to shout at her, but didn’t. I don’t just think about myself. I’m trying to organize a rescue attempt, while you are just pouting and smoking.
    Behind me, Bernadine snorted. I heard footsteps on the steps. “Ada, wait for me.” It was Brunhild.
    “Why?” I snapped, instantly feeling guilty. Brunhild wasn’t the one I was angry at.
    “Because Maerwynn is in Gussalen’s cabin,” Brunhild replied. “You’re going the wrong way.”
    “Oh.” I followed Brunhild up and adjoining staircase, sensing Bernadine’s eyes boring into my back.
    We found Maerwynn and Gussalen crouched together on Gussalen’s bed, their heads bent in murmured conversation. “I’m busy, girls.” she said grimly when we approached, waving us away with a flick of her wrist. “I’ll come and find you later.”
    “Aunt Aubrey hasn’t returned,” I blurted out, and as the words fell from my mouth, the fear I’d been holding back seized me. She hadn’t gone that far from the Haven, the nearest village wasn’t even a day’s ride away. So where was she? What could keep her from returning, except something truly awful—
    I tried to say