Sisters of the Coven (Daughters of the Warlock Book 1) Read online

  Sisters of the Coven

  Daughters of the Warlock book 1.

  By Amelia Shaw

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  SISTERS OF THE COVEN

  First edition. February 26, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Amelia Shaw.

  Written by Amelia Shaw.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 8.

  Chapter 9.

  Chapter 10.

  Chapter 11.

  Chapter 12.

  Chapter 13.

  Chapter 14.

  Chapter 15.

  Chapter 16.

  Chapter 17.

  Chapter 18.

  Chapter 19.

  Chapter 20.

  Chapter 1.

  Ava.

  Being the oldest child sucked. Always had. Especially in this family.

  I pressed my lips together, ensuring I didn’t say anything I was feeling. It wouldn’t be appropriate. Not now.

  My eyes flickered over my mother who lay in the middle of her bed, frail and willowy, all loose skin hanging off brittle bones. Her pale blue eyes—slightly milky due to her age—looked at me with her penetrating gaze. Instead of annoyance, or disappointment, however, they sought forgiveness, approval, and above all other things, help.

  Funny. I thought I was so inept, I couldn’t even grow a flower, and now she wanted me to save her life.

  I gave the Gods above the bird when she blinked. Even her gesture was slow, as though her body was tired and even something as simple as blinking required more effort than she had.

  I sighed. I glanced down at her hand, pondering if I should hold it. I didn’t want to, but as her oldest child, I was sure she expected some sort of comfort. After all, I was the child who had known her the longest in her role as mother. Would she recognize I wanted nothing to do with her? Would she know if I did hold her hand, I didn’t really mean it?

  She probably wouldn’t have cared, judging by the earnest way she looked at me. She expected me to save her, like it was part of my duty.

  Despite my feelings about the woman, I didn’t want her to die. The problem was, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I didn’t even know what was wrong with her. None of us did. We’d tried... everything. My magic was exhausted.

  Guilt gripped me. I had to look away.

  Perhaps my assessment of my mother wasn’t fair. As the oldest child, I was an experiment of sorts. No one was perfect. I knew she pushed me because she saw my potential and she was trying to bring out my best in me. I knew she wanted me strong because she wasn’t always going to be there and needed me to have the resilience to step up and lead when all I wanted to do was cower. She detested weakness, especially in me.

  My heart clenched. I didn’t want to get dramatic and claim it was breaking, but there was no other way for me to describe what I was going through.

  This was so not fair. We should have had more time.

  “What can I do, Mother?” I asked. I did my best to control my voice, to make sure it didn’t shake. The last thing I wanted to do was reveal any sort of weakness, especially to her. “Tell me.”

  My mother turned to me, her blue eyes brimming with tears. It was a strange sight to see. My mother wasn’t one for outward displays of emotions, especially not in front of her children. I nearly flinched. It was unnerving, being reminded just how human she was.

  “You need to help them, Ava,” she said. Her voice did not quiver despite her emotional display. Even on her deathbed, she had more control over herself than I did. “You’re all they’ll have when I’m gone.”

  By ‘they,’ she meant my two younger sisters. Bella and Courtney.

  Bella was a classic middle child with wallflower tendencies and Courtney was the rebel. The baby. The one who got to break all the rules and get away with it. Meanwhile, I was the one who has to be dutiful, responsible... perfect. The curse of the oldest born. We were sisters filled with clichés and topped up with magic.

  I leaned forward and smiled as bravely as I could. This time, I did not hesitate when I reached out and touched her by smoothing her grey auburn hair away from her face.

  “Of course, I’ll look after them, Mother,” I said. “I always have.”

  It was strange to see her so weak when she was known for being so strong. She was the most powerful witch I knew. And now, she was dying, frail and brittle, and I had no idea what to do to save her. I had no idea what caused her to get so sick so quickly.

  I knew nothing.

  I hated knowing nothing.

  She reached out with her frail, thin fingers and my gaze caught on the paleness of her skin. The way the veins shone blue against the white, like thin spider legs against a wall.

  I met her halfway and clasped her hand in my own, willing some of my strength into her. I hated this. She shouldn’t need my strength. She should have enough of her own.

  But she didn’t.

  More tears came, one right after another. I sniffed, mentally lecturing myself for being so vulnerable when my mother needed me to be strong. However, I could not help it, confronted with the fact that there was a good chance I might lose her. And that made me realized I loved her more than I had realized.

  I resented her for how hard she was on me. I resented her for the pressure she put on me.

  She drove me half mad sometimes with her expectations of perfection.

  But this woman was my whole world. My everything. She’d taught me every lesson worth learning, and some of those that weren’t. I’d never even imagined a world without her in it. I always thought she would be there, pointing out everything I was doing wrong, reminding me how amazing I could be if I just applied myself.

  Her skin was cold to the touch as I gripped her hands, and I cringed at seeing the last signs of life leaving her. No matter how powerful she was, nor how much strength my sisters and I had, we could not save her.

  We had tried. And we had failed.

  “Things are going to change, Ava,” Mother said, swallowing hard as she struggled to breathe. Her voice sounded foreign to my ears. I did not know this voice. It could not have come from the woman before me.

  I leaned forward and brushed more of her matted hair from her face. I had always thought if she died—if, not when, because I was a fool for thinking my mother would defy the odds and live forever—she would die in a heated battle against our enemies. She would go down fighting. But this... This was pathetic. She did not even fight. She lay in bed, pitiful and weak and completely unlike herself. She probably hated that this was how she was going to go.

  I hated it.

  It’s not fair.

  I was beginning to learn that life wasn’t fair and there was nothing I nor anyone could do about it. Magic was convenient, sure, but it wasn’t powerful enough to save a dying woman. It wasn’t powerful enough to decipher a mysterious illness or remove it from a body.

  Which meant magic was useless when it was needed.

  “Ava?”

  My gaze snapped down to my mother. I swallowed. I was so consumed in my own thoughts that I’d forgotten my mother needed an answer from me, if only to make herself feel better about leaving.

  A small, petulant part of me wanted no part in helping my mother pass. I considered holding my tongue and making her fight for more time so she could get that r
eassurance from me she so badly needed.

  But no. I would not be cruel.

  Not this time.

  “Of course, they will, Mother,” I told her. “I mean... You’ll be gone.”

  I stopped, pushing down the rising tide of emotion, because I was just as pathetic as her.

  I hadn’t expected to be at this life-altering juncture for many years. Yet here I sat, not much past my twenty-third birthday, watching my mother take her last breaths. Watching her go from a strong, stoic woman to a crumpling, insipid puddle.

  “You’ve been our whole world, Mother,” I continued. The declaration rang false. Of course, they weren’t a lie, but this wasn’t our relationship. We were never emotional. We did not lie to make each other feel better. We opted for the truth because the truth would make us strong, and we always needed strength. “Our entire life, you have been everything to us. I don’t know what we’re going to do—what I am going to do—without you.”

  As I said the words, designed to make my dying mother feel better, the truth hit me across the chest like a well-aimed arrow. She had been only parent.

  The only family we’d ever known.

  What would we do without her? I didn’t have a clue.

  Her blue eyes, tinged with a spectacular violet, widened and filled with panic.

  “I never imagined it would take me dying for you to share a kind word with your mother.” She forced a smile. “It warms my heart, girl, that you wound your pride for me. I did not expect you to be sad because I am leaving. If I’m being honest, I expected relief.”

  I sighed, looking away. I knew why she felt this way. Had our positions been reversed, I would have thought my mother was out of her mind if she told me meaningless niceties to take the blow of dying away.

  “Despite our differences, Mother, you have made us strong,” I said. “You have made me strong.”

  “You are,” my mother said, and for the briefest of seconds, it sounded just like her. Her voice was firm and unwavering. “Do not forget it. But heed me when I tell you, Ava, that you will have... nothing.’

  She gasped for air, and then coughed loudly.

  I looked down, not wanting to watch as the sickness consumed her. My gaze caught on the plush carpets and the well-worn rugs in her room. I always thought they were frivolous, but my mom liked the color. She said it brought life to an otherwise drab room.

  She’d been sick for months, almost a year now. But the time had finally come, I could see it. The spark of her magic was beginning to fade, like a candle flickering with no wax left to burn. It grew smaller and darker by the second.

  I think she knew it too.

  Horror filled me as I realized all the things we hadn’t talked about, all the things that still needed to be said. I didn’t know if apologies were in order. I didn’t know if we should exchange pledges of love. But something felt unsaid and I didn’t want her to leave without me at least saying it.

  But what, I didn’t know. Maybe if I tried to talk, maybe if I pushed myself to speak, the words might come to my mouth before they popped into my brain.

  “Mother, I...”

  She squeezed my hand, hard, stalling my words. What was she trying to say?

  I forced my mind back to the last thing she’d said. I couldn’t focus on that. Instead, I reflected on what she’d just told me. “What do you mean, nothing?”

  We had a house, a beautiful house. Servants. Our health. A vast yard where we could run and play and practice our magic.

  She wasn’t making any sense. If she meant we had no family, no friends, no one outside of our little world we could trust, then yes, we had nothing. But that had never bothered us before. We had each other. And even though our mother was particularly hard on me, she was our friend, our family, and, yes, our whole world.

  “Everything around us, Ava... the house, the lands, it’s all magic.” She paused, coughing. “A conjure. It’s not real.”

  An eerie coldness crept up my spine. She was delirious. She had to be. The disease had taken hold of her mind and was saying things that made no sense.

  “What do you mean, not real?” I asked. Part of me didn’t want to even entertain her words. But since she was so adamant about saying them, I would humor her even if I did not understand how one person could produce such magic, such a façade, for two decades.

  “I mean, there’s a reason I’ve never been able to leave this house,” she continued. “Not since I built it. These lands. My very presence is what keeps the house erect. The servants visible. It is all an elaborate... spell.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “It’s... what?”

  No. It couldn’t be true. The home I’d been born into. Loved. Lived in my whole life. It couldn’t all be a fabricated spell. Because if that was true, we’d have more things to worry about than our grief very soon.

  Mother wheezed again, louder this time, and I reached for a glass of water and handed it to her. “Hold on, Mother. Just hold on a minute more.”

  Suddenly, my blood burned with anger. How dare she wait until her deathbed to tell us this? How dare she not prepare us for what was to come? How dare she be so entirely selfish? How dare she lie to us? We were fools, all of us, for believing this place, this happiness, could belong to us.

  For a flash of a second, I hated her.

  A female servant, whom I now didn’t even know if she was real or not, shuffled into the room.

  I turned to her. “Gemma, you need to find my sisters, now.” I cleared my voice, trying to remain calm despite what my mother had just confessed to me. “Bring them here. Quickly.”

  Something flickered in my peripheral. I blinked. The elaborate wallpaper faded. The rich carpet beneath my feet shrunk away. The whole house shook, as though the very foundations of which the house was built were disappearing.

  Fear raced through me, my heart pounding hard and every sense coming alive. What was I going to do? I always tried to prepare myself for every possible outcome. This was what my mother had instilled in my brain at a young age. Figure out the best way forward.

  There was a solution to everything. And yet, I could not think of one. I could not think of how I was going to save my sisters from the devastation that was about to occur. They should at least be given a heads up. The rug shouldn’t be ripped out from under them. It wasn’t their fault our mother had lied to us for so long.

  Gemma rushed off and I focused all my attention on my mother. She had lied to me my whole life. It was like she was a puzzle. I thought I had all the pieces together, but I had forced them into spots that didn’t fit.

  My mother detested lying. Honesty, even brutal honesty, was better than a lie. Now, though, I realized she was the biggest hypocrite I knew.

  I let out a breath.

  There was no time for thoughts of regret and anger now. I had to save my sisters. I swallowed. My throat was too dry. My skin tickled, crawling with premonition.

  We were all in a lot of trouble.

  “Just hold on, Mother.” It was strange, me telling her what to do rather than the opposite, the way it normally was. It would never be that way again. “Until Bella and Courtney come.”

  I hoped hearing their names would move her, would make her hold on longer.

  “Give me your locket Ava,” she said. “Quickly.”

  She reached out, her frail arm half the size of my average one. It shook, despite the fact that all she was doing was lifting her arm. I ignored it. I couldn’t focus on something I couldn’t do anything about.

  I reached for the necklace that hung from my neck, the ancient gold warm against my skin. I hesitated. Should I give it to her? What was she going to do with it? Was this a façade as well?

  I had no choice but to hand it to my mother. There was no reason not to. Even if it wasn’t real, there was nothing I could do about that now.

  My mother brought it back to her person. She opened it up with trembling fingers and lay it on her chest as though she also wanted to wear it.


  I looked away from the odd image. So many questions raced through my mind, but I pressed my lips together, refusing to allow any to come to life. Mother taught me never to question her, to trust her. Since finding out my entire life was a lie, I wanted nothing more than to ask these questions. I certainly deserved honest answers, especially after everything she had engrained in me.

  It’s not fair.

  “What can we do, Mother?” I asked, ignoring the phrase that began to repeat over and over in my mind like it was some kind of incantation. Except it wasn’t. No matter how many times I said the words, nothing would change. Life would be unfair. There was nothing I could do for it. “Tell me.”

  She pinned me with her gaze, strong and steady, despite the shaking of the house around us.

  “You must keep them safe, Ava.” Her voice was firm. I did not like that she felt compelled to tell me to do such a thing. I would do anything for my sisters. “No matter what, Bella and Courtney must be your only priority. Build a home of your own on the land nearby. Stay there as long as you can. Aunt Alison is the only one you can trust... in the village. If they find out... you will...”

  My sisters burst into the room in a cloud of noise, a look of sheer horror on Bella’s face as she held up a beloved book.

  “What’s happening to the house?” she demanded, as though she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see our mother lying on a bed, helpless, my locket on her chest. I should have been more surprised that she was more concerned about her books than our mother, but I wasn’t. I almost envied her for her selfishness, for her brutal honesty. “My books are falling to bits.”

  She held out the book as the papers crumbled away into dust in her hands. She let out a squeal, her eyes wide and full of tears. Tears for stories. Tears for fiction.

  None for Mother.

  There wasn’t time for extensive explanations. Not now, anyway.

  “Mother is dying,” I snapped. I should have been gentler with her. Bella was sensitive. I didn’t think anyone ever raised their voice at her, or was too firm with her. She needed to get used to it, unfortunately. She would soon realize the world was cruel and heartless and did not care about her books—or anything. “Quickly. Come.”