BREAKING SHADOWS (Shadows Book 1)

Chapter 7

By breakfast time, I'd had about two hours sleep and was barely conscious at the table. My body hurt like I'd been hit by a train and I must have spent two hours in a scolding shower trying to rid myself of demon innards.

Gran whipped around the house in a whirlwind gathering everything she needed for her monthly meeting with one of the Council members. I loved the colour flushing her face and the fullness of her cheeks. She looked well, as if she'd never been ill at all. It made it all worth it, even at the end when Rafe gets to waltz off into the sunset with his love, I'll still have my grandmother.

"I can't tell you what time I'll be back," she threw her cloak around her and picked up a stack of papers from the kitchen worktop. "There's lots on the agenda today."

"Will you be discussing Cullfield?" Arden asked, his hand stilling with butter poised on his knife.

My heart went out to him.

Sympathy grew on my grandmother's face, softening wrinkles and shiny eyes. "I will be sure to ask. Now will you two be okay? Can I make sure you get to school on time?"

"Yes," I yawned into my hand. I hadn't even touched the toast in front of me.

"Good," she ruffled my hair as she passed in a cloud of lavender. "I'll see you soon."

Arden buttered his toast in slow, deliberate movements, eyebrow cocked and eyes on my face.

"What?"

He pursed his lips and continued to butter the toast.

"What?"

The door banged closed. Arden's knife clattered on the table. "Two things," he said, holding up the same amount of fingers in case I was unsure of how many two was. "First, shouldn't all coven members be present at the Council meeting?"

I folded my arms across my chest. "I've told you, where the coven is concerned, Gran keeps me...separate. Everyone else will be there, and your second thing?"

"But if you're to be High Witch one day-"

"And the second?"

"How come you were AWOL last night? Did you sneak out to see Will?"

My blood froze and suddenly I was alert and awake, the aches I felt from falling through the ceiling dissipated. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Y'know, absent without leave, in abenstia, missing? I had a small moment of panic where I even had to dab sweat from my brow because I thought you'd been kidnapped but then I remembered the dome and that they'd not taken me. So, how was Will? Is he the reason for your early morning glow? Did he make you blush-"

"I wasn't with Will. I was...on my own."

Arden screwed his face up. "Riles, that I do not need to know about."

"I went to Mr Holloway's to get answers." There was no way he'd understand why I was with an angel.

Arden pulled away. "Without me? I'm insulted."

"You were sleeping. Not all of us sneak into other people's rooms in the middle of the night."

"Did you find out anything?" He began tucking into his breakfast.

I shuddered thinking about what Rafe and I had seen. How Mr Holloway had suffered in the end. I pushed away the toast on my plate, my usual aggressive appetite diminished. "Confirmed Arachna kill. There were cobwebs and demon remnants. Not pleasant."