Soren
I stand on the porch for several minutes after Patton leaves, disappearing into the storm to go board up his house. He can’t stay there now. Not with the threat of the Hounds. His theory about Duke’s behavior made sense, but I’m not entirely convinced he wouldn’t have gone to the Hounds, or worse, alerted the Viper herself that Princess Maeve was with me, in the Roguelands, unguarded. Her boss… well, he’d love a royal in his clutches, especially Maeve, given her skillset.
The thought makes my stomach turn, or maybe that’s biting hunger, I’m not sure, but I go back inside, and the witches are disappointed to find out that Patton left.
He must come here sometimes. He left the basket, and it’s one of his fancy ones. He’ll return for it when it’s safe, I’m sure, and I do my best to explain that to the witches while watching the old witch continue her inspection of the bowl in the center of the room.
I start to move in the direction of the room where Maeve’s resting, but the elder witch stops me, clicking her tongue. “I need to speak to you,” she says, sitting on her stool and motioning for me to sit beside her.
“About what?”
“The princess,” she says with a sigh, then looks at her assistants, motioning for them to leave. They funnel through a door leading to the recesses of the house, and silence falls all around us, broken only by the crackling of the fire and bubbling of the cauldrons.
I don’t sit. I cross my arms over my chest, looking down at the bowl, its pale, pewter surface now stained crimson. “What is that thing?”
“It reads power in blood,” she explains in the simplest terms. “Witches use them often in healing to determine the best routes for our potions and medicines, but they’re also used when witches are young to determine what their best practice might be when they go through schooling.”
I edge closer to the table, glancing at the notepad beside the bowl, but I can’t make out the handwriting.
“You cut Maeve’s fingers.”
“To determine how best to help her, but she’s beyond my scope of power. I’m a healer, wolf. But I’m also just a witch. She is far more than that. Far, far more.”
“Is she dying?”
“No. She’s experiencing something we call a depletion event. Most witches have experienced one, but they learn early on not to stretch their powers so thin. We see it more in children–those too young to truly understand the scope of their powers. It makes them ill, a little sick to their stomachs, but they always recover with rest. The princess, however… her family is different.”
I sink onto a stool, giving up on looking hard and serious. While I hang my head in my hands, she continues, “Powers like the princess possesses are world ending, or world building, gifts. The kind that can topple mountains, create weather, breathe life into the dead. Her entire family is like that. I knew her mother. She was younger than me by several years, but we went through school together in Moonrise, in their healing program.” She tilts the bowl, gazing down at the shimmering blood. “Alpha Kenna was a force–a hybrid of two rival powers. From her mother, Firestone gifts, which had only ever sprung up randomly in our modern times, and from her father, the gifts of the Shadowsyngers, which was her dominant power group, for sure. Shadowsyngers are a special kind of wolf, however, not witches, so her blood was… complicated. She wanted to be a healer so badly. She had the hands for it, but not necessarily the powers. She did it anyway.”
“And what is Maeve, according to your bowl?”
“Firestone, completely. The first full-blooded of her kind since their downfall three thousand years ago. It’s a miracle. It’s the return of a demigoddess in our midst, but she… her power depletion spells are always going to be extreme. Her body can’t handle it, being stretched this thin, but this happened at a horrible time, I’m afraid. The next full moon isn’t for another three weeks, and when it comes, it’ll be eclipsed.”
I sigh, trying to take in all of the information, but I’m unsure what to do with it.
Thankfully, she doesn’t pause before continuing, “Her powers are naturally at their weakest this close to the sacred Rite. It’s a time of… renewal. Once the Rite has passed, her powers will return in full, but until then, she’ll be weak–weaker than she’s ever been, and in her case, using her powers at all for the next few weeks could spell danger. But, of course, marking her could help her along.”
“What?” I rasp, unsure I heard her correctly, but the witch rises and walks to the far side of the room, opening cabinets and pulling out lengths of fabric.
“The mate’s mark, of course. It’s simple, really. Her mate can carry some of the burden of her depletion, giving her a boost, so to speak. It’ll speed up the recovery process.”
“She can’t have a mate. She’s a witch.”
“Witches have mates. They just have a hard time finding them, that’s all. We can’t feel the bond like you wolves can, but it’s there, destined, finely woven into the heavens.” She walks in my direction, placing a pile of fabric in my hands which turns out to be clothing for me and Maeve. “You must leave this place, however, once she wakes. She’ll be weak, and if anything comes knocking, I can’t guarantee we’ll be able to protect you both. My apprentice, Glorabell, her parents own a hotel in the Highlands. Her mother is a witch, a healer, and her father is the Alpha of her pack. She’s sent word ahead of your arrival. You’ll be safe there. The Alpha is an ally, but his pack is far removed. There’s a ghost town two miles north of here at the base of the mountains. There’s a tram that’s been out of service for a long time, but it does still work. Take the tram into the mountains, and from there, you’ll be met by scouts from the pack Juniper Grove. They will take you to the hotel.”
“Is it possible for her to get word to her family while she’s there?”
“If that’s her choice, yes.”
She gives me an odd look that makes my chest tighten. I can’t decipher it, but it’s almost like she’s silently asking me if that’s what I really want.
“And you,” she says on a breath, reaching into her apron. “Take this tonic tonight, preferably on an empty stomach. It’ll help heal your wounds, both to your chest, and your arm.”
With that, she turns for the door and disappears into the back of the cottage. Silence hugs the room, but after a few moments of rolling the vial of healing potion around in my fingers, I move into the bedroom where Maeve is now sitting up in bed, her eyes glued to the window.
“Maeve,” I whisper into the darkness, shutting the door behind me and locking it with a soft click.
She slowly turns her face to me, her eyes watering and her mouth just… just trembling, her lips parted as she sucks in a breath.
I’m out of my mind when I move toward her, kneeling in front of her. She says nothing, but her fingers move to trace the fresh sutures on my chest.
“I’m fine. It’s just a scratch.”
“There’s ten stitches here.”
“I’ve been in worse shape before. You’ve done worse to me.”
One corner of her mouth twitches but doesn’t quite form into a smile. Whatever thoughts are behind her eyes weigh her down. She blinks and looks away from me, turning her face to the far wall. “I can’t go home yet. I’m sorry. My powers–”
“We’re going to the Highlands. It’s already arranged. You’ll be able to rest there for a few days until you can–” I cut myself off, remember the witch’s words from earlier. “Until I can get you to a train station. There’s one on the border. You can ride the line all the way back to Moonrise once this storm passes and the coast is clear for us.”
She continues staring absently at the stone wall. I can feel what she’s thinking. I can see it, the memory of sinking that knife into Duke’s throat. Telling her he deserved it isn't going to help. She’s not someone who wants, or needs, to be babied through this. She knows what she did. It wasn’t an accident. She’d do it again if she needed to, but there’s nothing like the first time.
“I was sixteen when I had my first kill,” I tell her. “I remember what it was like. You feel everything. It’s normal.”
She closes her eyes, biting her lower lip. “It wasn’t my first.”
I shouldn’t be shocked, but based on the look on her face… something isn’t adding up.
Still on my knees in front of her, I rest my hands on her thighs, planning to ease up if she so much as flinches, but I feel her muscles relax, my warmth permeating into her chilled skin. She’s wearing nothing but a white shift, probably given to her by the witches. Her breasts are high, her nipples peak beneath fabric, and she looks… undone. Unraveled and raw.
“I was a baby,” she explains, her lips barely moving around the words. “I remember it. I remember my powers, at least, and fear but… a witch tried to take me. So, I took her, spiriting us away, from what I’ve been told, and when she tried to hurt me, I burned her–and kept burning her until she was nothing but bone.”
Her words lace up my spine, spreading a chill in their wake.
“I wanted to kill the Alphas who rejected my sister,” she continues quietly. “I planned it out down to the finest detail. It would’ve been slow. I figured I’d like it that way, watching them suffer. I would have done it, too, if she hadn’t come back.”
Another chill that I ignore shimmers over my skin.
She turns to look at me, that rawness growing to something unhinged and terribly sad. “I wanted to kill you because you weren’t what I thought you’d be.”
“Who did you think I was?”
“The man from the teashop,” she says with so much heartbreak I feel it snapping through my chest. “The only person other than my family who has ever looked me in the eyes.”
My heart skips a beat, starting to thunder. “Do you still feel that way about me?”
She swallows hard, struggling a bit. I watch the column of her throat bob. “Why aren’t you scared of me? I could hurt you, Soren. I could burn you. I could light you on fire. I could turn you to ash.”
“You don’t have powers right now.”
“But if I did–”
“So be it. I don’t mind. What a way to go out, honestly.”
“It’s not funny. I could–”
“You could hurt me in a thousand ways. I don’t care.”
“But you hate me.”
“I don’t.”
“You–you’re the only person who has ever–who has ever raised their voice at me.”
“That explains so much,” I laugh, and she frowns.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not afraid of you and I’ll never be afraid of you. You can scorch me with your powers. You can wrap your little hands around my neck and squeeze until I take my dying breath, and I wouldn’t be afraid. I’d let you do it just to see the look on your face.”
“Why?”
“Because you know exactly who you are, and you’ve never seen a reason to change that. You never needed that moonstone necklace.” I rise, leaning over her, “You are the most powerful being in Eastonia, and you reduced yourself to a simple witch. You’re more than that. That’s who I met in that tea shop. A girl with fire in her eyes. If you hurt me, I want that to be the last thing I see. That fucking fire.”
Her lower lip trembles. She looks away before I catch the tears sliding free from her lashes.
“I’m going to get you home. I’m not going to leave you again, not until you’re on that train to Moonrise,” I say, and it’s a promise. I take her hand, knitting my fingers between hers and squeezing. “You’re going to be queen, and you’ll have your powers back.”
“You’re just trying to get on my good side so I don’t have you arrested and executed,” she sniffles, but the ghost of a smile tugs on her cheeks.
“You know I have my ways, Maeve, to weasel my way out of that.”
She turns to me, her eyes shining in the stormy, midmorning light. I’m still leaning so we’re eye to eye, now bracing my hands on the bed on either side of her hips, and I feel the sudden, overwhelming urge to just… just see what would happen if I brushed my mouth against hers, just for a moment. A second. The space of a heartbeat.
Maeve beats me to it.
She straightens her back and kisses me so hard our teeth clash painfully but then pulls away with a soft yelp of pain, her face burning crimson as she looks at the wall over my shoulder.
“Well,” I say, reaching up to feel along my lower lip for any splits, trying to play off my absolutely thundering heartbeat. “That’s not how that’s done, but–”
“Go away,” she whispers, that blush burning even deeper than before.
I scan her face, running my tongue along my lower lip, then kneel, resting my hands on her thighs once again. She shifts her weight, shimmying away from my touch, but I grip her muscled legs, tugging her closer to the edge of the cot.
“Look at me, Maeve.”
“No.”
I take her by the chin and lean in, my lips brushing hers in a featherlight touch. She inhales, her eyelids fluttering closed before her mouth chases mine, and then I… I pull away, just a touch, and look at her.
She’s a work of art. Undone and raw, she looks like… looks like something the Goddess crafted with a master’s touch. Something ethereal, whimsical, and too much for our world.
Too much for me.
She whispers my name. The scar on my arm tingles, sending shooting pains through every butchered, healing nerve ending.
“Get some rest,” I whisper against her mouth, and let her go. “We leave in a few hours.”
It takes all of my strength to walk away.