Chapter 33
A desperate wish to be somewhere else, with someone else’s face and name, consumed Semras.
She had poisoned the son of Warwitch Leyevna.
The Warwitch Leyevna.
With wolfsbane.
The realization twisted her entrails into a nest of snakes. Blood pounded in her ears, reducing the world around her to the rhythmic sound of her heartbeat. It thumped so loudly against her chest, it would shatter the windowpanes at any moment.
Walking past Semras, Leyevna greeted the inquisitor with a soft smile.
“Estevanya, my son!” she said. “What newfound filial piety is driving you to visit me again so soon? This is unlike you.” After bracing him against her, she led him to sit on a chair, then turned to Semras.
“This is the urgency you spoke of, I presume?”
Under the inquisitive gaze of the matriarch, Semras blinked. “… The …?”
“Yes,” Estevan lied for her. “Poison. But I am … fine.” Jaw clenched with pain, he struggled to even let these few words out.
Semras winced. He did not look fine to her. Had the dosage been too strong? She had chosen the seed’s size carefully, yet a spike of anxiety still stabbed her guts at the sight of him.
Leyevna gave her son an impatient wave of the hand.
“Obviously you are, Vanya. Hurry and finish purging it from your system. You still remember how, right?” With a mother’s critical eyes, she stared him down until he nodded.
Satisfied, she grinned. “Good, good. I’ll make us some tea. You finish before I’m back.”
The matriarch disappeared upstairs, leaving Semras alone with the man she had poisoned. She gave him a sidelong glance.
Hand grabbing his collar, Estevan was sweating heavily. A deep exhaustion lidded his bleary, unfocused gaze. Wolfsbane had taken its toll, and his stubbornness at climbing up to the house hadn’t done his body any favour.
Semras bit worriedly at her lip. “You were supposed to rest,” she said softly. “Your body needs to recover. I gave you an antidote, but it can’t—”
“Quiet! Just … quiet. I’m … trying to concentrate.”
“Let … let me help you,” she said, pulling on the fingertips of her gloves one by one. “My hands are still too stiff to grab the poison’s wefts out of your veins, but I could perhaps—”
His hand seized her wrist in a tight grip, and Semras startled. The gloves fell to the ground with a soft thud.
Estevan was staring at her. Sweat still dripped from his forehead, and a grimace of pain twisted his lips, but his eyes had returned to their usual intensity. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it without uttering a word. His hand on her wrist tightened once more.
Then, with a shuddered breath, he let her go.
The room dimmed as the fireplace flames flickered in and out. A shiver of cold ran down Semras’ spine while her breath turned to fog. Her eyes widened.
Someone was weaving the warmth out of the surrounding Arras. In disbelief, she peered into it.
And gasped.
Wefts of fire and heat were unravelling all around the hut—and going to Estevan. With clumsy fingers, the inquisitor wove them into his warp shape, burning the poison’s threads circulating within.
He was weaving.
Shock brought her back to the normal world. Mouth agape, Semras stared at a fully recovered Estevan. “You’re a—!”
“Witch, yes. Now you know all my secrets. Years spent carefully hiding what I was from both the Covens and the Deprived … all undone in a single night because of you,” he said, voice bitter and harsh.
“You just had to put your nose where it did not belong, didn’t you, Semras?
It was not enough to pry me wide open; you still wanted to take more! ”
Semras stood in front of him, face growing paler and paler.
Estevan was a witch—that meant he had felt it when the Wyrdtwined Oath unravelled his threads. It had never been the warwitches that shocked him.
It had been what she’d turned him into. He hadn’t known what the rituals meant, but he had known what it did to him. It must have been terrifying—just as terrifying as when she exchanged their vitality without warning him during the glade’s wolves attack.
Her throat tightened. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You think I will believe that? After all the times you have spied on me?” Estevan wiped the sweat off his brow, then stood. “I believe I am a tolerant man, Semras, but you crossed the line. You seduced me only to poison me! I told you—”
“You left me no choice!” she spoke over him. “How was I supposed to know—”
“… to go back home, that this did not concern you any longer. This entire mess is mine to fix. My family started all this, and—”
“… the witch was your mother? I thought you would torture her, or worse! You’ve shown me only—”
“… I will put an end to it. And I admit,” he seethed, voice overlapping hers. “I am not by any means above reproach, but how could you—”
“… the worst of you, and even after I confronted you about your secrets, you kept lying! And you expected me to—”
“… manipulate me, stalk me here, and poison me! How could I ever—”
“… trust you again?” their voices mingled into one.
Silence embraced them.
Trust. That had been the issue from the moment they met. It shouldn’t have ever existed between them, yet it had.
And they both abused it until it broke.
Semras’ words had expunged all anger from her. Now, she felt depleted, like skin stretched thinly over frail bones. She was tired—tired of their lies, of their secrets, of their constant fighting.
With a long exhale, Estevan looked away first. “It does not take so long to prepare tea, Mother,” he said.
“I didn’t dare interrupt such a lovely conversation,” Leyevna replied, stepping down from the staircase. In her hands, cups and a teapot were balancing precariously on an old wooden platter. “Are you two lovebirds done?”
After placing the tray onto the small table, the warwitch waved at them to sit back on the chairs. She put one cup in Estevan’s hand, slid another toward Semras, and then stood still in front of them both, fingers drumming against one of her crossed arms.
Semras looked down at the greenish liquid within her mug. Swirling slowly at the surface, the tea dust couldn’t hide the shame blooming in her eyes’s reflection—Leyevna had heard everything.
“So, you poisoned my son?” the matriarch asked flippantly. “With what?”
Wincing, Semras kept her head down. “Wolfsbane.”
“Quantity?”
“A single seed,” she replied, then added hurriedly, “A small one.”
Leyevna scoffed. “You would eat just about anything a pretty girl gives you, Vanya? I thought your father raised you wiser than this. I should have known that by leaving you with him so young, you’d become just as naive as he.”
“I tricked him,” Semras protested. “I—” She paused, unsure of what to say exactly. Admitting how exactly she had done so was a little harder than coming to Estevan’s defence.
“She kissed me,” he said, sneering, “and slipped the damn thing while I was … distracted.”
The bastard. Holding back her breath, Semras waited for the matriarch’s castigation.
Instead, Leyevna chuckled. “Oh, you both remind me of my youth. I nearly killed your father too, Vanya. Did he ever tell you? He was so understanding about it.” The matriarch’s hand—warm and comforting—fell on Semras’ shoulder. “You didn’t mean to harm my boy for real, did you, Semras of Yore?”
Semras glanced up—and froze.
Despite the levity of her tone, Leyevna’s icy glare held a quiet threat within. When Semras didn’t answer immediately, the hand on her shoulder turned into gripping claws. A warning, she reckoned.
A terrifying and effective one.
Semras shook her head. “I gave him an activated charcoal suspension. L-Less than one hour later.” It felt like a test, one she hadn’t prepared for. Swallowing her nerves, she continued, “Still within the recommended treatment window.”
Leyevna’s grip on her had lessened slightly but still pinned her in place.
“Good! It would have been quite different otherwise. I haven’t flexed my good old tricks in nearly thirty years, but I’m sure I could have remembered them, given motivation to.
” Her smile remained kind and polite, but the threat in her words couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.
“Now, you, you drink for xenia. And you, Vanya, take your shirt off and let me tend to your wounds.”
“I am fine,” Estevan said, groaning. “I purged the poison already. If you want—”
“Estevanya. My son. My little boy. I have spent seven years of my life at war, and I have never forgotten the smell of blood nor the shadow of pain in someone’s eyes. You are not fine.”
“Mother, I can wait,” he insisted. “I came here to ask you to look at Semras’ hands. I wanted you to go visit her as soon as you could, but … well, she is here now. You may fret over me as much as you wish after.”
“No.” Semras shook her head. “No, Warwitch Leyevna, please look at him first. Yore warwitches attacked him, and I—with the state of my hands … I couldn’t …”
“Let me keep that promise, Semras,” Estevan hissed. He breathed deeply, then unclenched his jaw. “At least one of them. Please. My mother is a powerful fleshwitch; she walked that Path before the last witch purge. If anyone can fix your hands, it is her.”
Leyevna eyed them one after the other. “You are both being ridiculous. I am not rationing my skills, and I will tend to both of you.” She sighed. “I can tell I am the only adult here, so I will decide. I do not care about whatever you promised your girl, Vanya; I will always choose my son first.”
Semras lowered her gaze. The hole in her, the one her own mother should have filled, ached and throbbed. The inquisitor was lucky to have his mother survive the witch purges.
He was lucky to have someone who’d always choose him.
“Mother …”