Chapter 34
It began with almost nothing.
Just a little weave of heat and warmth to revive the dying flames of the fireplace. They lit up the coals in mere seconds, and tongues of orange flames licked high inside the chimney. A simple task, but one she did effortlessly, just as she used to.
Hope slowly swelling in her chest, Semras wove the sweat and dirt off of her and then made the wall’s framed butterflies flap their wings delicately under the guidance of her fingers. These weaves were much more complex, yet her fingers deftly wove them.
Her face broke into a childish, excited smile. Semras glanced around, looking for more things she could weave to prove to herself all this was real. That her hands were truly restored.
“Thank the Radiant Lord,” Estevan murmured, crashing down onto his seat. “Oh, thank you …”
Lifting the corner of her lips in an oddly familiar smirk, Leyevna gazed at him with amusement. “Thank your mother, you ungrateful child.”
A myriad of emotions gathered in Semras’ chest—relief, wonder, gratefulness.
She felt whole again. Words of gratitude for Leyevna tangled together in her throat, clogging it and leaving her speechless.
Instead of fighting her emotions, Semras conveyed her thanks with a quivering smile and tearful eyes.
At the corner of her vision, Estevan passed his hand over his face, lingering over his eyes a moment before continuing down with a shuddering breath.
Semras beheld him. He hadn’t forgotten his promise to her, not even with the looming threats of war weighing on his mind. And now, he had fulfilled it.
With a tired sigh, the matriarch dropped into a chair. “Now, was that all you came here for?”
“That was the main reason, Mother,” Estevan said. “But my visit also concerns Master Torqedan’s medicine. Did you—”
“Ah, no! No, no, Vanya. I gave you the last batch to deliver two weeks ago, and my last letter to him was very clear. Did he not read it?”
The inquisitor stilled. “The letter?”
“Yes, the one telling him to shut up for good,” Leyevna replied.
“Listen, Vanya. I know Torqedan is your mentor now. I am making efforts to be cordial to him for you and for your father’s sake—yes, even for him!
I’m still mad at him for saying Torqedan deserves a second chance, but …
” A sly smirk slowly spread across her lips.
“… I am also petty enough to try to prove the all-forgiving cardinal wrong. So, I made the damn thing Torqedan wanted one last time—but no more.”
By the time his mother was done ranting, Estevan was frowning. “You mean that Master Torqedan wrote to you while I was in the Anderas?”
“Incessantly! And I told him he may still have as much willow bark tea as he wishes to deal with his chronic pain, but I was very clear about the ointment’s dosage. And the danger of applying more to his skin. He’ll make himself very sick, the idiot.”
Estevan let out a sigh. “So—”
“So, no! I will not make him more, no matter how much he begs for it.” She rolled her eyes, then continued, “Can you imagine, Vanya? The Hammer of Witches, begging a warwitch? The world has changed so much since the war.”
Semras frowned to herself, remembering the traces of ointment in Torqedan’s mouth. “You told him to apply it to his skin? Those exact words?”
A silence welcomed her question. Then Leyevna twitched her jaw, a glint dancing within her icy blue eyes. From memories of another pair of similar eyes, Semras recognized it as aggravation.
“Obviously, girl,” Leyevna said. “You are not insinuating I don’t know my Path, are you?
I used prickly comfrey to maximize the anti-inflammatory properties.
That old rat waved a ridiculously large hammer around his entire life, and now his joints are done for.
” She shook her head and muttered a low curse.
“No amount of weaving can fix that kind of damage—not that he wanted to see me in person anyway—so I upped the dosage as much as I dared to. There’s so much extract in his ointment, it could kill a horse if it licked it. ”
Semras’ throat thickened. What the inquisitor had found at the coven grounds was an incriminating receipt, and Leyevna’s innocence now hung only on the letter with her dosage and warnings.
Estevan closed his eyes. “Do you have a copy of that message? Dated, preferably.”
“A copy? What do you take me for, a city clerk?” Leyevna took her cup of tea, now lukewarm. She drank it anyway. “Why are you asking me such things?”
“Because Master Torqedan is dead, Mother.”
Leyevna stilled. Her gaze slowly fell to her cup. “Oh. I need … I need something stronger than tea to celebrate this!” Abandoning her cup on the table, the warwitch strode toward the stairs, then halted midway. “Ah, no! First, my little book!”
The warwitch grabbed it from the fireplace’s mantle. Flipping the pages, she walked back to her guests.
Exhaling deeply, Estevan hung his head down. Semras longed to reach for his hand, to squeeze it in support, as if to say they’d be alright, that they’d find something else to stop Callum with.
She didn’t. Instead, she gazed at his side profile, his chiseled cheeks and the days-old stubble growing there. Wild strands fell from the hair he had perfectly coiffed back when they first met.
Estevan Velten looked very different now than he did then.
He had been cold, arrogant, and dressed neatly—a perfect embodiment of control.
Now, his shoulders hunched under the weight of burdens too heavy for him to bear alone.
Deep circles marred his eyes, and sweat had dishevelled him more than once in the past hours.
Despite it all, he remained one of the most attractive men Semras had ever met. He truly was one of the Fair Folk, and it was blatantly obvious now that she knew it.
Estevan caught her staring at him, and she turned her head away, face flushing.
“Ah, there it is!” Leyevna pointed at a page. After nicking the side of her finger on her teeth, she spread a bead of blood over one line. “The last one in my little black book!” she said proudly, presenting the pages to them.
Rows of names filled Leyevna’s book, each of them crossed with old, blackened blood—except for one. ‘Eloy Torqedan’ had a bright scarlet red line over it.
“What a miserable death for a miserable old bastard,” the warwitch declared with a laugh. “Taken by old age! I’d never have guessed that’s how he’d die, back when we fought during the war.”
Semras paled at her words.
“You have a book filled with the names of the dead,” Estevan said flatly. “Which you killed, I suppose, during the last witch purge.”
“Every single man and woman who has wronged us, Vanya. They’re all dead now, and I remain!
What a joyous day!” Leyevna returned her book to its shelf.
Her hand lingered on the fireplace mantel.
“I will not mourn Torqedan. He was a mighty adversary deserving of my begrudging respect, but I will not lie: I desired his death most of all. A shame I didn’t end up killing him; I came so close to it back then.
The war is long over, but the land remembers, and I …
I remember too.” Her hand clenched the fabric of her dress over her stomach.
Semras’s breath shuddered out of her. Callum had found the perfect scapegoat for his crime. Had Estevan not been her son, he’d have never doubted Warwitch Leyevna’s culpability.
“I shouldn’t have remembered the war,” the warwitch muttered, looking around with a glazed gaze, following the ghosts of her memories.
“It is late, and … and I am tired. I’ll be upstairs, with a good Freran brandy, I believe.
You both stay here for the night. The hour is far too late to leave now.
Vanya, you remember where your old room is? Make use of it.”
Leyevna left them alone. A heavy, defeated silence filled the room.
Semras glanced at Estevan, not knowing what to say or how to approach him. The wound between them had expunged all its poison after their fight. It remained fresh, but it could start healing now, given time and nurturing.
But it wouldn’t even have that luxury if a war broke out between the Inquisition and the Covens. That dreadful possibility was now creeping closer than ever to reality. Which side would he fight for: his father’s or his mother’s?
How grim a choice he’d soon have to face, she thought.
“… I’m sorry,” Semras breathed.
Estevan lifted his head and stared blankly ahead.
“I should have known coming here was a fool’s hope.
Of course, Cael planned it all to the last detail.
He must have stolen that damn letter too.
And now we have nothing … except a receipt with a deadly amount of prickly comfrey leading directly to my mother and the list of men she wanted dead.
Even if she wrote a testimony about the dosage she prescribed, no one would believe it when she bought this much comfrey.
All the proof I meant to find to absolve her is only making her look more guilty.
” His eyes wandered to the butterfly walls.
“I had no idea she hated him that much … Master Torqedan asked me if I knew a witch who could make him some pagan medicine, and I … I—Void take me, I should never have reconnected them.”
Semras shuffled in her seat. “I meant about the poison. Um, my poison that … that poisoned you,” she said, hands fumbling on her lap. “I-I really am sorry. I was so sure you were … Ah, it doesn’t matter. You’re talking about the murder. I shouldn’t bring personal matters—”
“No! No, I … I appreciate it,” Estevan replied hurriedly. His lips twisted into the shadow of a smile. “Do we call it even, then? Us, I mean?”
A pleasant, warm shiver ran down her spine. ‘Us,’ he’d said.
“I poisoned you with wolfsbane. I spied on you at least … two, three times?” she asked, counting on her fingers. “And I bit your lip bloody, but I think you liked that.”