Chapter 26
DOREN
“Consider your side of the bargain complete,” Gretel says. “We’ll be in touch.”
One of the Witch Killers tosses Winnie Darling over his shoulder and starts off into the darkness of the woods.
“I’d rather make sure your side of the bargain is fulfilled.” Doren steps forward. Gretel has a dagger in her hand before he has time to blink.
The steel is placed at his throat, the blade parallel to her arm, the hilt firmly in her grip.
Her body is locked into place, but he can tell like a jungle cat, she is always ready to pounce.
Gretel is not an enemy Doren wants to make.
He knows the stories, of course. That she was abandoned in the woods as a child by the people who were supposed to care for her and that in order to survive, she had to trick an ancient woodland witch and shove her into an open fire.
That she stood there at the cast-iron door listening to the witch scream as she burned alive.
Gretel was forged through grit and carnage.
She has no room for mercy or compromise or concession.
“You’re not allowed within the boundaries of the Order,” she says.
“Why?”
“Do I have to spell it out for you?”
He is truly mystified by her objection.
“We kill witches,” she says. “But if given the right incentive, we kill anything unnatural.”
She means magical.
Doren snorts. “You made a deal with me. To use my power to get what you wanted.”
“And now we have.”
“Yet you sniff your nose at my power?”
The blade is retracted. “We’ll be in touch.”
She starts off into the dark, giving him her back, confident, it would seem, that he knows his place.
Fucking bitch.