1. Chapter 1 #5
With a sigh, Agnes lowered her teacup of sherry onto the table and looked at me with a pair of imploring brown eyes.
“I cannot send another girl to die in their hands. Moira is too weak to be wed to Logan Duncan and we both know it. Her fate will be the same as the others.” She took my hands in hers.
“You are not a red maiden, but you are also not just any witch, Willow. You’ve handled creatures and monsters of all sorts without using a lick of magic, and I trust that you out of everyone will be able to deal with this one.
Far better than any of my other girls could ever.
I want you to find out why and how they have been killing our sisters.
I want this to stop now. The Duke of Darkheim is the commander of the king’s guard, so his position is one of the highest in Mortdale’s parliament.
If there’s any news at all, it will pass by him first. If someone is hurting our sisters, he’d be the first to know something about it.
” She pulled my hands closer to her as she brightly whispered, “I hear the king trusts him with his life. This would be our only opportunity to ever get this close.”
“And then what?” I asked, sounding a little breathless. “If I find out who has been hurting the red maidens, what is it that you want me to do?”
“I want you to kill them.”
Just as the room started spinning, Agnes let go of my clammy hands.
“You’re the only one I trust can do this.
” She stood, pacing back and forth in front of the window, her long delicate fingers lacing and unlacing.
“No one knows anatomy and ailments and poisons better than you. You have the knowledge of how to block one singular alchemical node and make it look like they died of a common cold. You can convince someone they’ve died of nail fungus, for Lady Death’s sake!
If there were no peace in Epiron, you’d be a weapon. Such a waste of good talent.”
“Talent,” I emptily echoed, staring into the depths of my teacup where leaves had sunk to weave a treacherous path of fate.
I jumped back when she landed on her knees before me, taking my hands in hers again.
“You will not suffer long in their hands.” Her hand rested against my shoulder, over where my witch’s mark was covered.
“You’re way past its due course. No one has ever survived a malediction as long as you have.
I suspect your pain won’t drag on for much longer.
Your sacrifice would save so many more.”
I forced a smile, hoping to mask the agony that’d been maturing in my heart for so long. No one was more disposable than I was. And I was a sacrifice she was willing to make.
Her fingers came under my chin. “You will do it, won’t you? You’ve always been such a good, obedient girl.” She dragged a hand through my hair. “You and Ethel, both. Such good, obedient girls.”
My attention snapped back to hers.
Her nails dug into my jaw. “When I saved you two—”
“You bought us,” I interrupted her. “You didn’t save us from anything.
You bought us with money.” Two young witches in an orphanage full of humans were worth more dead than alive.
It was a miracle that the matrons had even let us live there for so long.
Untrained witches were a liability. So much chaos in one little body with no outlet.
Point somewhere wrong, stare at someone too long, touch something that doesn’t belong to you, and you’d risk killing someone.
We’d been only seven years old when Agnes had shown up at the orphanage’s doors and bargained with the headmistress like we’d been a couple headless chickens for her next stew.
“Then you must remember what our deal was. Ethel was and still is worthless to me and the Crimson Weaver. Her magic doesn’t weigh even in pennies; she hasn’t been able to cast a proper spell in the nineteen years she’s lived and trained with our coven.
It was you I wanted back then.” She smiled softly, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“Such a special girl you were. You agreed that if I bought Ethel, too, you would always do what I asked of you. You’d do anything. ”
The threat was not even mildly veiled. She’d told me plainly that she’d discard Ethel at the nearest hour if I didn’t marry the duke.
And a covenless witch was better off dead than alive.
Covensteads made deals with humans and merchants, to keep us safe and grant us passages through the city zones.
They housed and fed us and found us employment.
Meridian was our city, but no one would employ a witch without a coven token.
Too much of a liability. And witches were born marked; it was not like we could hide it.
I pushed her hand off my face. “I will do it. But I want reassurance that Ethel will be safe and protected even when I am gone—even when I die. That she will have a home here forever.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” she said, making a cross over her heart, a slow smile stretching on her face.
“When?”
“In an hour.”
I shot to my feet, quickly brushing back the tear that escaped my eye.
In an hour?
“But….but…I haven’t even washed my hair. In a week.”