Epilogue Part One
HAZEL
Two Years Later
The cottage at the end of the footpath was surprisingly large—much larger than any other in the village of Allhurn. Which was why the man inside had apparently declared it his and used a royal decree to evict the family who’d lived there for many years.
The fact it was hidden from the village road by thick trees and out of earshot of neighbors was also likely to be a factor in his actions, if the rumors in the village were to be believed.
And I believed them.
I adjusted my hooded cloak one last time, making sure it hid my face and hands and draped loosely in the front.
According to the tavern owner, the women who were summoned to this cottage at night often arrived in similar garb, so the man whose shadow I saw in the curtained front window shouldn’t suspect anything.
Still, I had to be cautious, or the very tense male keeping watch nearby would intervene before I had a chance to do what I’d come here to do.
My mate loved me so much that he’d agreed to let me do this, and I was grateful to him beyond words.
As I walked up the path, I noticed signs that this had once been a pleasant, well-tended home: window boxes full of flowers, a large garden, a set of benches under a shady tree.
But the flowers in the boxes had died of neglect, the garden was overgrown, and the benches were covered in branches and leaves and one had tipped over and been left where it had fallen.
At the thick wooden door, I stopped and took a deep breath. If any place could be said to have an aura of foreboding and evil, this cottage did.
I rapped on the door softly with my knuckles as a timid woman might and stepped back, tipping my head forward so my hood covered most of my face.
Heavy, booted footsteps crossed the floor inside and the door was yanked open.
“There you are,” Lord Vedast snapped. “Finally. Get inside.”
With my head down, I couldn’t see his face, but I’d know that voice anywhere, even after more than two years. And to my keen nose, he smelled of wrongness and evil, just as Terolon had described his scent.
A low hiss drifted into the doorway from the darkness to my right.
Vedast’s head whipped in that direction. I tensed, but a sudden breeze rustled the trees and he seemed to dismiss the sound as nothing but wind.
Keeping my head down, I slipped past him into the cottage. He slammed the door closed behind me and loudly locked the bolt. I jumped and cowered because that was what he expected the women who came here to do.
Vedast walked around me slowly. I watched his feet moving until he disappeared past the edge of my hood. He smelled strongly of brandy, and there were many bottles of it and numerous empty glasses throughout the room.
“You’re new,” he mused from behind me, his trousers rustling. “And fatter than I asked for. But I suppose you’ll do.” He gave me a shove that sent me stumbling. “On your knees.”
I knelt as he circled around to stand in front of me again. The buttons of his trousers were undone but they hadn’t slipped down past his hips, thank the Goddess. At the moment, I was subjected only to the sight of the tented fabric and not what was underneath it.
He chuckled and patted my cheek. My flinch wasn’t entirely feigned. “You’re a quiet one, aren’t you, little mouse?”
My breath caught in my chest. Lord Vedast had called me that in the woods. But surely he hadn’t recognized me after two years and with my face half-covered.
“I like the quiet ones,” he added, seemingly oblivious to my dismay. “It makes it more fun to make them scream.”
My shoulders went down a little at that. He didn’t know me. He simply thought of all women as prey.
This would be the night he learned differently.
A swimming sensation rolled through my belly, but I resisted the urge to put my hand reassuringly on the curve hidden under my cloak.
“What do you think, little mouse?” Vedast prompted, his fingers gripping the top of my head through my hood. “Do you think you’ll scream tonight?”
“Hazel,” I said.
“What was that?” he asked sharply.
“Hazel,” I repeated, louder. “My name is Hazel.”
“All right, Hazel,” he said mockingly as he squeezed my head more tightly. “Do you think you’ll scream tonight?”
My fingers tightened around the handle of the dagger hidden in my right sleeve, adjusting my grip the way Terolon had taught me. “No, but you will.”
I struck fast—faster than he could process my words, far faster than I could have managed before Terolon’s bite and our many matings had given me this new, quicker body—and drove the dagger hilt-deep through the hard bulge beneath his tailored trousers.
And then I twisted the blade and shoved harder to drive it into his lower belly too.
Lord Vedast’s scream was high-pitched and agonized.
How very bittersweet to know that even if it drifted as far as a neighboring farm, it would not have been the first such scream that came from this cottage of late.
It would, however, be the last.
Vedast stumbled back, pulling himself free of my blade as he did. Blood sprayed across my cloak and soaked the front of his trousers, turning the rich blue cloth dark under his flailing hands.
“You cunt!” he shrieked and collapsed, writhing, his hands pressed to the injury. Blood spurted between his fingers, splattering the rug.
I was just getting to my feet when the door was ripped off its hinges and tossed aside. Terolon filled the doorway, amber eyes blazing and his massive body trembling in fury.
Eyes wide with panic, Vedast made a croaking sound of horror and scrambled to his hands and knees, lurching in the direction of the far side of the room where a pistol lay on a table.
Terolon hissed.
It was a sound I’d never heard him make before: a low, threatening promise of death that raised goosebumps over my entire body.
With just a few undulations of his long body, my mate filled the cottage’s main room and formed a barricade between Vedast and me.
He thrashed his coils, smashing the table and everything near it, then used his tail to sweep it all into a corner, burying the pistol in a pile of broken furniture, smashed brandy bottles, and shattered drinking glasses.
“Please,” Vedast said, on his back with bloody hands raised as Terolon loomed over him. “I have coins and gold. Two chests under my bed upstairs. Take them and leave me be.”
When I chuckled, his gaze snapped from Terolon to me and back. “What is it you want, then?” he rasped.
He was very pale, his lips thin and bloodless. The rug beneath him was soaked with blood. Not even the best healer in the province could save him now. He must know that too, but men like Vedast always thought their wealth and power protected them, even from Death.
“Name your price,” he wheedled. “I’m a cousin of the king. I can give you anything you want.”
“Distant cousin,” Terolon grated out. He flicked his tongue, making Vedast flinch. “And fallen far out of favor, which is why you are here on the far side of the kingdom.”
I circled Terolon’s coiled body to stand next to him and ran my hand along his side reassuringly.
And of course Vedast noticed it. His face twisted in revulsion. “Snake’s whore.”
A tremor of barely contained violence ran the length of Terolon’s body.
“I prefer ‘serpentae’s mate.’” I smiled as I caressed my shelshan’s smooth belly scales. “Haven’t you recognized me yet, Lord Vedast? We’ve met before, you know.”
“I’ve met many whores.” Rage burned in his eyes, but his voice had grown thin and weak. “I can’t be expected to remember every mouse I’ve stepped upon.”
I flipped my hood back. “Do you remember the ones who refused to be crushed underfoot?”
Mouth agape, he stared at me in a combination of dawning realization and shock. I moved closer so he could better see the coral and lavender scales edged with crimson along my hairline.
“You’re dead,” he whispered, his head falling back weakly. “I saw you die.”
“No, you saw me fall.” I stood just out of reach and smiled down at his slack jaw and dulling eyes. “Not at all the same thing.”
“Witch,” he ground out.
“Witch,” I agreed. “Goddess-blessed daughter of the earth, especially the forest.”
His fingers twitched and he moaned, his eyes glazing. Time was growing short.
With Terolon at my side, I knelt and withdrew something heavy from my cloak pocket. I’d bundled it up in a piece of muslin to keep it from making any sound.
When I unwrapped the cloth, the dying man’s gaze sharpened just long enough to register what I held. He made a rough, disbelieving sound.
I held up the dirty, rusted witch manacles Terolon had dug up for me before we’d left on our journey south. “Open your mouth.”
Vedast pressed his lips together and shook his head.
“Open,” Terolon hissed, holding up a clawed hand. “Or I will break your jaw.”
Eyes narrowed with hatred, Vedast obeyed.
I pushed the wrist manacles as far into his mouth as they would go, feeling and hearing the rough metal scrape against his teeth, until his jaw and cheeks stretched wide.
“I am your reckoning,” I told him. “I am every woman you have abused, every man you have tortured and murdered, every child you have mistreated and left orphaned. I am justice, I am vengeance, and I am the witch you deserved to meet twice. And you are nothing.”
Vedast tried to speak, probably to curse at me, but the words came out garbled.
His heavy-lidded gaze slid to my weapon. Was he hoping I’d end his suffering?
I picked up the dagger. His eyes tracked it as I deliberately wiped both sides of the blade on one of the few areas of clean cloth on his body. His expression dulled as I slipped it into its leather sheath.
Terolon helped me to my feet. I tucked the dagger into my cloak pocket along with the piece of muslin.
His amber gaze on Vedast’s face, Terolon showed his fangs and smoothed his hand deliberately and proudly over my rounded stomach.
Lord Vedast’s eyes rolled skyward and became fixed on the ceiling. His jaw slackened, a final breath rattled in his chest, and his body stilled.