The witch.Realizing I didn’t know what to call her, I said, “I’m Tamsyn. What’s your name?”
“Sylvi,” she returned, passing me back the flask after taking a long pull. “You are the first to ask me my name … in a very long time.”
I was about to ask her how long was long when Kerstin returned. She paused, eyeing Sylvi as she plopped down beside me—on the sideawayfrom the witch. I handed her some food. She bit into the loaf with a ferocity that could only partly be blamed on the stale, week-old bread. “We’re treating her like a pet, are we?” she asked stiffly.
“Kerstin,” I chided in warning.
“I’m not a pet,” Sylvi snapped, coming alive.
“No? You seemed like a pet to me. The skelm kept you on a leash.”
Angry color flooded Sylvi’s face and she held up both her wrists, which still bore the marks of her ropes. “They bound me for so long, I forgot what it feels like to move without a rope around my wrists. Can you imagine what that is like? To no longer remember what freedomfeelslike?”
Kerstin didn’t back down, only glared, her bronze eyes hard and flinty. “No less than what your kind deserves.”
“Kerstin,” I said, rebuking her. “Enough of that. You didn’t have to come back, you know.”
“Oh, really?” She scowled at me with wide, wounded eyes. “That’s the thanks I get?”
Snow fell lightly, adding weight to the creaking branches. The wind continued to whine around us.
I inclined my head once in acknowledgment. “I’m glad you came back, and I appreciate your help, but if you’re going to continue to be this hateful to Sylvi, then you can leave us and go back to the pride.”
Kerstin’s nostrils flared and an expression of hurt crossed her face before her features evened. “I don’t want to go home. Not yet.”
I nodded. “Good.”
Sylvi spoke up. “You don’t need to worry. I don’t plan to stick around here very long.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
“Kerstin,” I snapped, quite done with her rudeness. Turning back to Sylvi, my voice softened as I asked her, “Where will you go?”
“South. I don’t think there’s anything of my village left. The dragons burned it to the ground. I doubt they rebuilt. No one left alive to do it.” She said this so plainly. Like the truth of it didn’t hurt. “But there are other villages. I will find a place to settle. Find a new husband. Start a new family.” Her features were tight as she uttered this. As though it didn’t grieve her that she’d lost her previous one, but I knew this couldn’t possibly be true. One look at the hot emotion gleaming in her eyes told me that she felt the loss strongly.
“A new husband?”
She nodded. “I was married. He was a decent man. A simple man. He did not know what I was. He would not have understood. Few humans do. But he was good to me, and I miss him.”
“Of course you do. I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it … familiar with what loss felt like. “I lost my husband, too,” I confessed, surprising even myself at the admission.
She gave me a funny look. “You’re a dragon.”
And dragons didn’t marry. We bonded. There were no wives and husbands among us. That was a human convention.
I gave a slight shake of my head, not about to explain my past to her.
“What kind of witch are you, anyway?” Kerstin asked.
Apparently one that blended in among humans. Until the skelm showed up and ruined everything for her and her entire village.
Sylvi considered Kerstin for a long moment, her manner cool, measuring, as though weighing her worth. “You needn’t concern yourself with me. I’ll be leaving you soon enough.”
It would be for the best, and not just because of the contentionbetween Sylvi and Kerstin. The witch wasn’t safe in the Crags. Not among dragonkind. At least in Penterra, she could go back to blending in among humans. She would not be identifiable as a witch there—as long as she didn’t run into the skelm again.
I felt it. Whatever the skelm recognized in Sylvi when they found her in the village. Whatever it was that Kerstin had immediately sensed about her, alerting her that she was a witch … I felt it now. I felt it and I recognized it for what it was.
The longer I was around Sylvi, the more I looked at her … I saw it. A faint vibrating aura, a pale glow that radiated around her. This was the mark of a witch, and I could see it.
