“I’m so sorry I ruined your idiotic plan by warning my Coven, Estevan!” Semras threw her hands in the air. “Should I also be sorry centuries of oppression have made my people alittlenervous about yours?”
“You think this is about me?” he asked lowly. “If these witches make good on their threats, hundreds of would-be witchfinders will turn villages upside down trying to hunt your people down! Town squares will turn into makeshift courts of law for all the widowed goodwives and all the reclusive midwives of Vandalesia!”
“Glad to hear how concerned you are for thewives! How about showing some care for the witches burned on makeshift stakes by the dozens because of your precious Inquisition!”
“How about you remember how warwitches hid among the common populace and used them as shields during the last purge? Thousands of citizens caught in a deadly conflict with no way to defend themselves—theyare the only innocents in all this!”
“How dare you? Look around you, Estevan, look!” Semras swept her hand around. “Yore survived by being unravelled from the Unseen Arras and woven back together in the space between time. We stand on fey ground here—ground we still have to pay for dearly to this day! Do you think the other Covens were aslucky? Barely a fifth of our numbers survived back then, and those who fell weren’t all warwitches!”
Estevan somberly watched the waves of witches passing by the alley they were hiding in. “I do notwantthis conflict to be reignited either, Semras.”
Crossing her arms, she scoffed. “You can’t blame me for being a little suspicious when you told me yourself that the Inquisition grows in power during witch purges. You have everything to gain from a new one.”
“I have things to lose too …” Estevan turned his attention back to her. “My father, for one. He helped facilitate the negotiations that ended the last purge. If a new one arose, he would rush to the front lines again to stop it.”
Brow furrowed, she asked, “Could he?”
“Not alone. Not if both the Inquisitor and the Covens want blood. Besides, he is growing old. This fight should not be his burden to bear.”
Semras looked up at the starless sky of Weirlaind. Far above their heads, where the Night stretched between worlds beyond anyone’s ken, darkness loomed and waited for them all.
She shuddered. “It won’t be. Warwitch Leyevna would not let vengeful Elders ruin her life’s work. And she wouldn’t stand alone either. There are many of us who owe our lives to the peace she brokered back then.” In a softer voice, she added, “like me.”
“Likewise …” Estevan gave her a weak chuckle. “I was born during those long months of negotiations. Had war still been waged, I might not be standing in front of you.”
“To the world’s greatest loss, I am sure,” she quipped. A tentative smile drew across her lips. “Are we really bickering over a war neither you nor I were old enough to remember?”
“I am afraid it is in our nature.” Estevan caught a strand of her hair and tucked it back behind her ear. His fingers trailed down her neck. “Were you born during the purges too?”
“Half a year later. Near the end of the war, Father died so Mother could live. She didn’t even know she was pregnant when she lost him. And she … she never got over it. They were Wyrdtwined to one another.” Semras swallowed the familiar grief back. “She died before I turned one-year-old. A broken heart, according to her gravewitch.”
Years later, despite never knowing them, the loss of her parents still carved a hole in her. Each time friends and mentors and acquaintances moved on with their own lives while she remained behind, it dug a little deeper.
Estevan leaned his forehead on hers, then softly caressed the back of her head, stroking her hair soothingly. It felt so intimate, to have him in such close quarters, standing as if they were alone next to waves and waves of passersby.
“I am sorry,” he murmured. “I wish this would never happen again. I wish that damn war had never robbed you of the life you should have had.”
He lifted his head and, for a mind-shattering moment, Semras thought she felt his lips graze her forehead in a fleeting kiss.
Then Estevan stepped back and offered his arm, inviting her to walk out of the dark alley.
“Well,” she said, linking their arms together, “if we fail, maybe Warwitch Leyevna and your father will manage together to stop your brother.”
The inquisitor observed her pensively. “You really admire her, don’t you?”
“Everyone does, even the Elders of Yore. She negotiated with the Inquisition to outlaw the persecution of witches, and that made all our lives so much easier. As long as we commit no crime, we don’t have to live in fear of the law anymore.”
“Just of the superstitions of old folks. Lucky you,” he teased.
She playfully slapped his shoulder.
“Who … who was your father, to have met your mother?” he asked, wading through the crowd on the street. “I always wondered how witches meet their mates.”
Semras hesitated. “I’ll tell only if you promise not to laugh.”
“I promise.”
“… A woodcutter. He was a woodcutter lumbering in the Balewoods east of the Anderas, and my mother, Sarana of Endor, was the woodwitch living within it.”
