The crowd of witches funnelled out of the Mother-Tree in a thick human wave. Semras weaved through them, ignoring both the stares and murmurs of amusement following her. At her passage, some witches slipped her compliments on her catch, and the ashen mix of anger and dread on her face darkened into an embarrassed crimson.
Semras glanced behind at Estevan, praying silently he hadn’t heard the comments. Drained, puzzled eyes stared back at her. “Semras … What was that? What just happened?”
She stayed silent, focusing instead on getting out of the curious crowd—and away from the Voice of the Elders stalking them still. Guiding him out of the Mother-Tree entrance and onto the main street, Semras kept peeking behind to see if they had lost her.
She couldn’t see robes of yellow and white among the crowd anymore, but she still dragged Estevan into the dark alleys behind the shops.
“Damn you, why won’t you answer me?” Estevan asked, trailing behind her.
Semras glared back at the man she had sacrificed too much for, prepared to scold him—but one glance at him drained her of all will to fight.
Barely restrained panic filled the inquisitor’s pale eyes. The kohl she had traced earlier on his skin now fell in rivers of bluish-black along his face, washed away by sweat and tears of agony. The usually overconfident, shameless inquisitor was barely holding together.
“Semras …” he pleaded.
“Please,” she replied, voice croaking. “Please let me … I …We will speak once we’re out. It’s too dangerous to remain here.” She turned once more to focus on the path, blinking away her own rising panic. “And I need—I need time. To gather my thoughts.” And find a plausible lie, she thought.
Semras kept her hold around his wrist, taking comfort in the pulse still beating there.
Aftercrossingthefeygate and putting a safe distance between them and Yore, Semras slowed down.
Legs shaking, she sat at the base of a beech tree and watched as Estevan slumped against another one. They faced each other in silence, catching their breath amidst the dried red leaves.
They were safe now. Bound by a Fey Bargain to Yore, none of the Seven’s successors could leave its grounds. By the time the Voice would report that Semras was gone, their trail would have turned cold.
Now that the danger had passed, her heartbeat slowly returned to a normal rate, and the consequences of her foolishly spoken words sank their claws into her mind.
It still felt so unreal to her. In front of all the Coven, she had taken Estevan before the Old Crone and the New Maiden. She had lied to save his life, and the lie became real in the most horrific of ways. There was no turning back.
Even now, her warp shape throbbed with discomfort as it adjusted to the foreign sensation of Estevan’s threads replacingher own. A breath shuddered out of her—it came from her heart, mourning what she had just lost.
She was now bound for life to a man who had deceived her, betrayed her, thrown her in shackles, and confined her. A man she had meant to run away from and never see again once they’d have stopped Inquisitor Callum’s plan.
But now … now she would have to live with the ghost of him wrapped around her heart instead.
“Well?” Estevan’s voice startled her from her thoughts.
Semras glared at him. “Well? What madness possessed you to enter the sacred Mother-Tree?”
“What madness, you ask—you!You are the source of my madness! That wispy girl in the red dress, she approached me and said some cryptic words about how the Elders would soon come down for a rare spectacle. I dismissed her, but then you were not where we agreed to meet, so of course her words made me believe that you had been caught! And I rushed inside the hall to—”
“And you believed her?” she snapped. “I never pegged you for a fool, Estevan, yet here we are! You still have no idea that you walked into a trap, do you? And you have no idea what you just forced me to—”
“What. Trap.” His voice had turned to ice. “You held me in the dark for long enough, witch. Speak now.”
Semras scoffed. “Of course. Back to being called ‘witch.’ So this is an interrogation, not a conversation, is it,Inquisitor?”
A storm was brewing in his pale blue eyes, where panic had turned into a cold fury. The inquisitor still controlled it, but she could see the cracks forming in the walls of his restraint.
It broke some more, and he suddenly leaned forward, caging her between his arms and the tree.
Semras killed a whimper of fear behind tight lips. He had trapped her just like that a week ago in his mentor’s study. Morememories soon followed that one, fluttering helplessly around her mind: the cage, the shackles, the loneliness and fear and despair and—
Shuddering, Semras blinked away the agonizing visions.
The inquisitor grabbed her chin, forcing her attention on him. His face was inches away from hers. “Do not …” he said quietly, “think of running from me. I will have my answers from you, and I will have them now.”
Semras’ lips quivered, and the memory of the murder scene surged back in her mind. “You can’t hurt me …” she breathed, trying to convince herself.
