A terrifying and effective one.
Semras shook her head. “I gave him an activated charcoal suspension. L-Less than one hour later.” It felt like a test, oneshe hadn’t prepared for. Swallowing her nerves, she continued, “Still within the recommended treatment window.”
Leyevna’s grip on her had lessened slightly but still pinned her in place. “Good! It would have been quite different otherwise. I haven’t flexed my good old tricks in nearly thirty years, but I’m sure I could have remembered them, given motivation to.” Her smile remained kind and polite, but the threat in her words couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. “Now, you, you drink forxenia.And you,Vanya,take your shirt off and let me tend to your wounds.”
“I am fine,” Estevan said, groaning. “I purged the poison already. If you want—”
“Estevanya. My son. My little boy. I have spent seven years of my life at war, and I have never forgotten the smell of blood nor the shadow of pain in someone’s eyes. You are not fine.”
“Mother, I can wait,” he insisted. “I came here to ask you to look at Semras’ hands. I wanted you to go visit her as soon as you could, but … well, she is here now. You may fret over me as much as you wish after.”
“No.” Semras shook her head. “No, Warwitch Leyevna, please look at him first. Yore warwitches attacked him, and I—with the state of my hands … I couldn’t …”
“Let mekeepthat promise, Semras,” Estevan hissed. He breathed deeply, then unclenched his jaw. “At least one of them.Please. My mother is a powerful fleshwitch; she walked that Path before the last witch purge. If anyone can fix your hands, it is her.”
Leyevna eyed them one after the other. “You are both being ridiculous. I am not rationing my skills, and I will tend to both of you.” She sighed. “I can tell I am the only adult here, so I will decide. I do not care about whatever you promised your girl,Vanya;I will always choose my son first.”
Semras lowered her gaze. The hole in her, the one her own mother should have filled, ached and throbbed. The inquisitor was lucky to have his mother survive the witch purges.
He was lucky to have someone who’d always choose him.
“Mother …”
“Don’t you ‘Mother’ me! I’ll be done before you know it. Old Crone witness me, you act just like when you were younger,” Leyevna grumbled, pulling at her son’s shirt to uncover his wounds. “Covered in scratches and bruises, fighting boys two times your size for that child your father adopted, and still refusing to see me so I could heal you.”
The sudden mention of Callum startled Semras. Didheknow the witch he had meant to frame for Torqedan’s murder was Estevan’s mother?
It didn’t matter; human empathy wouldn’t stop a Seelie’s desire for order.
“Mother, please, spare us the childhood memories,” Estevan said, ears flushed.
His mother possessed no such pity. “What? I know; Iunderstandwhy you acted out. You were just a teenage boy with an attitude and a grudge. But think of your poor mother for a moment, will you?” Leyevna inspected his neck, then his arms, and then started weaving absentmindedly as she kept speaking. “Took you years to talk to me again, and now that you do, you barely come around! How am I supposed to catch up on so many lost years of teaching? Almost all you know about your own kin comes from the Inquisition! It’s absolutely ludicrous.”
Estevan let out a long, suffering sigh.
An amused chuckle escaped Semras, and he pressed his lips tightly together, looking away. His neck had turned a deep shade of crimson.
A soft, private smile bloomed on her lips before she shook her head and turned her attention back to the warwitch.
With disconcerting ease, Leyevna wove the damage out of her son, then examined him once more. The matriarch had taken only mere minutes to do what she had needed hours for back when she had healed Estevan’s wounds in their tent. Semras’ eyes widened with shocked awe—and a quiet dread.
Madra had a point: the blood of Fey in the veins of witches was drying, generation after generation, and nothing might remain of it by the end of the next century. They were fading away—just like the Inquisition.
Leyevna finished fretting over her son, and Estevan breathed in relief. The tension in his shoulders and jaw vanished, leaving behind only the shadows of a past strain. He closed his eyes, a smile of relief floating over his lips.
The matriarch hummed pensively. “What curious and unfamiliar threads you have wrapped around your warp shape,Estevanya,”she said, pointing at his heart. “A mother could almost think you forgot to tell her something of importance.”
Dropping his smile at once, Estevan snapped his eyes open. “A son could definitely think you forgot to teach him about some of the more obscure witch rituals, Mother.”
“Ah, yes, I might have,” Leyevna replied, laughing. “Then again, I’d never thought you would be interested in such old-fashioned fey magic. It is not often done nowadays.”
“Can it be undone?” he asked.
Bristling at his words, Semras snapped her eyes to Estevan. He was suggesting undoing something so sacred in such a flippant tone.
She couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t known what it meant when he gave his consent; he hadn’t wanted to choose her. So, instead of snarling at him for the slap to the face his words represented, Semras hid her pain behind a stilted smile and a creased brow.
“No, son,” Leyevna replied chillingly. “No, it cannot. Not unless you want me to core your warp shape out like an apple,and then you’d be untwined. And also dead. What is it you are trying to suggest?” Her icy blue gaze bore into the inquisitor.
