Chapter one
Katria
The fever broke with the dawn.
I felt it before I saw it—the subtle cooling beneath the boy’s skin, the way his shallow breaths grew steadier, as if his body had remembered how to fight for itself again. The fire on the hearth had burned down to embers, painting the walls in dull orange light. For hours, it had been the only warmth in the room.
When I lifted my hand from his forehead, the mother was already watching me from the corner, wringing her apron until the threads threatened to tear. Fear clung to her like the scent of smoke—old, heavy, impossible to wash away.
“Well?” she asked. Her voice was so small it barely reached me.
“He’ll live,” I said.
Her eyes darted to the door, as if someone might be listening. The wind hissed through the shutters. I could almost hear the unspoken prayer she whispered under her breath, though it wasn’t to the Light—it was to distance, to secrecy, to the hope that no one would know she’d let the witch of Hollowmere into her house.
I reached for the bowl beside me. The mixture of willow bark and feverleaf had gone cold hours ago. I dumped it into the basin and rinsed my hands, rubbing away the faint green stains.
“No more pond brew,” I added, glancing at her. “Whatever charm you were using to ‘draw out the sickness’ was poisoning him faster than the fever could.”
She nodded too quickly, eyes glistening with tears that had nothing to do with gratitude.
“Thank you,” she murmured, and pressed a single copper coin into my hand. It was damp from her palm. “Please—don’t tell the others you were here.”
I looked at the coin for a heartbeat before setting it back on the table. “Buy him broth instead,” I said, and then I gathered my satchel.
The moment I stepped outside, the fog swallowed me whole.
Hollowmere never truly woke, even when the sun rose. It just shifted from one kind of silence to another. The moors breathed mist into the streets, and the wind carried the smell of peat smoke and thawing earth. Roofs sagged beneath frost. The river that cut through the village whispered faintly beneath its sheet of ice.
People were already stirring—shapes behind shutters, faint voices through thin walls. My boots made soft, wet sounds on the stones. Heads turned when they thought I wouldn’t notice.
“She’s out again,” someone hissed near the bakery door. “Didn’t the priest say not to—”
“Shh. She’ll hear.”
I heard. I always did.
By the time I crossed the bridge at the edge of town, the whispers had quieted into the hum of ordinary morning. The bridge creaked beneath me, its boards slick with frost, the water below dark as ink. Beyond itstretched the moor—endless, silvered, and still. My cottage sat on a low rise where the fog gathered like a curtain, its chimney the only thing visible from a distance.
The villagers called that part of the moor cursed. I called it peace.
Inside, the air smelled of thyme, smoke, and something faintly sweet—the ghost of dried flowers hanging from the rafters. My herbs lay in bundles along the shelves, their labels neat and ordered:frostmint, heartleaf, wolfsbane.To most of Hollowmere, they were proof enough of witchcraft.
To me, they were the only reason half this village was still alive.
I hung my cloak by the door, flexing my fingers to shake off the cold. My hands were stained green at the creases from crushed leaves, my nails rimmed with charcoal. I knelt before the hearth and coaxed the fire back to life, feeding it kindling until warmth began to creep across the floorboards.
For a while, I just sat there. The flames cracked softly, echoing the rhythm of my thoughts.
No one had ever said it outright, but I knew what I was to them—a necessary evil. They’d come crawling when their children burned with fever or when a husband’s cough turned wet and red, but afterward they’d cross themselves when I passed and whisperwitchas though the word might bite me.
Let them.
The truth was simpler and far less interesting. I wasn’t cursed. I wasn’t blessed. I was just good with plants and stubborn enough not to die when everyone else decided I should.
Still, sometimes, when the fog lay too thick and the wind howled from the north, I caught myself looking toward the trees beyond the moor—where the land dipped into shadow and the world grew strange.They said the Veil shimmered there, separating our realm from the fae’s. I’d never seen it myself. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
I was thinking of that shimmer when the knock came.
