Lena lifted her head at the sound of my voice.
A dark void curled in her eyes.
“They’re coated with nightshade,” she whispered, exhausted.
The one herb poisonous to the Witches of Weeping Hollow.
I looked at my palms. “How did nightshade get back into Weeping Hollow?”
Lena sank further to the ground, her shoulders slumped, like the only thing holding her together was her spine. She looked up with a defeated yet humorous expression. “Oh, Adora, there’s so much you don’t know.”
I peered down the tunnel to my left, then right. “Where are your guards?”
“It’s almost nightfall. You should probably go while there’s still time,” Lena said in a croak, her nails scraping the ground as she curled her hands into fists.
She had to be in pain after what Augustine had done to her. Enough pain to account for the dried blood down the sides of her neck from her ears. But not enough to fill the emptiness in her eyes. Half of her was already dead.
“No, I’m not leaving you.”
“Who would have thought I would end up here?” She dropped her head until the side of it rested against the wall. “I told Grandma no, but she insisted on helping me to save Jeremy. She was too weak, Adora. Now I’ve lost them both.”
I shook my head, knowing I would have done the same as her grandmother. Even if it meant burning in the Wicker Man. “You don’t deserve this. Any of this. The law needs to change. This isn’t right.”
“As if there’s anything we can do about it.”
At that moment, I wanted to tell her I planned to kill Kane. If Augustine’s only son was dead, perhaps Cyrus would be next in line for high priest. The Pruitt lineage would end. There was a chance killing Kane could fix more than I’d imagined.
“I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure your death is the last punishment for using magic,” I promised.
Lena turned and faced the wall, mumbling incoherently. Like what I said was absurd. Hollow words to make dying a little easier.
But my words held weight. A whole town of weight.
“Lena, come here,” I begged, but she didn’t move. I leaned forward, clutched the poisonous bars, and bit back the painful sting. “Please come here.”
Lena was ten years older than me, but she crawled on all fours slowly, like a toddler would do, until she was sitting in front of me with the bars between us.
That was when I noticed a trail of blood sliding down the inside of her thigh under her dress. I glanced back at her with tears in my eyes, and I squeezed the bars tightly. “Did Augustine do that to you?”
There were still four more days left of her sitting in the cell. What more would she endure during that time without a guard to keep watch?
Lena didn’t answer. The truth was too horrific to put into the air.
“What can I do? Just tell me what to do so I can help.”
Lena looked up at me as her eyes held swirls of death.
Empty expiration.
The end.
“I just want to die,” she whispered.
I could do this for her so she didn’t have to suffer any longer.
For her, there was only one way out, and I could help.
I reached in to pull her closer to me. Nightshade sizzled the flesh along my arm, and I sucked in a breath through clenched teeth to fight through it.
