She grinned, stretching her cheeks into wrinkled swaths. “I could make the same promise.”
“Very well.”
I placed my palm into hers. Knobby-knuckled fingers clenched around mine.
And then my skull lit aflame.
I screamed, the agonized sound clawing free from my throat before my senses were snuffed outentirely.
The first thing I noticed was the smell of dirt—warm, earthy, and a bit sweet from decaying plant matter.
And then came the cold. It permeated my stolen clothes, soaked into my spine, stiffened the joints in my fingers.
A warm weight sat in the center of my chest, holding me pinned.
My eyes were leaden. It took a great effort to pry them open, but after long, painful seconds, I was able to glimpse my surroundings.
I was in the middle of the forest.
Alone.
Surrounded by nothing but ancient trees, insects, and dead leaves.
Weirdest of all, there was a cat curled up on top of me, resting peacefully.
My head ached as though pummeled by stones. The pain got worse when I attempted to dislodge the cat and rise, shoving the bile from my stomach. I curled to my side and vomited, the tea I’d swallowed making a swift and violent exit.
The cat on my chest vanished into the night, hardly making a sound.
The fucking tea.
My whereabouts returned in bits and pieces.
The tea. The crone. Her gnarled, magical hands.
The witch had tried to kill me.
She drugged me, knocked me unconscious, and then left me in the forest for dead. She surely expected the forest’s wandering beasts to finish me off.
Luckily, I wasn’tthat fragile.
I was going to kill that evil woman. I was going to kill her and flee with my wife in tow.
When my stomach finally ceased its roiling, I pushed onto my feet. The forest swung wildly around me, and I braced myself against the trunk of a tree for long minutes before my surroundings solidified again. Cold air was a balm to my lungs, and I sucked it down greedily.
I could scarcely glimpse the sight of the twin moons between sparse, gnarled branches.
Something poked at the back of my mind. It stung like a bee, hot and insistent, pricking at my awareness.
A memory.
I fell to my knees as it overtook me.
“What are you doing, brother?” a light, melodic voice asked. It bubbled with mirth.
I drifted through the trees, carried on a breeze, lighter than air itself. My fingers drifted over scratchy tree trunks, crushed dried leaves, left them as dust in my wake. The shadows were my safety, my home, and in the shade of the tree trunks I stayed. It was a game to avoid the sunlight.
I always won this game.
