one
Orelia prepared her workstationfor another night of healing the brothel’s pleasure girls. She set jars of herbaceous creams and colorless salves on the tabletop next to a stack of neatly folded linen cloths. The witch propped her hands on her wide hips as she counted the various concoctions, mouth twisting to the side.
One was missing.
When she curled her pale fingers toward her, a drawer in a table across the room opened. A glass vial of orange liquid rose from its hideout, slowly floated over, and when the sana was close enough, Orelia plucked it out of the air.
She hadn’t had to use the advanced healing elixir in a while, but with the influx of patrons as fishermen traveled to Minro looking for spring work, it was only a matter of time before one of the pleasure girls would need a vial. Or more than one.
The brothel was alive with exuberant laughter and womanly moans she’d learned to distinguish as false. Throughout the building, men made their selections of whom they would choose to love, or hurt, for the night. From the confines of her healer’s room, shewas accustomed to tuning out the chorus of ebbing ecstasy and flowing conversation.
Orelia hummed as she went about her remaining tasks, ones as familiar as the cracks in the stone walls. She threw out a withered bunch of lavender dangling on a hook near the door and replaced it with a fresh bundle. After sprinkling a few drops of vanilla extract on the flowers to let the calming scents mingle, Orelia slid the oil vial into one of the pockets of her skirt. The wool brushed her ankles as she crossed the room in boots in desperate need of resoling.
Warm light from beeswax candles flickered on the damp stone walls, and though she found candlelight to be more comforting to those who came to her for aid, Orelia preferred the concentrated luminosity of a trulight when she was alone.
She tapped the trulight orb hovering above the water pump. Orange light swirled inside the cantaloupe-sized glass ball as it came to life, filling the orb completely. Orelia tapped the glass again to brighten the trulight before grabbing a bucket and setting it under the pump. She gripped the sloped, cast-iron handle and began feeding water into the bucket, her humming immediately drowned out by the harsh sound of water hitting tin.
While the bucket filled, Orelia stepped onto a footstool, using her magic to keep the pump moving with subtle movements of her wrist. She stretched onto her tiptoes and peeked out the only window that was far too close to the ceiling. During the day, sunlight struggled to enter the tiny room, and the lack of outdoor visibility often left her desperate to feel the sun on her skin and the grass under her bare feet for longer than a few minutes each day.
Almost half her life had been working in Beron’s brothel. Years and years of doing what she was made to do—heal others. Only witches and druids were natural healers, and with druids hard to come by and nonexistent in Minro, guilt sat like a lump in her throat from wanting to leave.
Dust coated the pads of her fingers as she clung to the windowsill and watched a gaggle of drunks stumbling through the muddy street. When a human threw a punch at one of his dwarf companions and missed, Orelia huffed. “Morons,” she muttered. She knew each of the men in the group by name, as all her thirty-three years of life had been the secluded fishing village on the southeastern corner of the world.
A thin layer of mist hung in the night air, glistening on the window her nose was pressed against. The villagers were settling in for the night, lanterns being extinguished and doors shut, with the tavern being the only place open other than the brothel. Her gaze shifted beyond the roofs of the shabby homes, landing on the tall pines. The silent guardians of the forest stretched to the violet sky adorned in sparkling stars. Something wrapped around her heart and tugged; the same sensation that befell her each night when she would lose herself in the dream of visiting the world beyond.
The continent of Nivinia was vast, and though Minro was a relatively safe, quiet place to call home, she didn’t want to spend the next one hundred and forty years looking out the tiny window of a decrepit building that reeked of incense and despair. Adventure called to her, and Orelia longed to answer.
Was the seafloor of Goldbottom Bay really lined with gold coins? Was the Greywood home to the most wicked creatures in all of Nivinia? Were the oceans rife with sea dragons? And did pirate ships ever reach the northern islands at the edge of the map?
One day, she thought, knowing the words were a lie, but choosing to believe them anyway. As a witch, Orelia believed it was her duty to help others. With Minro being comprised of more humans than any other race, they would need someone to heal them when violence came knocking.
And violence always came knocking.
Water splashed and tore her from her thoughts. She cursed under her breath, jumped off the stool, and slammed the handle to the pump off, nearly slipping on the slick floor.
Hoping Beron wasn’t about to strut into the room, Orelia gathered all the towels she could find, chastising herself for the mess. For a man who only bathed once a week, Beron had an obsessive need to keep his floors spotless. Orelia wasn’t keen to be yanked around by her auburn hair and belittled in front of everyone in the main room again, so she patted the towels as quickly as she could, soaking up her mistake.
When she finished, she gripped the orb until the trulight extinguished a few seconds later, the room dimming slightly. Orelia used a few pots to store some of the excess water, then carried the bucket by the bowing handle and hoisted it onto her workstation, careful not to slosh any water over the rim.
After retying her shoulder-length, wavy hair in a knot high on her head, she wrapped the emerald scarf that matched the color of hereyes around its bulk. A few ornery strands fell loose, framing her face. Orelia’s creamy skin had yet to turn golden, as spring had only just begun, and her freckles were a mere dusting on her nose and cheeks. With how often she’d been working lately, it was unlikely she’d have time to bask in her garden and earn the sun-kissed glow she so adored.
Raucous male laughter and feminine giggles drifted down the hall into her work room, but another noise in the mix caught her attention. The polite sound of a throat clearing.
A human girl she didn’t recognize trembled in the doorway, one lanky arm crossed over the other. She was doing a poor job of shielding the glowing orange lines running from elbow to shoulder, twisting around her limb like gnarled vines.
Orelia grimaced. The evils of men were never more apparent than in the wounds they inflicted upon women. She fought off the spiking anger at seeing wounds from a Lysa Fae and gestured for the young blonde to come inside.
Blue eyes darted over every object in the room like the girl was waiting for someone, or something, to jump out and grab her. She winced as she settled onto a cushioned bench, slowly shifting her weight to one side.
Orelia grabbed one of the cloths off her table, dunked it into the bucket, and squeezed out the cool water.
The girl kept glancing at the door, shaking like a newborn fawn as she adjusted her threadbare dress made of sage linen scraps.
Careful not to frighten her more, Orelia rounded the table and knelt in front of the human. “What’s your name?” she asked in a gentle voice.
Candlelight flickered in the girl’s glossy eyes. She wiped her running nose. “Millie.”
“Nice to meet you, Millie. I’m Orelia.”
