The rich were next, booking passage on ships across the ocean in all directions. Anywhere was better than Velora. That left the middle and poorer classes, those who could not immediately afford to flee, along with those who were stupid enough to hope.
Many covens left, but not mine.
If we had fled to richer lands, where power still grew up from the ground with the crops, would it never have happened? Would I be with my sisters, still?
A useless thought.
I ought to have learned by then that the past did not matter. If I had not learned that lesson by now, maybe I was doomed to never learn it at all.
The mother or the farmer. One of them would be the first to approach me that night.
There were more that would come to me. It was my third night in this tavern on the outskirts of Canmar, what was once a thriving capital city at the heart of a prosperous continent. The old fae palace in the center of the city was deserted, as were most of the larger residences.
Three nights was the maximum, I’d learned. Enough time for the desperate to pass word from mouth to ear and muster the courage to come to me. Any longer and I would attract the wrong sort of attention.
I rolled my shoulders, trying to dispel the tension building in the center of my back. Remorse for what I was about to do, what I’d been doing for months, paired with the flood of sensations that accosted me from every direction.
Even the sparse tavern was almost too much to bear. Wood crackled in the hearth, the warmth spreading relaxation through the haggard patrons. Watered wine and ale were enough to intoxicate these days. Voices grew louder. The heat pressed in. The power thrumming in my veins grew to a rush. I flattened my palms against the table, fighting for control.
I might have been the only non-human in the tavern, but desperation makes humans do stupid things. If I was anything less than the hardened, ruthless witch they expected to see, therewas no telling what the desperate patrons around me might convince themselves to do.
I forced myself to continue scanning the interior of the tavern, looking for prospective customers. It dulled the edge of tension, but only slightly.
A prostitute emerged from the shadows at the rear of the tavern. Her rouge was smudged, the kohl that lined her eyes expertly covering the heavy bags that should be beneath them. Comely women were harder and harder to find in Velora. Most of them had escaped with the more affluent, selling themselves as mistresses and broodmares. The ones left behind were those born too late. Unlucky to have been born at all.
She sauntered to the bar top, crooking her finger to call for wine. No man nor woman appeared from the shadows behind her. She must have sent her most recent customer off through the back door. The gaunt proprietor slid her a goblet. There was an arrangement between them. But I did not have any interest in her. She wouldn’t seek me out. Prostitution was one of the few professions that continued to thrive in Velora.
A hacking cough filled the close space, reminding me that the patrons I’d marked were far from the only occupants of the desolate corner of the world I inhabited. The tavern was a beacon of warmth, and unlike many such establishments, the proprietor had managed to procure a stock of wine. The price was exorbitant, but desperation… well, desperation and stupidity. Even those without money for the next night’s lodging will spend their coin on the escape alcohol can bring.
The door stuttered, protesting against the contrast of frigid cold outside and insulated heat within. It was the only redeeming trait of the dark, noisy establishment—warmth.
But even that might not be enough to keep it full.
As one, the occupants of the tavern held their breaths. I exhaled into the blessed silence, even knowing it would not last.
Sometimes, desperation outweighed stupidity. Instinct took over. The will to survive overpowered all else. Right then, every person in the tavern was calculating the threat posed by the new arrival.
It was not just the greatsword sheathed across his back or the full quiver of arrows, though the weapons said enough. Why carry a bow and arrows when there was so little game to hunt?
There was no doubt this man was a predator. Violence peeled off of him in curls as visible as the cloud of breath he huffed into the cold air he let in.
“Close the door!” the proprietor yelled without looking up to see who he accosted. Desperation and stupidity could look eerily similar.
I braced my hands flat on the scarred tabletop in front of me, a surge of power centering in my palms.
He was massive—tall enough that I found myself trying to pick out his ears in the dim light scattered from the lone stone hearth. I hadn’t seen a fae in more than three hundred years; not since they realized that the curse the gods had warned about had truly taken hold. The fae took too much. They set themselves above the gods. Those same gods cursed Velora as punishment. Those same fae retreated to the safety of their walled fortress beyond the mountains while the rest of us were left to die.
Hate curled in my stomach, turning the meager gruel to ice in seconds. The fae had stolen everything from me—my past and my future. I’d never matched myself against one, though the hate for them ran deep among my kind. The witches and fae were natural enemies, both contenders for the power and magic rooted in the land itself. Except one of us had destroyed it and then fled to safety, while the others were left to scratch out an existence from the remains.
I would kill him.
He was handsome enough to be fae. The broad shoulders swathed in fur, the elegant but masculine lines of his face, the hair so blond that it might have been mistaken for silver, if not for the gold tones cast by the firelight.
But amid the tangle of pale hair, the man was just that—a man. Human. There were no points atop his ears, only rounded shells that proclaimed him as mortal as every other person seeking refuge in this particular hellhole.
The power that had overwhelmed me moments before ebbed to a light frost. He would scare away some of the patrons with that grizzled visage and all those weapons, but the most determined would remain. I would still get my coin and eventually get off of this cursed continent. Survive another day.
Though what I’m surviving for…
