The thought slid from my mind, replaced by a sharp stab of awareness.
I may have dismissed him, but the newcomer had not returned the favor. Like everyone else who entered, he scanned the occupants of the tavern for predators or prey. He found me.
Even in the low light of the tavern, I marked the way his eyes widened. Recognition shone in the blue-green orbs. Recognition and intensity. The rest of the tavern melted away, the sounds of voices and scraping of metal and wood fading into a blur of indecipherable background noise. He held me in his gaze, his eyes boring into mine, as if he could see past the rings of exhaustion and into the dark power that pumped through my veins.
I dragged in a breath, the air scraping across my throat painfully enough I had to blink back a reaction. A blink was all it took to shatter the connection. He swung away from me, giving me no more heed than the prostitute who was already sidling in his direction. The cacophony of voices and sounds came crashing back in on me.
He pulled out a stool at the bar and put his back to every other occupant in the tavern. A distinct contrast to the approach I’d taken, tucking myself with my back to a wall at a table within an easy run of the tavern’s rear door.
Wood scraped across the floor as someone pushed up to stand. More than one someone—the calculus of the tavern was rearranging itself around this new arrival. I exhaled slowly, trying to settle the tempest that raged through my stomach. He was just a man. A well-armed one, but nothing more.
From the stink of unwashed cloaks and the murmuring emerged a slim human figure, hair disheveled and cheeks pale despite the blazing heat of the tavern. And she was coming my way.
The mother. I should have known. Mothers were always the most desperate. And determined.
The child strapped across her chest was as slight as she. He would have been easy to lose in the layers if not for the squalls of hunger every few minutes. The words of a spell danced along my tongue already, but I wouldn’t give it to her without payment. I’d made that mistake early in my exile. Word of a benevolent witch had spread quickly, and I’d barely escaped with my life. Kindness was a weakness. Kindness allowed others to take advantage of my gifts. Kindness had gotten me cast out of my coven and set me on this desperate path.
I was not merciful. I did not have pity. Maybe if I said it to myself enough times, it would be true.
“My lady,” the mother mumbled. She tried to dip a curtsy but lost her balance, not used to the weight strapped to her front or too weak to execute the movement. She grabbed for the table that separated us.
I didn’t wait for her to steady herself. “I am not your lady,” I bit back.
She blanched, one hand wrapping around the child protectively. My teeth ground together of their own accord.
Touching the child seemed to give her courage. “I beg your pardon, miss, but I?—”
“Call me what I am.”
Maybe it was cruel. MaybeIwas cruel. It would be among the least of the charges leveled at my kind, and believing it about myself might give me the hardness I needed to survive. But in that moment, I needed to hear her say it. I needed to know that she understood exactly who—what—she was dealing with. And I needed to remember what I was, even if my sisters had cast me out.
“Witch.” The whisper slipped between her lips. An admission and a curse. A plea.
My spine straightened.
“What do you want?”
“My babe.” She swallowed, mustering her courage once more. “My milk is drying up. I do not have enough food.” She opened her palm, dropping a single sparkling coin onto the table.
If she could not feed herself, then her body would not produce the milk to sustain her child. She was not the first mother to seek me out since I was cast out of my coven, driven to performing parlor tricks in dark, fetid holes of humanity to scrape out an existence. I could practically taste the power that she needed, the words that would give her what she so desperately wanted, at least for a time.
But those weren’t the words that came out of my mouth. “Then use your coin to buy a meal.”
Maybe I was as foolish as the humans loitering around that desolate place. The woman wanted to give me her coin. I might not technically need food or shelter to survive, but I’d rather sleep in a bed than on the ground. The sole of my left bootwas nearly worn through. The leather and expertise to repair it would be dear; there were few animals left to hunt for hides, and most craftspeople had deserted the forsaken continent for kinder shores. The passage off of Velora was even more expensive, and my only real option. If I lingered too long on Velora, in a festering land without my coven to concentrate what power there was and sustain me, I would die.
The young woman’s lower lip trembled, but she did not turn away. She used the broken fingernail at the end of a dirty finger to nudge the coin across the table in my direction. “A meal will not be enough. Nor will ten meals. Not when there is no shelter to keep him warm. I do not care for myself. Only for him.”
She would let herself waste away for the sake of her child. She would suffer the pangs of hunger, using whatever resources remained to her to give her child warmth. She would die, but he might live. It was a choice I’d seen before, and one I was sure to see again.
This was the curse of Velora.
“It will not last forever,” I warned.
The mother nodded. “Long enough.”
I did not have the power to read minds. My active power was less useful, particularly in this frozen wasteland. So I could not know what her plan was once she had my spell—and nor did I care, I reminded myself. She had a coin, and for now, I had the power to cast.
I lifted a hand in her direction, although the action was meaningless. It was the words that mattered. But the motion comforted the humans and drew the attention of other potential patrons.
