“By river’s flow and rain’s sweet song, let mother’s milk again flow strong.”
Once, the spell would have been enough to keep a mother’s milk flowing until her child’s second name day. But Velora’s power was dying right along with everything else.
The mother closed her eyes, her focus turning inward. Her baby squalled again. But unlike before, a wet spot bloomed through the fabric over her breasts. She didn’t bother with thanks, too transfixed with her child and the outcome of my power.
But others noticed. The farmer slid off his stool, leaving his empty tankard of weak ale behind. The pale-haired behemoth at the counter leaned on one elbow, his gaze more casual this time, a lingering perusal. Let him look. If he believed I could offer him some solution, he was welcome to part with his coin. But I doubted a man like that would pay for anything he could obtain through violence instead.
The prostitute from earlier was at his side, her laugh echoing off the low overhead beams of the roughshod, single-story structure.
Familiarity prickled my spine. I’d spent too many nights in desolate, desperate places like this. It was beginning to impede my judgment.
An elderly woman leaning on a cane sidled up behind the farmer, a makeshift line beginning to form. I flattened my hands on the tabletop once more and licked my lips.
CHAPTER 2
I leftthe tavern an hour later. There was a cadence to the evenings in such places. When the second prostitute arrived and the noise ratcheted up, it was time for me to leave. Once the humans began brawling over their company for the night, it was too easy to get injured and harder to control my power. Best to be gone before desperation took on its more dangerous shades. There was enough coin in my purse to buy a night of shelter—many nights, if I was not too particular about my accommodations. Getting my boot patched would be trickier. Or I could save it all. Not enough for passage out of Velora—not yet. But soon.
The door that stuck earlier gave way to me without a hitch. The walking death threat must have knocked the door into submission. He was still seated at the counter when I left. He did not glance my way, and I didn’t glance his. Whether that eerie perusal allowed him to recognize me as the threat I was did not matter. I would never see him again.
The cold whipped in from every direction, pressing against the thick layers of my cloak and in through the leather and wool and linen beneath. There were never enough layers to truly keep out the cold. Not in Velora. Not in the last decade.
I died on a night like this. Back then, such extremes were rare. Now, we went months without seeing the sun.
But I could see just as well in the dark—a gift of the ancient power that moved my blood through my veins. Or more specifically, from the Dark God who created the witches.
I noted the pair of men huddled just within the dark alley that separated the tavern from the boarded-up remains of a general store. They were just that. Men. Too short to be fae, a possibility that had not even entered my mind in years until that huge hulking beast entered the tavern. And they were certainly not witches, for the simple fact that they were not female.
The tiny hairs at the nape of my neck prickled again.
Wearing it like this was driving me mad. I reached over my shoulder, dragging the thick braid forward and dislodging my other hand from inside my cloak to pull out the knot that held the plait in place?—
My hands froze, every muscle in my body tightening.
It blended with the snow, white and so finely ground that it was nearly impossible to see. But I felt the impact immediately, as if I’d been punched in the gut, all of the air forced out of my lungs.
Salt.
The two men stepped out of the alley. A smile curved one of their faces—the bigger of the two, his cheeks still full and round. The rich and the evil were the only ones left in Velora with full cheeks. And the former were mostly gone.
“I told you she was real,” the slighter man said, rubbing his bare hands together against the cold. He held his place behind the larger man, lingering just over his shoulder as they approached, leaving a trail of shuffling footprints in the fresh snow.
“The salt was worth the price,” the bigger one agreed, his smile still in place.
Salt was expensive this far inland even before the gods cursed Velora. With so few people left on the continent, the once flowing trade routes from the sea had thinned to a trickle. A vial of salt could buy an entire month of shelter. Or capture one witch.
Anger rolled through my veins. This would never have happened if I were with my coven. If I was where I belonged.
You did this to yourself, a voice that sounded like an eerie mixture of Maura’s and my own hissed in the back of my consciousness. There was no hint of kindness in either. I could be gentle with others, but never with myself.
I was the one who got banned from my coven. My actions. My choices.
The same choices that had landed me here, trapped by two dirty, stinking men.
My fault.
But what happened next would not be. Men who hurt women all deserved to be punished.
The men moved closer, emboldened by the rigid lines of my muscles where the salt held them in place.
