If the fae had not overreached their powers, angered the gods, and brought down the curse. If my mother had not died, and my father had not become obsessed with wealth and selling fae objects. Maybe I would have grown up in a loving home. Maybe my sisters and I would have grown close instead of apart. Maybe I would never have become a witch.
But I was a witch, and Kyna was pregnant.
I loosened the strings that held the wrists of my pale blue wool dress closed. They were meant to make it easier for layering in the cold Velora weather. Now they provided me access to shove my hand up past the wrist, past my elbow, to the circlet of gold on my upper arm. It took me a few turns to work it down, but I managed to get it off. A quick glance out the window—the man had disappeared from sight as he followed the curved path around the bluff. We had only a minute or two more.
“Take this. Sell it if the ship’s captain will not accept it in trade. With what we already have, it will be enough to buy you passage across the Southern Fate and provide a start wherever you land. But you must go now, before your pregnancy is apparent, or they will charge you for two fares.”
Kyna did not reach for the gold circlet. She showed no sign of recognizing the family heirloom I’d carried with me for nearly four centuries, the one I’d stolen the night I ran away. But her face was far from blank.
Sympathy. That was the emotion lining her eyes. She felt bad for me.
I felt the blow before her words delivered it. “I will not go without him. And he will not leave behind his family’s legacy.”
“Kyna,” I rasped, the ice in my throat making it hard to speak. “You cannot stay here. You will die. Your child will die.”
She raked her teeth over her lower lip, but it was not a mark of indecision. She’d already made her choice. Now she was deciding how to deal with me.
“We appreciate any help you can give us. Spells or such. But I cannot take your coin. It would be in bad faith, as I would not spend it the way you intended.”
My keen senses alerted me to the man’s footsteps. Merrick. A poor fisherman cursed to fish a dying sea and drag Kyna down with him towards its pitiless depths. Anger rose within me, and my power with it.
I could kill him. I should kill him. There was nothing to be done about the child in her belly, but without the man who’d put it there, she would have no option but to flee across the Southern Fate.
I felt the whorls of frost as my power coated my skin. The temperature in the cottage dropped several degrees. Kyna crossed to the window, but she lingered before closing it, listening to her man’s footsteps.
We.
It no longer referred to me and Kyna, but to her and her man and the child they’d made together.Wehad always been an illusion. Kyna might know my name, she may welcome my help outright in a way that her predecessors had not. Butwewere a lie.
I was alone, just as I always had been.
I tossed my mother’s golden bangle into the pile of coins, so carefully collected. “Keep it.”
I could not stay. Maura’s orders were strict. Each sister was to fetch her appointed items for the coven and then return posthaste. I’d already diverted to come here, risking dire punishment if the head witch ever found out where I’d been.
If I watched that man walk through the door, I might kill him.
I grabbed my cloak, not pausing to pull it on. “I will return when I can.”
“We will be here.” I knew she meant it. That scared me more than Maura’s threats ever had. “Goodbye, Koryn.”
Kyna leaned her head against the window frame, her hand drifting down to caress her still-flat belly. I thanked the Dark God that my heart no longer beat, for I was certain in that moment that it would have cleaved in two as I forced myself to walk out the door.
It was the last time I saw her alive.
CHAPTER 48
The wind kickedup as we climbed down the mountain, the crags giving way to hills until we saw the southern road emerge. Once, it had been a bustling trade route that circled the human lands before curving around the edge of the mountains to the coast. Now it was mostly overgrown. Only the ancient stone wall that ran along one side made it easy to discern, and only then because it was only as tall as my waist. Any taller and it would have tumbled down to the ground a century ago.
When I’d journeyed out from the coven lands, we’d always been instructed to avoid such thoroughfares. If we came across humans, we were to take what we needed and leave no survivors.
Humans had no power or magic, nor could they enhance our own. There was no benefit in keeping them alive.
We followed the road south, the mountains lurking to the east.
When the tavern finally emerged from behind a hill, my feet stilled.
“It is busy,” I breathed, my brain struggling to make sense of what my eyes saw.
