Thick internal columns supported the heavy weight of the castle that loomed several stories overhead. They shielded us from view. But they could not block out the screams.
I’d killed many people over the past two decades. Men, women. There were excuses for all of them, but in the end, it was just that. Killing. But I’d rarely had occasion to do what the witch on the other side of that column was doing. Some things, there were no excuses for.
Koryn pressed her forehead to the pillar, her eyes closed. This was what had drawn her. If Koryn could not bring herself to look, I could. I could be her eyes.
The witches had inscribed a pentagram on the floor using ash. The dark lines vivisected the pattern of red-orange bricks and mortar. At their center, a young woman lay on her back, arms and legs splayed wide, each reaching toward a point of the pentagram. Her head made the final, fifth point. Her limbs were held in place with bands of fire.
As I watched, the head witch leaned down and whispered something to the young woman. The captive mumbled something in return, but it was too garbled for me to make out.
Whatever her response, it did not satisfy the witch.
The fire around the woman’s legs flamed higher, crawling up her thighs. She screamed, thrashing to get away. But there was no escape.
Gods, this was gruesome. There was plenty of darkness in Velora. There were places where the humans had taken to killing and eating one another once they’d run out of other creatures. But that was survival. This was just torture. I could not claim to be a stranger to it. But the day it failed to roil my stomach… thenI’d truly become the monster my mother had tried so hard to protect me from.
“Do you know her?” Koryn said softly. Maybe so that we would not be heard. Or because it was all she could manage.
I shook my head. “No.”
I did not ask, but Koryn had to see for herself. She splayed a hand wide against the bricks of the pillar, anchoring herself as the acolyte from the temples, Tomin, had taught her. Then she raised her head and looked.
“Neither do I,” she finally said. Her chin trembled, but her eyes did not flood with tears. She blinked several times in rapid succession. I could hear the faint sound of her fingernails digging into the mortar and breaking.
There was agony in her gaze, but not surprise.
This was not the first time she’d seen something like this, I realized. This was her coven. The Midnight Coven, the last remaining witch coven in all of Velora. The head witch had done this to her. Maybe not exactly this. It was hard to imagine her torturing another member of her coven this way. But the woman who could do this… she was the one who’d shaped Koryn for the last four hundred years.
Burning rage surged through me. No one was allowed to hurt Koryn like this… not even me. I rolled my shoulders, feeling the wings desperate to break through. It had been nearly three decades since I’d shifted without meaning to. But watching the pain on Koryn’s face, I was closer than I wanted to admit.
I wanted to become the raven. I wanted to peck Maura’s eyes from her body, use my sharp beak to sever her jugular, and bathe in her blood as she bled out.
But it was not just Maura. Koryn’s eyes darted around the room, taking in every detail that I’d incorporated in an instant. The red-haired witch who’d questioned her in the presencechamber stood at one point of the pentagram. The shape-shifter stood opposite. The head witch retreated to a point of her own.
“How can they stand by and watch?” I asked. I instantly wanted to call back the words. Hadn’t I just promised myself minutes earlier that I would not be the source of any more of Koryn’s pain?
I expected her to turn away, but now that she watched, she seemed almost mesmerized. There was immense power at work here. So strong, it had called Koryn to it. Now it seemed to hold her in thrall.
“They are witches,” she said softly.
You are a bounty hunter. She’d thrown those words at me like an accusation just yesterday. I heard it just as clearly today. I understood this brutality, and she knew it. We both did. And we were both still alive, still fighting. Together.
I shifted just a little bit closer to her. If Koryn noticed, she did not say. When she spoke again, her voice was just as soft, but far away. She watched, but I was not certain she actually saw what was happening in front of us.
“Allegiance to coven is everything,” she said. “Without your coven, your power fades away.”
She’d told me this before. “Yours hasn’t.” I’d told her that, too.
She rolled her shoulders, a slight shiver shaking her out of whatever memory had held her captive.
“Maybe it is because they insist on returning and making my life more complicated.”
The flippant tone was self-protection against the gruesome scene.
Maura was back at the center of the pentagram, speaking to the woman. A new circle of flames appeared, this time around her neck. Maura leaned down low, murmuring something. The woman screamed. This word was understandable.
Please.
Please. Please. Please.She screamed it again and again.
