The sounds of pursuit faded, but just as I thought we might have escaped, a scream split the night.
High. Desperate. Familiar.
Kat.
I stumbled, nearly falling as the sound cut through me like a blade. She was screaming, pleading for help that wouldn’t come. That couldn’t come.
But it could.
My feet stopped. Through the skeletal black trees and thick fog, I could scarcely make out the glow of torches. Hunters circling back. Racing toward that scream.
Another cry tore through the darkness, wordless and raw.
I knew what they’d do to her. What they did to all witches they caught breaking ridiculous laws. Questions asked with hot iron and rope. Mercy that looked like a blade drawn quickly across the throat if you were lucky.
Because some of us had escaped, Kat wasn’t going to be lucky.
Silas’s presence pulsed through our bond, urgent, insistent. Not a sound, but a feeling that hit me like a fist:Run. Keep moving. Now.
I took a step forward instead. Back toward the screams.
But what could I do? I barely knew Kat. She was Vitoria’s friend, someone I’d shared a meal with twice, maybe three times. Someone who’d smiled at me and offered bread once. An earth witch with dirt under her fingernails and flowers that bloomed in her wake.
Someone who was screaming.
Another scream, closer now. Or maybe the fog just carried it better. I heard the word through it this time: “Please.”
My hands were shaking. I could go back. Could use the fog as cover, create enough chaos to?—
Silas’s panic crashed through me like a wave. I felt his desperation, his anger, the way he was somewhere nearby fighting every instinct to stay hidden because coming to me would mean revealing himself to the hunters. He was trusting me to run. To survive.
Kat screamed again, and this time it broke into sobbing. Begging. The kind of sound that hollows you out from the inside. I stood frozen between one breath and the next, every muscle coiled to spring back toward her voice. To do something. Anything.
But the torches were spreading out now, forming a net. They’d catch me in minutes. They’d have us both. And then Kat’s death would mean nothing, and neither would mine.
Self-preservation forced me to turn. I ran into the darkness of the Bloodwood, my heart hammering one truth over and over: there was nowhere left to hide the witches.
Chapter 2
Syneca
To recharge applicable runes, lay them bare beneath the full moon’s face. Speak the names of your ancestors thrice. Let moonlight wash away the day’s desperate magic.
Our small apartment felt too quiet after the chaos. Silence pressed in at the windows, heavy and unnatural, as though even the wind didn’t dare stir. I sat in it, restless, haunted by the memory of Katarina’s scream as the hunters dragged her away.
We hadn’t talked about her for days. Vitoria and I both seemed to agree without ever saying, silence was easier than the truth. Easier than admitting we shouldn’t have gone to the Bloodwood. Still, the guilt of running away gnawed at me, threatening to consume every moment if I let it. But Katarina had been Vitoria’s friend, or as close to one as Vitoria allowed outside of Calder and I. Acquaintance might have been the better word, yet they had trusted each other enough to share a spell circle. That kind of trust left its mark. She probably carried her own share of guilt, heavier than mine.
“So help me, Silas, if you do not stop sulking?—”
The griffin snapped his little beak at me, cutting off my words. With all the drama he could muster in his current house-pet-sized form, he stood, turned his back to me, and slumped onto the couch like the world’s most offended beast.
“Aw, look at you,” Vitoria cooed from her spot by the window. “Such a pretty little kitty, even with that grumpy attitude.” She reached toward his black wings.
He snapped at her fingertips.
Vitoria jerked her hand back. “Rude.”
From across the room, Calder tossed something small and bloody toward the little beast. The griffin caught his snack mid-air and gave Calder a slow, majestic bow.
