Three witches stalk down the streets in all black, red leather straps tied around their wrists, some twisted version of animals trudging behind them. A grizzly bear lumbers past the window with milky eyes and a festering wound on its chest. It opens its mouth, revealing rotting teeth. A black panther with matted fur and a fatal wound in its side slinks beside the bear. But instead of red flowing from the wound, black blood has been crusted over. Like the witches, shadowy auras cling to them.
“Time to go,” Luca says as he emerges from the back. “I think we can funnel away undetected.”
“What if the witches return? How are they going to protect themselves?” I protest.
“Don’t care,” Asmo says, reaching for me and Luca. The café disappears around us, the forest of the cabin materializing in its place. With the barrier hiding the cabin, it looks just like a clearing in a forest.
“We have to go back and help those people. We’re the only ones who can,” I say the moment we step inside the barrier.
“You’re our priority, Mae. We cannot protect everyone right now.” Asmo glares at me, ready for a fight. But I don’t give him one. He has a point. If we die protecting a small faction of humans before we can get Marik and Cora off the throne, even more will die.
“If the witches are already this close, it’s possible they know we’re here. We need to leave. Now,” Luca says before storming inside the house.
Asmo helps Holly from her bedroom, a supportive arm out to steady her. My throat grows tight from seeing her still so weak. We’re lucky Marik’s flames didn’t kill her. Even now, she spends most of her time sleeping, thanks to the medicinal sedatives we’ve been putting in her food and water to help her recover faster. Over the last week, her burns have turned from bright pink to nearly white.
She waves Asmo away as she trudges down the hall, but he still hovers behind her. Ivan portals us to a small cabin on the edge of another human town within the Deer Court. Lucaapproaches the house and peers through a grimy window before entering the front door.
The living room is covered in a thick layer of dust. The floorboards groan as we explore the tiny house that was abandoned long ago. Somehow, in all the craziness of the last hour, I managed to grab the bags of food from the market. I find a ceramic vase on a kitchen shelf and brush off the dust before plopping the bouquets of flowers inside.
I’m wiping down the counters with an old rag when Ivan walks into the cramped kitchen. “So, what happened?” he asks.
I recount our trip to Briar’s Glen. “Well,” he says as he leans against the counter with a sigh. “We hoped it wouldn’t, but we thought it might come to this.” He’s right. We’ve been waiting for Marik and Cora to make a move, to extend their power. I just wasn’t expecting them to take over a human town. With witches. And undead animals. “Have you given any more thought to my theory?”
I nod. His theory that Elle’s the one on the throne. “I think it’s possible. I’m not sure how else they could proceed as if everything’s normal. Someone must bepretending to be me, and Elle makes the most sense.” Even if it makes my heart lurch in my chest. “What do we do, Ivan?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not sure yet. Don’t worry, though. We’ll figure something out.” But his words ring hollow.
Asmo joins me outside, sitting beside me as I hug my legs and stare out into the darkness. There’s no porch or rocking chairs here. Just a blanket and the cold, hard ground. He doesn’t ask to share the blanket, and I don’t offer.
“What the fuck were those things?” I whisper. The memory of the undead animals and their rotting teeth hasn’t left me since we left the café.
“The Cursed,” Asmo responds.
“Whatwere they, Asmo?” I press.
He runs a hand through his hair. “They’re from a faction of theunderworld. They’re created by the witches, who force them to live in damnation to serve as their pets.”
The underworld, also calledthe hells, is not something that’s talked about in Woodland. The heavens, yes, but never the hells.
“What do you mean?”
He stretches his legs out in front of him and leans back, resting on the palms of his hands. “Please tell me you’re not one of the hybrids that doesn’t believe in the Sister.”
“I don’t,” I admit.
There are some that believe in the Sister, the Mother’s antithesis, and the ruler of what is below. But when you believe in the Mother, you believe that all living creations go to the heavens, as a death means that the body is restored to the earth, the only payment to ascend. You don’t believe in an alternative.
But the animals from today did not ascend.
He sighs. “Okay. Well. The witches are created by the Sister. And the Cursed are one of the Sister’s creations, as are the cambions and the osseri.”
“How do you know that?” I ask.
He speaks of it as if it’s fact, but the Sister is just a fable, a nightmare told to scare children. But so are the osseri, and those are real.
“Dark magic, which originated in the hells, was an important part of my education.”
“That’s how you knew about the cambions when you saved me the first time.”
