Page 63 of Crownless Heirs

Sorcha forced her legs to move, taking three measured steps forward. Her fingers tangled deep into Noctis’s freezing, misty fur. She aggressively rubbed behind the hellhound’s ears, what looked like a casual gesture, but really, it was a warning.

“Thank you, that’s very kind of you,” Sorcha said, “but we really must be going. Is there any way you could direct us out of the marsh?”

She glanced back. Kyron and Maelan hadn’t moved an inch. Their bodies were completely rigid, statues of pure panic.

The witch’s smile didn’t falter, though her eyes hardened as she locked onto the boys. “Oh, come now, don’t be shy. I’m deeply sorry for the rude welcome. Next time, I’ll remind my little friend not to eat the guests before they’re properly prepared.”

She waved them over with a slow, hypnotic crook of her finger. The underlying malice in her tone made it perfectly clear: playing along was their only prayer of survival.

Sorcha forced her face into a blank, neutral mask. But as she subtly tried to test her internal energy, horror struck her. Her magic was gone. A heavy, suffocating force pressed against her smothering her inner flame as if the very oxygen in the cabin was engineered to extinguish her power.

They were forced to sit at the small wooden table. Three bowls of thick, steaming soup were placed before them with an unsettling clatter. The scent was violently earthy, heavily laced with standard herbs, but beneath the rosemary and thyme hid a sour, copper tang that made Sorcha’s skin prickle.

She stirred her broth idly, watching the grease swirl. She caught Kyron’s eye, then Maelan’s. The witch stood over them like a vulture, her unblinking gaze lingering heavily on their faces every single time they lifted a spoon.

So, they began the deadliest performance of their lives.

Sorcha carefully tilted her bowl, pretending to blow on a hot spoonful while letting the broth drip silently into a deep crack in the rotting wood of the table. Kyron feigned a clumsy reach for his iron cup, deliberately spilling a massive puddle into the thick wool of his heavy sleeve, which absorbed the liquid. Maelan tilted his bowl just enough to let a steady stream slosh over the far edge, dripping soundlessly onto the dirt floor beneath his boots. As they reached the bottom of their bowls, the witch finally drew a deep breath, looking thoroughly satisfied.

“I’ll be back in just a moment,” she said in a sing-song way.

She turned and climbed the stairs, her form melting into the heavy shadows of the upper loft.

The very instant her boots cleared the top floor, Kyron and Maelan exploded into motion. Kyron darted to the herb shelves, his hands a blur as he swept glass bottles and dried roots directly into his coat pockets. Maelan rifled through a chaotic stack of tattered books and yellowed parchments on a side table.

Sorcha threw her upper body over the table, hissing in a panicked whisper, “What are you doing?! Get back here!”

Maelan didn’t even look up, his fingers flying through the pages. “A sleeping drought. I found it.”

Kyron lunged across the room, thrusting a handful of blue-tinted nightshade petals and dried root into Maelan’s hands.

Maelan didn’t waste a second. He crushed the ingredients between his palms, grinding them into a fine, powdery dust before dumping it directly into the witch’s steaming tea mug. It dissolved instantly, leaving a faint, oily shimmer on the surface that quickly vanished.

The heavy, rhythmic creak of a floorboard directly above sent them scrambling back into their chairs, forcing their bodies back into postures of serene calm. When the witch descended the stairs this time, she had abandoned the illusion entirely. She hadn’t even bothered to pin her skin together. Her blackened lips curled into a grotesque mockery of a smile, her broken, jagged teeth gleaming in the firelight. Her pale skin was marred with greenish patches of weeping decay, and bald spots peppered her skull, her stringy black hair hanging in limp, greasy strands.

She looked at them and saw three perfectly paralyzed victims. Or so she thought. The witch took her time as she sauntered over to her counter and plucked a long, jagged boning knife from a block. The slow, rhythmic scrape of metal against a sharpening stone filled the suffocating silence of the cabin. She took a long, lazy sip of her tea, letting out a satisfied sigh. She smiled, savoring the absolute terror radiating off the three.

“You know,” she mused, tapping the flat of the blade against her rotted palm, her voice dripping with a mockingly sweet, motherly tone. “That soup contained a rather special ingredient from my garden. A paralysis flower. Oh, it’s subtle and slow working. Just enough that you can still blink... maybe twitch a finger if you try real hard. But...”

She leaned down, her foul, decaying breath washing hot against Kyron’s cheek. “... not nearly enough to run.”

She took another sip of her tea and sauntered forward. The dagger glinted in the firelight. Then, with a sudden, vicious flick of her wrist, she drove the blade straight into Kyron’s thigh. A choked, agonizing gasp was cut short in Kyron’s throat. He forced himself to freeze, his eyes wide and watering from the sudden spike of pain. Dark blood pooled rapidly, soaking through the fabric of his trousers and dripping onto the floor. But he didn’t scream or fight, he couldn’t risk revealing the truth yet.

She then laughed, a high-pitched, delighted cackle. She twirled on her heels, her ragged, mud-caked skirts billowing as she spun in front of the hearth, humming a low, tuneless melody. Noctis growled, her shadows rising like razor blades, but Sorcha’s knuckles turned white as she buried her hands deeper into the beast’s fur, physically pinning the Noctis to the floor.

The witch danced back to the table and ran a filthy, long nailed finger along Kyron’s trembling jaw, leaving the dagger deeply buried in his leg as if he were nothing more than a pinned butterfly in her collection.

She turned to Sorcha next. “And what do we have here?” she sang out with delight.

Sorcha braced herself, waiting for the poison to drop the hag. Why wasn’t she falling? She drank the tea. Why wasn’t it working? Panic flooded her thoughts, as the witch raised a small, serrated paring knife. With a slow, agonizingly motion, the witch brought the blade to Sorcha’s head. She didn’t just cut; she pressed the dull edge against Sorcha’s scalp, dragging it down hard enough to scratch the skin before severing a long lock of golden hair. Sorcha forced her eyes to stare straight ahead, refusing to blink, even as a bead of sweat rolled down her temple.

The witch held the golden strands up to the firelight. “So much potential. It’s a shame Bres wants you alive. Oh the magic I could create with your marrow.” She licked her lips in hunger. “I’m going to chop your little friends into pieces and you’re going to watch as I devour every bit of them.”

Sorcha’s heart was hammering away, her breath labored, and she was struggling like a caged animal. The poison failed. It failed. They were going to die here, pinned to chairs, carved up piece by piece and she was going to imprisoned to Bres. The witch turned back to the table, raising her teacup to take another sip to celebrate but this time when witch swallowed her throat convulsed violently. She paused, her hand hovering in mid-air. Her fingers began to tremble, a sudden, erratic twitch jerking her wrist. She took a step back, her boots wobbling as if the floor had tilted beneath her. Confusion flickered across her decayed face.

She blinked rapidly, her gaze dropping to the wooden mug. She tilted it toward the firelight, her pupils dilating as she finally noticed a thick, foreign sediment settling into a dark crust at the very bottom.

“You…” she hissed, her voice dropping to a demonic, guttural sound.