Page 15 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

That was a bit insulting.

Factual, but insulting.

Sorcha could climb trees and garden walls. She was well accustomed to thorns and teeth. Wounded animals tended to bite, even when she had just climbed through blackberry brambles to free them. She had a pet Black Shuck who roamed the moors and terrified the villagers, for pity’s sake.

But she did not know how to fight. Not really. Not beyond planting a reasonably solid facer or tripping drunken lords in an assembly room dance. She was passably good with a fencing foil. And kissing curators in the dark.

Not a lot of those about at the minute.

Still. She tossed her hair and shouted her own wager. “A hundred pounds on me.”

She did not have a hundred pounds. She had a run-down castle, three ovens, a dead grandmother, and a menagerie of creatures to feed.

Also, that overdeveloped sense of vengeance.

But as she honestly did not know how she could survive the next quarter of an hour, a possible new debt was not high on her list of things to worry about. She was not here of her own accord, so the least they could do was pay her.

The ogre advanced, grunting. Ogres barely spoke, at least to witches. They communicated with each other through a series of grunts. Blows to the head. Eating the bones of humans.

They liked fighting more than any other living creature on the island.

He spat on the ground, showing a cracked tooth the size of her fist. The crowd cheered so loud it made her a little dizzy. Of course, that might just be the fear and the lingering smoke. There weren’t enough wasps to call into the tower.

“We don’t have to do this, you know,” she said, backing up a step. The green fire licked at her back, singeing the ends of her hair. “You could smash your way right out of here right now. Stomp about the moors. I’m sure it would be quite lovely.”

But ogres loved a good fight and they loved beer and mud and blood. And considering their cannibalistic tendencies, this was like a bakery for them. All sorts of treats for the taking. She was just a brioche. A raspberry tart.

“I’m sure I’ve very bitter. I eat mostly garden greens and far too many lemons.” She was surrounded with the delicious scents of baking bread and sugar frosting every day, and she often needed sharp tastes to cut through the sweetness. “In fact, I had rampion and pickled beets for supper. You’d hate it.”

She knew trying to reason with the ogre was a lost cause.

And worse, it was boring the audience.

One of the guards prodded him with a sharp spear that arced with blue sparks. More magic. Ogre skin was too thick for even a spear to do much more than annoy him. He grunted again, louder, angrier. Hungrier.

Splendid. Not just an ogre, but an annoyed ogre.

And then the green fire between them disappeared, shooting out to reinforce the circle still burning around them. When he lumbered toward her, the thump of his footsteps rumbled through the cracked stones under Sorcha’s feet. Her crow shot out from her ribcage, squawking as it dive-bombed the ogre. He waved a huge hand, swatting at it. Sorcha kept backing away, as close to the flames as she dared. Her gaze bounced from the chains to the green flames, the shouting spectators. There was nothing else in the ring, nothing conveniently left behind beyond streaks of blood and axe marks in the rock, and a scattering of teeth.

It was just her and an ogre.

He swung a giant, meaty fist down toward her skull. She ducked to the side, popping up out of reach. Barely.

Still, he did not like that.

So she did it again.

It was a bit like moving through the steps of a country dance. Who could have guessed that dancing lessons with famous instructors from France and Italy would be so useful outside a duke’s ballroom?

She had always liked dancing.

She liked surviving even more.

She ducked again, twirled once, hopped over a giant fist.

But she already knew that she was only delaying the inevitable. She would get tired, she would trip or fall, and then he would smash his fist through her bones. Already her breath burned in her lungs. Her knee still ached from jumping off the wall.

Surely all of these people wouldn’t just stand there watching gleefully as a woman was crushed to a pulp by an ogre. Would he suck the marrow from her bones? Right here? With the mayor’s spoiled son watching?