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The house was perfectly pleasant. I hated my prison for what it represented—Goddess knew I did—but I also understood the Victorian cottage pleased most eyes with its pale yellow exterior trimmed in bright white scrollwork. Given the world’s current infatuation with all things “vintage”, the quaint Victorian kitchen made the cottage a realtor’s dream. It didn’t appeal to my aesthetic tastes, but feeling trapped in it certainly didn’t help my opinion.

In all honesty, the only real negative was the too modern living room. Rumors from food deliverers and the guards assigned to check on me was that the warlock previously imprisoned in it requested the large masculine furniture that dwarfed my petite body.

Sure, I’d spent a few nights sleeping on the monstrous couch in the living room when I was feeling depressed and too lazy to climb the stairs, but never once had I sat in any of the matching over-sized chairs. Instead, I’d dragged a reasonable-sized wooden rocker from the master bedroom downstairs. The rocker wasn’t the most comfortable seat for lounging, but at least my feet touched the floor. That was my usual requirement for furniture.

I sat beside the fireplace during lonely winter nights and rocked myself into a state of calm.

Long ago, I was told everyone imprisoned here got to redecorate a room or two, but I’d found that offer too ironic to take them up on it. Why bother changing the contents of my prison cell? I was neither tenant nor guest in the cottage. The mismatched furnishings kept my situation from feeling normal, and my discomfort reminded me that this was not my true fate.

I refused to adapt any further to this farce.

The only reason I hadn’t tried to escape was because they’d allowed Fiona to visit me over the years as much as she wanted. Using her as my excuse not to change my situation had reached its expiration date, though. At twenty, she was a child no longer... and thank the Goddess for that. I mean, I loved my daughter madly, but being stuck in this place was more maddening than an innocent woman should have to endure.

Time had passed faster for me when she came to visit. Even with several bedrooms to choose from, my daughter had favored the weirdest one in the house. Its dark purple walls were adorned with posters of boy bands from the 80s. I hadn’t tried to find out if some incarcerated teenager chose the furnishings. Anger simmered in me still. Learning that Jack and his demon hunter council had imprisoned a teenage witch would have only made it worse.

Fiona said she liked the feeling of the furry black rug by the bed on her bare toes. Goddess knew she’d not been a simple child, especially for me as a part-time mother, but I loved my daughter with my whole heart. Knowing she’d made it this far in her life still able to appreciate such minor pleasures as a furry rug made my heart happy.

There was no man in my daughter’s life yet, nor did Fiona seem to want one. Life was funny, though, because I had been exactly her age when I met Jack. We’d married quickly, and soon I had gotten pregnant with Fiona. Like my daughter, I also had appreciated life’s simple pleasures. Without a single doubt in my soul, I’d given all of myself to Jack believing the two of us truly were meant to be together.

On good days, the mystery that was my only child convinced me I hadn’t made such a colossal mistake in sleeping with him. But on other days? Well, I suppose I preferred not to dwell on those.

When I finally grew tired of dwelling on the same old things I thought about every day, I rose from the porch to go back into the house. Last week Fiona had brought me a new book of spells. I couldn’t perform the more interesting ones with the limited magick allowed around the property, or at least, I couldn’t without revealing my powers.

Instead, I focused on memorizing the more intriguing ones.

One day soon I was going to leave this place and practice whatever spells I wanted. I had an entire list of what I would do when I left. The first and most important goal I had was to getThe Dagda Stoneback no matter how many dead bodies I had to step over.

Then I was going to do what I should have done the day Da gave it to me. The only reason I hadn’t done the ritual was because Jack had been too fearful of the magickal cost. I wouldn’t be incarcerated if I had fully accepted my legacy because the demon hunters would have known that their pitiful wards wouldn’t have held me, not even a single day.

Many times in the last seven years, I’d asked the Goddess to apologize to my Da and The Dagda for putting Jack ahead of my other responsibilities. I’d vowed that I would fix things as soon as I could, and that it wouldn’t be much longer now that Fiona was grown.

It had been Fiona who had explained to Conn all those years ago that they had incarcerated me because of my relationship with him. Calling him to me in my magickal prison was out of the question when that was precisely what Jack and the demon hunters wanted.

But I hadn’t wanted him to feel abandoned either, so Fiona had arranged with my mother—her maternal grandmother—to keep my familiar until I got out of here. Da’s mother was the last legacy witch in the family before I became one, but she’d passed long before Da did.

Ma was all I had left, and she hadn’t batted a false eyelash at the request. She’d taken Conn in because that’s what family did when ya needed help. Or it was whatrealfamily did.

Before I left this country and the unhappy life I’d lived here, I would track down my traitorous husband and magickly divorce him. It was a sad truth that I might not be able to take back the blood vow I made to him on our wedding day, but I refused to stay connected to Jack in any other way. Killing him was not an option because of the vow, but maybe I could watch while someone else did it.

Perhaps I’d leave this place the day I turned forty. Sure, I still had to decide what I was going to do with this midlife opportunity to reinvent myself, but I’d figure it out. For sure, I would not be spending the rest of my life with some other man who might stick a knife in my back. One of those in my life was enough.

* * *

The momentI crossed the threshold of the front door, I knew I was no longer alone in the house.

Feeling someone magickal, I made my way into the kitchen and found a stranger sitting at my kitchen table. Intruders were a common occurrence, and one I didn’t dare try to prevent, so I didn’t react to this one either. No doubt he was here simply to make sure I still was. They sent someone to check on me every day.

“Greetings, stranger. Do ya fancy a cup of tea before we get to yer business? I have a nice herbal blend that won’t ruin yer dinner or keep ya up all night. I’m having a cup myself, so it’s no trouble to make ya one.”

“Is the tea your own magickal blend?” he asked.

“No,” I said, chuckling at the thought of having that much control over what I ate and drank while at the cottage. “My daughter brings it to me when she visits. Her father checks it for poisons and hallucinogens before she does. Since I’ve been drinking it for years without issue, ya’re probably safe. There’s honey and milk too if ya have an urge for those.”

“Just honey, please.”

I got two big mugs down and the squeeze-bottle of cheap honey they provided. Food appeared in my kitchen every week like clockwork. I think the house reported how much I used because nothing ever got doubled. Either the house was magickal or it was spelled. Mostly I couldn’t complain about the way they fed me, but the quality wasn’t high.

Before my incarceration, I used to harvest honey from the bees living in my garden. Fiona reported that she’d tried to keep the hives up over the years but didn’t have my touch for beekeeping. I grieved my bee loss years ago and set it aside just as I had all the other things I’d taken for granted.