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She was going to give them hell someday.

“We were all together then, the night of the raid,” she finally said, her face distant. “But it was bittersweet. It was the greatest job that any of us had ever done, but we knew t’would be the last. We’d grown to love each other, our little thieves’ coven, cobbled together of whoever we could find, whoever was left. We stole to support ourselves, but we didn’t kill unless attacked first. We had a code; we were family—

“Until the Circle broke us, too. They couldn’t leave us even that, couldn’t let us rest. They threw us into their prisons, separated us, tortured us. So many died. My daughter almost died, and yet you say this wasn’t the Circle’s fault?”

She raised hot gray eyes to Rilda.

“I said it wasn’t entirely their fault,” the older witch demurred. “I am not absolving the bastards of guilt. I’m saying they couldn’t have done what they did without help—”

“Whose help?” Gillian’s hand hit the table top, her face furious. “I’ll gut the traitors alive!”

“That might be difficult,” Rilda told her quietly. “Since the traitors . . . are us.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Gillian stared at her friend for a moment, and then had to ball her hand into a fist to keep from slapping her. She got up and turned away, so abruptly that she knocked over her tea. The cup fell to the floor, shattering, as she started for the door to the stairs.

And found Kit in her way.

“Move,” she told him, anger trembling in her voice.

But he stayed where he was, his face sympathetic, but his eyes somber. “You said that you could control yourself,” he reminded her.

“You don’t understand!”

“Neither do you. And if you leave now, you never will.”

Gillian stared up at him, furious and confused. Why was he getting involved in this? Why did he care?

“This isn’t your affair!” she reminded him.

“No, it isn’t. But I know you. If you go, your pride will ensure that you will not return. I think you will come to regret that, in time. And after everything you’ve gone through, that you both have, what are words? If you don’t want them, let them go. They’ll blow away soon enough, like the leaves today.

“The ones that fester are the ones we never say.”

She stared up at him, tears in her eyes, and wondered what he was talking about. But the short interruption had stymied her initial impulse. She was wavering, and Rilda took that moment to speak.

“T’is easier to blame the Circle,” she said. “They deserve a great deal of it, after all. It is much harder to face the fact that we do, too.”

“We did nothing wrong!” Gillian said, whirling on her. “They invaded us, stole our lands, hurt our people. We had to fight—”

“Yes, that is what I believed once, as well. My whole coven did. It’s what caused their deaths.” She paused, and cocked her head. “Only that was a lie just now. Do you see how easy it is? After everything I’ve learned, I still find myself trying to share the burden, to lessen my own fault. Even at the expense of blaming the dead.

“But it isn’t true. They followed my lead, my mistakes. My coven died because I killed them.”

Gillian stared at her in disbelief. “You were almost killed yourself trying to save them! You did nothing wrong!”

Rilda didn’t immediately reply. She had been packing a pipe as she spoke, and she continued to do so until she had ordered it to her satisfaction. Then she held it up.

“Do you see this? Carved from deer horn. Gifted to me by a young man, barely fourteen. He wasn’t a wizard; just a boy who lived on a nearby farm.

“Our coven helped his family once or twice. The father was dead and the boy was the eldest of six children. The mother had her hands full, especially around planting and harvest time. I sent a few of my people to assist her, knowing that she couldn’t afford to pay for help. Afterward, I forgot about it.

“But the boy remembered.” She lit the pipe with the candle, charring the tobacco and then puffing slightly, until she had an even burn. “Don’t know how long he worked on this, or how he had the time, with all his responsibilities. Hard to be a man at fourteen, but he came over with it before Yule that year. He had no box, as there wasn’t time to make one. Just a scrap of cloth with a sprig of holly tucked under some twine, to brighten it up.”

She took a draw, then exhaled and let the smoke drift toward the ceiling. “He was a good boy.”

“That’s what you want to tell me?” Gillian demanded, anger in her voice that she couldn’t control. “About your pipe?”