Page 1 of Song of the Hell Witch

One

Prudence Merriweather loathed perfume. It always made the space behind her right eye ache, regardless of the circumstance.

Add a ballroom brimming with pudgy earls, pinched-faced countesses, and arrogant lords cloaked in peony and lavender, and her head became a swollen beehive.

The sickly-sweet cloud was thick enough to cast golden halos around the gas lamps lining the wine-red walls.

Shoulders back. Chin up. Look like a lady now. She couldn’t falter, not tonight. It was her second Provincial Ball and her first as the Duchess of Talonsbury, Leora’s crown jewel of a city. She had to be perfect.

Pressing back into the too-hard mahogany chair, she flinched as her braided twist collided with the headrest. The diamond pins keeping her chestnut hair coiled around the back of her head jabbed into her scalp, murdering what was left of her patience.

In the time between dinner and dancing, she and her husband Frederick, Duke of Talonsbury and master of Leora’s southernmost province, were expected to listen as the leaders of the city’s inner districts and surrounding villages aired their grievances.

Yet in the last half hour or so, Prudence hadn’t heard anything close to an actual grievance.

No starving war widows clutching their children tight, begging for heels of bread or root vegetables hardened by months in manor home cellars.

No Holy Sisters from the workhouse in Whitefire Square complaining of little girls coughing up their lungs.

Then again, she wasn’t sure why she’d expected anything else.

A person didn’t become a leader of a Leoran district or village unless they had wealth.

Problems like crop failures or starving babies weren’t welcome in a place as fine as Talonsbury Estate.

No, the people privileged enough to ask their province master for help—Silks, as the commonfolk or Groundlings called them—often requested lower import prices or assistance settling a long-held feud over a strip of disputed land.

War widows and sick children couldn’t afford gem-studded gowns wide as doorways or tailored velvet suits, and so their problems didn’t matter.

That was the hard, simple fact of life in Leora.

“You all right, my dear?” Frederick’s enunciation was crisp and practiced, a mark of his formal education. Prudence had picked up the same formalities—in Talonsbury whorehouses and brothels an ocean away.

Not that he knew that, of course.

Fine, darling. It should have been an easy, immediate answer.

She was wearing the gown of her dreams, emerald brocade detailed in black roses.

Throughout her childhood scrounging for scraps on Talonsbury’s sludge-filled streets, she’d dreamed of being a woman people marveled at whenever she walked into a room.

This life she’d won for herself—six months as a duchess , Lightbringer’s loins—was a wish come true.

So when, she wondered, would the Silk lifestyle stop feeling so hollow?

And so fucking dull?

“Prudence.” Frederick stomped his cane on the marble floor.

The sound called her back. A prickle of frustration scurried up her spine. “What, dearest? Not smiling enough for you?”

His eyes, dark topaz pools, narrowed, and he smirked in a way that betrayed an underlying …

hunger. “Is my Hell Witch getting riled up by all these ridiculous requests?” He leaned in closer.

The musk of his cologne thickened in her throat, and the pain behind her eye throbbed.

She didn’t like how he’d said my Hell Witch , like she was something to be owned.

“Shall we retreat to the bedroom, let you spread those beautiful wings of yours?”

Her cheeks flushed. She glanced around, terrified someone had overheard him. Luckily, most of the guests were clustered around the banquet tables like pigs at their troughs, piling shaved pork and soft Visage cheeses onto provincial crackers as big as their hands.

Gluttons, she thought, and as the embarrassment and fear kindled her temper, the power quickened in her blood. The old hum began its tantalizing trill in her ears, vibrating into her bones, beckoning her: Let go, let go, let go.

Everyone in Leora knew about Hell Witches, women who, in a single, desperate moment, heard a mysterious melody that awakened a transformative magic in their blood. They knew the magic turned them into incredible creatures—banshees, lamias, selkies, and a thousand other beasts.

And with that certainty came another: that the Lightbringer’s Apostles, keepers of Leora’s True Faith, condemned all Hell Witches.

A thousand years ago, Leora had been dominated by bands of Druids, wild women who worshipped a goddess called the Dark Mother and, according to the Apostles and their ilk, spent their time making blood sacrifices and stoking discontent amidst the citizens, going so far as to encourage cursed practices such as polygamy and abstaining from childbirth.

Then, a young farm boy named Galahad was visited by a vision from the true God, the Lightbringer, who brandished His flaming silver sword and demanded Galahad rise up against the evils of the Dark Mother and reclaim the land for the people, lest the country—and then the whole of Canto, their Sphere of existence—tilted into Hell.

For nearly two decades, Galahad had waged a holy war, the Non-Believers’ War, against the Dark Mother’s followers, including her “Daughters,” who he and his disciples proclaimed as Hell Witches.

Victorious, Galahad declared himself Crown Apostle and head of the one True Faith of Leora—and of Canto as well.

From that point forward, the Apostles had strapped suspected Hell Witches to the pyre to burn alive. The citizens of Leora had watched in awe as the flames stretched toward the heavens, reminding them of their God, the Lightbringer, and His absolute power.

Of course Frederick, a war hero who’d always been more hedonistic than most nobles, knew Prudence was a Hell Witch.

It was the primary reason he’d married her, a fact he made abundantly clear each night in the bedroom.

But they’d agreed never to talk about it openly, especially not in a den of gossip-obsessed vipers eager to confirm that yes, their mysterious, dark-haired duchess had indeed enchanted her way into the bed of the most powerful man in all of Leora.

The last thing she needed was Countess Fortuna Braithwaite and her ilk gaining useful ammunition. Their barbs and jabs were horrific enough.

“Are you trying to get me killed?” Prudence’s nail beds ached as her talons begged for release.

Frederick chuckled at Prudence’s fear, his cheeks pinking up like starpeaches above his full, black beard. “Dearest, do you think I would let anyone harm you?”

“Do you think that crushed hip of yours could stop them?” She tilted her chin up the way her sister Emmaline had taught her so many years ago and pressed her eyes into a glare. “You want to purr about my power while we’re in bed, fine, but mention it here again and I’ll tear your throat out.”

She didn’t mean it, of course, but she took pleasure in watching his eye twitch. Clearing his throat, he angled his face back toward the door and his duty.

Good. You can still scare him shitless if need be.

“Walter”—Frederick’s voice cracked, and Prudence bit her lip to hold back her grin—“send in the next.”

The manservant opened the door, and Father Sewell, Senior Apostle at Talonsbury Abbey, shuffled into the room, doing his best imitation of a reanimated corpse.

His acolyte, a young boy who couldn’t be more than fourteen, did most of the work, propping him up when his steps faltered.

The voices skittering along the walls softened as everyone in the hall turned, bowing their heads in respect.

When a holy man spoke, everyone in Leora was expected to listen.

Impatient at his approach, Prudence stole a glance around the room.

In the far corner, Fortuna Braithwaite stood with her gaggle of friends, eyeing Prudence with a mixture of disgust and jealousy.

She and her wart of a husband had already had their audience, some nonsense about how Madame DuFresne, a talented seamstress with a shop on the border between Talonsbury’s Silk and Sweetbreads Districts, had increased the price of her fine fabrics.

Evidently, she was upcharging her Silk customers for their ball gowns and day dresses to account for increased export prices in Belacanto and Visage, courtesy of tariffs imposed by the House of Lords, of which Earl Braithwaite was a member.

“But she hasn’t raised the price of factory smocks for women working in the Stacks,” Fortuna had said, her haughty tone bristling Prudence’s nerves. “It’s reverse classism is what it is.”

“Or perhaps,” Prudence had said, cocking a brow, “it’s that wool doesn’t cost nearly as much as silk or taffeta. Could that be it?”

Now, almost an hour later, Prudence locked eyes with Countess Cockpuss.

Fortuna’s lips pursed into a sour pucker.

In response, Prudence tucked her hand under her chin and wiggled her fingers in what she intended to be the world’s pettiest wave.

She made sure to use the hand marked with her love knot tattoo, the one all Leoran women had to receive within a fortnight of their wedding.

Ridiculously, men weren’t required to get one at all.

Many believed male love knot tattoos were a weakness, an outward demonstration of a willingness to be possessed and controlled by a woman.

Yet the House of Lords and the Apostles had no reservations whatsoever against forcing women to receive one.

“Father Sewell, always a pleasure,” Frederick said once the Senior Apostle finally reached them. The old man kept his arms crossed over his chest, his gnarled hands tucked inside his billowing white robe.