Page 19 of Song of the Hell Witch

Eleven

The first time Prudence Merriweather fell in love with Puck Reed was on the rooftop of a place called the Rum Pudding Inn.

It wasn’t actually an inn but a brothel that sat on the boundary between the Sweetbreads District and the Horn of Justice, far more convenient than Madame Sybil’s place for the newly recruited Watchmen suddenly aware of how short their lives could be.

Just before Prudence left Leora, the Apostles ordered the inn be raided and set it on fire in the name of the Lightbringer, convinced it was bringing great shame to the city. When she was younger, say fifteen, it was quite the place to hide after a run-in with the Watch.

And quite the place to watch the stars come out too.

She and Puck had spent the day picking pockets in the Silk District, playing at newsies while, light fingered, they fished lyran, watches, and snakeskin clutches out of coats and skirts and trousers.

Prudence felt the first tickle of desire watching him work.

She was a good thief, quick and subtle, never one to linger too long.

But Puck was an absolute marvel. He didn’t just steal from his marks, he charmed them, drawing them in so close he could nick whatever he was after right before their eyes and they would never notice a thing.

But that particular day, a priggish woman with a hog nose caught Prudence as she was walking away.

“That girl stole my purse!” she shrieked at a group of Watchmen stationed at the center of the square.

“Time to go, Spitfire!” Puck shouted.

Together they bolted out of Silk Square, sprinting down the polished streets, past the spotless storefronts.

Street sweepers and window washers worked hard to keep the Silk District pristine.

The Stacks coughed rivers of soot into the air, so it took regular scrubbings to keep the brick from charring.

They raced beneath Merchant’s Walk, past the factories and warehouses blocking their view of the harbor and the sea, crossing into the Sweetbreads District.

The browning sugar and baked butter made her mouth water.

The bakers, butchers, and tavern keepers were still hard at work, preparing for another night of merriment and debauchery.

“Looks like we’re climbing!” Puck said as they scrambled down the alley that ran parallel to the Rum Pudding Inn.

She was tempted to cheat, rely on her wings to get her to the roof, but impressing him felt more important.

So, using the grip she’d been strengthening for years, she found a divot in the bricks and scaled the wall like he’d taught her.

On the rooftop, they huddled together against the biting autumn air.

“Sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“Getting caught.”

“Thieves get caught, Pru. You were great out there, really.”

And then Puck, eyes gleaming with a slice of budding moonlight, stuck his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a ruby pendant the size of her thumb, dangling from an ornate golden chain.

“What’s that?” The wind tousled Prudence’s hair, a relief from the sweat beaded across her brow.

“Yours if you want it.”

“Of course I want it; are you joking?”

He was gentle as he clasped it around her neck, his fingers dusting the space between her vertebrae. Afterward, they sat in one of their peaceful silences, looking out toward the harbor, visible now over the caps of the smokestacks.

“You ever think about what it would be like,” he asked, “to just … take off over the Marrow Sea? Just fly away and never come back?”

“Sure,” she said, fiddling with the pendant. All the time, she didn’t add.

“Would you?”

She shook her head. “I’d get tired after a few miles.”

“But say you could. Right now, poof , you can fly to Belacanto or Visage. Do you?”

“Mm.” Any other day, her answer would have been immediate: In a second.

She’d search out a place with color and spice and excitement, a place that didn’t use words like Groundling or Hell Witch , that didn’t have Silks who got to ride in fancy carriages and spit at people while poor children drowned in their own fluids.

Except that place wouldn’t have this boy, who sometimes sat there looking like that , with his hair all wild and his face bright as a sun, smiling at her like she was some kind of miracle.

“Puck.”

“Yeah?”

At the time, it felt like the bravest thing she would ever do. “Kiss me.”

Prudence wasn’t sure why her mind latched on to the memory, if it was the rooftop or her subconscious laughing at her for thinking a kiss took any courage at all.

For the first time in hours, she thought of the pendant—and when she reached for it, it was gone.

She almost cried out, but then the person on the roof took another step, and she forgot all over again.

“What is it?” Marigold had changed into an emerald traveling skirt, her beret hanging crooked on her head. A black hooded cape draped elegantly around her shoulders. “Watchmen?”

Puck shook his head. “Watchmen break down doors.”

The boots paced back and forth, sending breaths of dust huffing from the ceiling beam.

“Who is it, then?” Marigold pressed.

Prudence thought of the cloaked assassin from her bedroom, how nimble he’d been, and she choked.

She’d spent so much energy hiding from the Watch, she’d forgotten what had sent her running in the first place.

If he’d stirred in time to see her take off toward the city, he could have easily tracked her.

Her power pulsed to life. The hum was weak, tempered by exhaustion, but it was there, promising safety if she needed it.

“General Hale’s men.” Imogen’s voice quaked with terror. “They’ve found us.”

Father Sewell and Paris’s argument came back to Pru, along with Paris’s anger.

Maybe he’d come to soften Frederick up for Hale, and when that didn’t work, they’d decided to send an assassin to kill him.

Maybe that was part of Hale’s overarching plan: Eliminate any nobles who stood in his way until all he had left were men willing to prop up his extremists.

“But Hale works in the shadows, right?” Prudence cocked a brow, confused. “Yes, he’s gaining influence, but what he’s preaching, it’s still considered fringe zealotry?”

Imogen didn’t answer, but Prudence knew terror when she saw it. She didn’t want to fight a force terrible enough to scare a succubus. “Wake the girl.”

Puck was gentle as he nudged Beatrice awake. “Bumblebee?” She opened her eyes, and Puck smoothed her hair back and sniffed. “Listen, we’ve gotta—”

He barely had time to catch Bea in his arms before the ceiling caved in.

Shingles, wood, and plaster exploded through the room.

Prudence dove for the nearest wall, landing hard on her elbows.

Her head slammed into the drywall, and pain stabbed through her skull.

The world blurred, and while her body begged her to surrender to the black pushing in at the edges of her vision, she fought back.

The acrid taste in her mouth, the ringing in her ears, the prickling along her skin drew her back to clarity.

What …

She could see the gaping wound in the ceiling, the plaster scattered like snow across the hardwood. But the two figures standing before her had to be hallucinations, especially the one with wings.

Except, on the other side of the sitting room, Marigold was staring at them too, crouched low and trembling. Bea and Puck, frozen against the wall, stood transfixed as well. At the base of the staircase, Imogen gripped the banister and stayed low, doing her best to hide.

Somehow, it was easier for Prudence to believe in the man with obsidian wings.

He didn’t have her sleek feathers; his wings were more bat-like, charcoal skin stretched over bone and cartilage.

The man’s bare chest and strong arms were chiseled marble, purple and blue veins pushing up to the surface, making him even more monstrous.

Lightbringer’s loins, it isn’t just a name. Hale’s called the Zeraphel. The real Zeraphel.

The winged man’s boyish blond curls on top of his head felt out of place. He grinned at her, and she suddenly knew what a fox felt staring at the hunting dogs eager to tear it apart.

That face. She’d seen that face before.

“Two Hell Witches instead of one.” He said it loud, eager. His eyes shifted toward Imogen, and Prudence finally saw that her ankle was kicked out at a strange angle. Broken. “What a gift.”

The Zeraph—for that had to be what he was, the singular term used for Zeraphel—clutched the hilt of an ivory knife hanging on his hip. He spread his wings wider, the taloned tips punching through each side wall, trapping Puck and Bea in the corner.

Yet as horrific and impossible as he was, it wasn’t the flesh-and-blood Zeraph that covered each of Prudence’s nerves in black sludge, numbing her to her core.

He should have been. He was an impossibility, a creature from the Epistle of Light, proof that the Lightbringer might in fact be the true god rather than the Dark Mother she’d secretly believed in all her life.

No, it was Paris who leeched the feeling from her body. Paris, wearing the same oil cloak as the assassin from her bedroom. His black hair stuck to his rain-soaked face. Water dripped from his patchy black beard. Blood still stained his skeletal hands. Frederick’s blood. His brother’s blood.

“ You. ” She wanted it to be bladed, but it came out frail.

“The monster, revealed at last,” Paris rasped. “Tell me, Prudence, did you enjoy killing my brother? Did it make you feel alive?”

“I never would have hurt him if you hadn’t—”