Page 42 of Song of the Hell Witch

Twenty-One

It took some doing to get her broken wings to fit as Arcadie guided her through the hotel’s side door and back into the kitchen.

A gaggle of women in simple black frocks and stark white aprons fawned over, prodded, and pulled at Puck, who sat at what looked like the same round table from last night, doing his best to give them all a polite smile.

The crease between his brows and the sweat on his face betrayed his pain.

The stab wound was already wrapped, bandaged under layers of white cotton so Prudence couldn’t see it. But his shirt was open, once again reminding her of how much he’d changed.

There was the scar, of course, peeking out from beneath the cloth around his injured shoulder.

But there were other changes too. The Puck she’d known was lithe and ropy.

This man’s shoulders had been hardened by years of scaling walls, his abdominal muscles carved by hard labor—and hunger, probably.

There was the love knot snaking up his forearm, weaving between a nest of bulging veins.

And then there was the tattoo inked just above his heart. She’d caught a glimpse of it last night and had mistaken it for a crescent moon. But now she could see it was a tusk. No, not a tusk, a horn , with a number printed inside the curve of the bone: 64523 .

The logical part of her mind told her she’d already pried enough. But pain, adrenaline, and shock were far stronger than reason, and the question was out before she could reel it back in. “Why do you have a Hornsgate tattoo?”

There could only be one answer. At some point in the last twelve years, he’d been locked up inside the prison, and not for some six-month stint as a punishment for burning draft cards. Only serious criminals condemned to rot in the bowels of the prison got marked for it—prisoners guilty of murder.

Puck and the kitchen maids startled at the sound of her voice. Some of the tension fell out of his shoulders as his eyes settled on her and he winced, pained by the damaged muscle relaxing. The grimace quickly morphed into an admiring smirk. “Nice to see you too, Pru.”

“Sorry, I’m …” She hugged her ribs and wilted, wishing she could disappear. She could still feel the boy’s trachea in her hands, hear the gurgling and its terrible end, and suddenly the tattoo wasn’t important. “I’m not thinking straight.” She stumbled toward him, then stopped short. “Can I …”

“Come here.”

She was gentle as she folded her arms around his neck. He slung his left arm around her waist, pulling her in. For a heartbeat, she closed her eyes and floated, grateful to be held, to be alive at all.

Except …

How is he alive?

“What happened?” She pushed away but left her hand resting on his good shoulder. “Did you kill Paris?”

Puck shook his head. “He stabbed me. I got the knife out of his hands, and then …” He stopped, and his eyes pressed into a squint, like he was racking his mind for an answer he couldn’t find.

“I guess he decided the wound would do the work for him, ’cause he took off after that.

Cockpuss didn’t even have the stones to kill me right. ”

“He was never known for his follow-through.”

“But he did jabber on a bit about Maximus Hale. Makes me think the rumors are true, that he’s put the fucking zealot in zealotry and somehow started warping men into these Zeraphel-looking beasts. Not only that, but based on what Paris was saying, it’s his dream to become one.”

Prudence sucked in a breath. She knew her brother-in-law was far gone, obviously. But to hate what she was so much and want to become one of Hale’s twisted warriors … the hypocrisy was enough to curdle her stomach.

“Speaking of which,” Puck continued, “what happened to your guy?”

Talons sinking in. Empty, unfocused eyes. That look right before he died that told her his humanity had come back, at least for a moment.

“Dead. Which is what he wanted, I think. Or what Hale made him want.” Her gut twisted.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. At the end, it almost felt like …

like I’d cut his puppet strings. Like he was coming back to himself somehow.

It felt like I was killing a …” Her breath hitched, mind flooding with visions of Brom, some of them flashes of memory, others imaginings stirred up by her guilt. “A scared boy.”

“Hey.” He reached up, and as his good hand palmed her face, warmth shivered through her. “No. You were saving our lives. We’re safe, at least for now. And that’s because of you.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Arcadie cut in, propping the blunderbuss against the stove.

“As I said, we’re probably an hour away from an angry mob gathering in the square, and that’s if we’re lucky.

” They folded their hands in front of them, their face inscrutable.

“We should get moving. Start our journey down the Whip, toward the Wild Fangs.”

“The Whip?” Panic sent the room tilting. “I can’t travel down the Whip. I’m wanted for my husband’s murder. And Brom might be dead, but Paris is still out there. He might not have wings anymore, but he has influence . He can send powerful people after me. I can’t just—”

“You misunderstand me, Miss Merriweather.” Arcadie’s face didn’t change. “There’s another arm of the river. Many believe it winds into Welling’s catacombs, where it leads to a dead end among the bones. But that isn’t the case. Mildred, if you please.”

With a skip in her step, one of the kitchen maids unlocked the same secret door that had led them up to their rooms. Prudence’s stomach sank at the thought that they’d be going down now instead of up, into more darkness, more risk.

Arcadie turned to look at them. “Now’s the moment where you decide. Do you trust me?”

Puck and Prudence glanced at each other, and she could see the desperation all over his face. All he wanted was Bea, through any means necessary.

“ Can we trust you?” he asked Arcadie, pretending like it mattered.

“I swear on my life, Mr. Reed. In two days’ time, you’ll be holding your little girl in your arms.”

Puck looked at Prudence, as if she were the one with the final say. But she knew better than that. Even if she refused, he’d go anyway.

She studied Arcadie one more time. They didn’t avoid her eyes, and she thought about how they’d spoken to the mob, then compared it with the hospitality they’d shown her and Puck last night and the urgency and kindness they were offering now.

It felt like they wanted to protect her. Like her life mattered to them.

She wasn’t sure she trusted them completely, but she knew she and Puck couldn’t make it on their own. And she also knew, now more than ever, what she was capable of, how to protect them both if need be.

“Lead on, then.”

The staircase went on for what had to be a good half mile. The deeper they went, the more Prudence wondered if Arcadie was leading them to the Dark Mother Herself, if Stormlash was simply another name for Hell.

Beneath her feet, the stone, worn smooth over centuries of use, grew colder, the temperature gnawing into her shins. She cursed the fact that she hadn’t grabbed her boots, that all she had to keep her warm was a shredded nightgown.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, the stairs ended, dropping them onto a stone riverbank. Both she and Puck gasped at the sight before them, so beautiful it was hard to know where to look first.

Of course, Prudence had read about underground rivers in fairy tales and fantasy novels, stories where magic not only existed but dominated the world, acting as currency or language, even as a god itself.

But even in those stories, the rivers were often ribbons of dark water that typically bore travelers to their doom.

This river, encased by cavernous walls, was ghostly white, lit by a luminescent force glowing under the surface. And the force sang , its melody like a glass harp, an instrument made of old wineglasses that was popular in Belacanto taverns.

“Spectabra crystals,” Arcadie explained, noting the awed looks on their faces.

“Before the Non-Believers’ War some thousand years ago, many people believed they were the source of the Hell Witches’ magic.

The original source, that is. The Druids used to worship them, believed they had all kinds of powerful properties.

Of course, over the centuries, the Apostles destroyed most of them, fear and whatnot.

But they still exist in caves and natural tunnels like this. ”

Prudence placed her palm on the surface of the water, the cold soothing and restorative.

The crystals’ song hummed alongside her own, and part of her wanted to sink into the depths, let the current carry her all the way to Stormlash.

Perhaps she’d emerge as someone new. A woman who hadn’t killed her husband.

A woman who hadn’t been foolish enough to return to this cursed island chasing a man who didn’t want her.

Or maybe she’d become the woman who had never left in the first place. The woman she could have been if she’d never sailed away.

Maybe the love knot spiraling around Puck’s wrist would be hers.

Two bellboys, dressed in double-breasted coats with gold buttons and black top hats, kicked at each other as they waited in front of a long black canoe on the bank.

“Ahem!” Arcadie coughed, and they both snapped to attention.

One of them marched up to Puck, holding out what looked like a fresh set of clothes. Puck accepted the bundle apprehensively.

“Pardon me if they don’t fit quite right,” Arcadie said. “I made my best guess.”

Puck looked like a man stripped naked before a mob. “I meant to ask you last night, when exactly did you—”

“Size you both up? The moment you walked into the hotel. Guests leave clothes and accessories behind all the time, so I shopped through some forgotten items and picked out a few things I thought might work. Hetty and the rest of the Ladies are quite the fashionable crew, so it won’t do to show up at Stormlash looking like vagrants.

And trust me, Mr. Reed, as worn out as you look, you’ll need all the help you can get. ”

For Prudence, Arcadie had brought the black blouse from her wardrobe, a pair of black boots, and the gorgeous emerald trousers with a garden of hand-stitched flowers running down the right pant leg.

She wanted to slide into the clothes right away—but there was no point if she couldn’t get her wings to fold in.

Taking note of her slumped shoulders, Arcadie offered a comforting smile. “You heal quickly, yes? Lady Florence heals quickly.”

“Most of the time, yes. I’ve never broken a wing before, though.”

“Well, I’m sure by the time we arrive, you’ll be back to your usual, radiant self.”

“Radiant.” Her dry chuckle sent a spasm screaming through the fracture in her wing. “I don’t think anyone’s ever used that word to describe me before.”

Puck snorted, obviously amused. “Definitely not.”

She rounded on him, ready with a mountain of insults, but the look on his face as he shrugged the new shirt over his wounded shoulder shut her up fast. He’d taken enough punishment for one day. Maybe for a decade.

“Indomitable.” He grunted, his fingers still trembling as he tried the buttons, and she couldn’t bear to watch him struggle all over again. She walked over to help him. He sighed out a “Thank you” as her own quivering hands began their work.

“What’s indomitable?” she asked absent-mindedly.

“That’s the word I’d use to describe you.”

She looked up at him. This close, it was hard to deny the heat in her cheeks, the change in her pulse. How the scent of him sent her mind reeling. “Puck, I …”

“You said two days, right, Arcadie?” He pulled away, and the moment was gone.

“And that’s a sure thing, not just a guess?

” He didn’t bother changing into the new set of herringbone trousers or the smoke-gray vest. He probably wanted to keep them fresh, impress his daughter with how strong and put-together he looked on arrival.

“Plus one or two pockets of rapids, a short but feisty waterfall I lovingly refer to as Pete, and the ever-present threat of cat eels gnawing their way into the bottom of the boat. But I swear to you, I will get you there safely.” Arcadie strolled over to the bank to inspect the canoe.

Carved into the short bow was a snarky-looking mermaid, and a long oar stood at the stern.

It reminded Prudence of the gondolas that glided through the Vivichan canals each morning.

“Are we stopping to sleep, or is this another go-until-we-collapse adventure?” Prudence dreaded the answer.

The hotelier plucked the monocle out of its socket.

Their right eye was a deep emerald, contrasting with the bright topaz of their left.

“Sweet girl, I’ve been ferrying women along this river for some thirty years.

Next to tailored suits, hospitality is my passion.

I would never let any of my guests, be they river travelers or hotel patrons, suffer when I could provide comfort and luxury.

” They strode toward her, knocking a bent finger against her nose, and while it should have been alarming, she chose to find it endearing. “Have faith in me.”

What other choice did she have?

Puck set the rest of his clothes in the boat and climbed in.

The second his legs hit the unsteady deck, they collapsed, like his knees had turned to putty.

Prudence lurched toward him, but he held up a hand to tell her he was okay.

Then, with the enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old boy, he gestured to the stretch of cavern before them.

“Faster we set out, the faster we get there, right?”

For the first time, Prudence took all of it in. Stalactites, like the teeth of some ancient, fossilized beast, hung from the ceiling. Their shadows wavered along the stormquartz and mudstone walls. Between them the river slithered on, an ivory snake curving about a quarter mile ahead.

Something fired in her belly, a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Two days and she’d finally be with women who could tell her more about what she was. Women who could help her focus her power, control it with greater ease. Two days and she’d walk into yet another new life.

Hopefully, this one would fit.

Please.

She gave Puck a nervous smile. “Onward.”