Page 44 of Song of the Hell Witch

They helped each other out of the boat, the sand sifting beneath her boots. They were a little too big for her, so her feet knocked against the sides as she walked. Three steps in, her heels threatened to slip out entirely.

Let’s hope one of the Ladies is more my size.

Arcadie stood beside the natural archway cut into the left cave wall. Striking a match against the stone, they lit the torch resting in the iron sconce beside the tunnel. “Come with me, please.”

Pulling her wings in so tight was agony, but she obeyed without complaint. The torchlight shone like tiny stars inside the walls’ amethyst crystals, and the beauty distracted her from the pain until they reached another archway.

“That back there’s the master bedroom. Which is mine.

” Arcadie led them along a little farther, then spun around when they reached another room.

“And this is where I leave you. I’ll fetch you when I wake”—Puck opened his mouth to ask, but Arcadie beat him—“which will be soon, and we’ll carry on, yes? ”

Handing Puck the torch, they slipped away before either of them could answer.

“Strange person.” Puck adjusted the torch in his left hand. “Good strange, just … strange.”

“I like them.” Smiling, Prudence gestured through the archway. “After you. Before you keel over on me.”

Puck ducked under the arch and Prudence crouched on her knees, the tips of her wings brushing against the rock. Swallowing the nausea, she pushed into the chamber.

Arcadie had taken great care to cozy up the room, nestling mahogany bookcases against the stone walls.

They’d topped them with iron candlesticks outfitted with fresh white tapers.

Puck lit them while Prudence studied the nightstands sitting on either side of the wrought-iron bed.

The mattress was big enough to fit two people and covered in a gorgeous, wine-red comforter, but it was smaller than the bed they’d shared last night—too small for Prudence’s comfort.

Puck set the torch into the sconce on the wall, painting the cavern a burnished amber. Her heart was beating in her face as he shuffled up to the mattress, and she willed herself to calm down— Just calm down, Prudence.

“You think we’re okay?” he asked.

“With what?” She fiddled with the pendant around her neck, which was thankfully still there even after the scuffle with Brom.

“Well, with Brom dead, Paris has to travel on foot, right? Much as he might worship Hale, he’s not him; he doesn’t have some Zeraphel army at his disposal. So there’s no real way for him to follow us, right? No way for him to really catch up?”

“Right.” She thought of Hale, of the face she’d seen sketched on flyers strewn in empty alleyways or plastered crooked on brick walls these last few months.

With his long golden curls and stern stare, he’d looked every part the handsome war hero.

But then, wasn’t that how every dangerous movement started?

With a commanding, charismatic man spouting dangerous ideas to a crowd of desperate people?

As far as she knew, Hale wasn’t taking an active part in any of this.

Perhaps he wouldn’t. Perhaps Paris, having found one of Hale’s Zeraphel, had enlisted him into his little vendetta and Hale had left the country, off to spread his vicious rhetoric throughout Belacanto and the rest of the continent.

Still …

“You … you realize we can never go home again.” She said it like a question, but it wasn’t.

Puck gave a pained sort of nod. Then, like he wanted to forget about that solemn fact, he gestured to the bed. “Look, I’d actually sleep on the floor tonight, but with my shoulder—”

“It’s fine. We’ll do what we did last night.” She cracked her knuckles once. “I just don’t know what we’re gonna do about my wings.”

“Here.” He sat on the bed and patted the space beside him. In the candlelight, his shadow was three times his size. “Let me take a look.”

“And do what, exactly?”

“Shift things back into place? I don’t know.”

Prudence sighed, frustrated and worn out, but at this point, she’d try anything. She settled onto the mattress, careful not to whack him in the face with her feathers.

“It’s the right one, yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah, on the end, and then where the wing meets the shoulder blade.”

“Okay, let’s start at the wing tip, see if that does anything. Ready?”

“Go ahead.”

His touch was gentle, but even a simple graze made her wince. Finally, he found the place where the break was, and she screeched as he pulled the bones back into alignment.

“Sorry, sorry.” His hand, warm and callused, closed over her arm. “What if I try the floor? It might not be bad, it might—”

“No. I don’t want you to. I can just—”

But before she could finish her sentence, the fracture lit up, this time with a comforting heat, soothing the ache the same way a bed warmer breathed life back into a body taxed by the cold. She could feel the fracture fixing itself, her healing power restored.

The pain in her shoulder was still there, though, and it was definitely the tear along the joint’s seam that was preventing her from pulling her wings in.

“Can you reach the wing joint, do you think?” she asked.

“There’s … uh …” Something rumbled in his throat. “There’s a bit of nightgown in the way.”

“Tear it,” she said.

An audible gulp. “What?”

“Rip the holes around the wings so you can reach it.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

He hesitated but eventually did as she asked.

“Shit,” he grunted.

“What is it?”

“The joint’s fucked. Bruised and swollen and … fucked.”

The acid bubbled in her gut. “Can you … un -fuck it?”

“I can try.” He shifted behind her, exhaled once. Then he braced his right hand against her side, in the curve between her rib cage and her hip.

She tensed, and he mirrored her, their bodies in sync for the first time in years.

“You okay?” His warm breath danced across the back of her neck.

She nodded, telling him to keep going. “Your turn. Tell me a story.”

“What kind of story?”

“How about …” She was almost naked, exposed, and it seemed like a fair exchange, vulnerability for vulnerability. “The tattoo. The Hornsgate tattoo.”

“Ah, so this is all a ruse to get me to tell you my secrets, eh?”

“Yes, I got myself thrown off a roof so I could hear about your toil in Hornsgate Prison. You’ve discovered my plan.”

His fingertips kissed the sore joint, and as he explored the injury, trying to discover what to do next, she pinched her eyes shut.

“It was that bar fight I was telling you about,” he began.

“Like I said, this bloke was banging on about Mari, saying all the stuff shitheads like to say about women like her. And I thought Here’s the perfect opportunity to punch the shit out of something and walk away . He obviously had other plans.”

“Did you kill him?” She didn’t know why it bothered her.

Maybe because she’d never seen him resort to violence outside of traditional street scuffles or the occasional ring fight back when he was a teenager trying to impress her.

Maybe because it was nearly impossible to envision him taking another person’s life.

But then, she’d killed people. Two people. And one of them was your husband. Murderess, murderess, murderess.

“I didn’t mean to.” His fingers still explored her wing joint, and a few jabs of pain cut through her shoulder blade.

“But once his blade went into my shoulder, I blacked out. Next thing I know, some Watchman’s grabbing hold of me and taking me away, and the bloke’s bleeding out on the tavern floor, his own blade in his neck. ”

“How exactly did you—”

“Hang on, I think I’ve got it.” Clasping the bottom of her wing joint between his thumb and his palm, he jerked up, then pulled out. It was like glass shards scraping against her bones, doing their best to burrow through the tissue. She screamed, the comforter balling in her hands.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry.” Puck pulled her against him, fitting his body between her wings. The shards sliced through muscle, slaughtering thought but not feeling.

His body, curling around hers. His arm, hugging her waist. The sensations summoned her out of the agony.

His mouth, close enough to tickle her ear. “Breathe, Pru. With me, come on.”

His chest rose and fell. At first, the rhythm was too slow, too steady, but eventually she settled into it, matching him breath for breath. His heat and her power melded, and the pain pulsed once, twice before fading into what felt like an old bruise.

Her wings retreated inside her, folding up beside her spine as though they were eager for rest.

She collapsed against him, expecting him to push her away, but he didn’t. He held her and held her and held her still.

“It’s all right.” His words formed on the back of her neck. “You’re all right. I’m here.”

Focus on your breathing. She tried to ignore the heat of his hands on her hips, how she shivered at his touch.

Then, like he used to do whenever she was caught in one of her storms, he teased her hair, acting like there was enough to drape over her shoulder, then kissed the nape of her neck. It was subtle, soft, like a faefly’s wings fluttering against her skin, and yet every nerve sparked in her body.

Think, Pru. Think before you turn around. You cross this line, there’s no going back. You cross this line, and you’re in it. And it’s not just him, but his kid and the life he had before you and everything else you don’t know.

Are you ready for that? For everything this means?

But she already knew the answer.

She was slow to turn. He stared at her, cornflower eyes swelling wide, mouth half open. His hair was wild. His face was bright.

This. This felt like coming home.

“I’m sorry,” he started. “I don’t know what that was, it was like a reflex and …”

“Puck.” She took his face between her hands and straddled his lap, certain he could hear her heartbeat.

“Yeah?”

She was just as afraid as she’d been that day on the rooftop, trembling like a leaf in his arms. “Kiss me.”