Page 48 of Song of the Hell Witch

In one of the upstairs rooms, a tiny head peeked out onto the street. “Mommy!” the little girl shouted in a crisp eastern accent. “There’s a man …” Her words were lost as she ran deeper into the house.

That can’t be good.

“Guess I don’t make a very convincing man, then,” Pru teased, and as much as he wanted to tell her that no, in no world could she ever truly pass as a man, Puck gave her a nervous look instead. What if he really wasn’t welcome here? What would become of them then?

“Did the Ladies build the hamlet, or was it here before?” Puck asked Arcadie, trying to distract himself.

“It’s actually an old fishing village, built toward the end of the Non-Believers’ War, before Galahad was crowned as the first king,” Arcadie explained.

“Then a nasty case of Scarpetta swept through in the mid-thirteenth century. Wiped the whole town off the face of the earth. Most people forgot about it, save for a few Daughters who heard stories and came to see if it might be a refuge from persecution. The rest is history, I suppose.”

“And no one’s ever found this place?” Pru’s worry was unmistakable. She was still thinking of Paris, the possibility of him tracking them down.

Arcadie shook their head. “You’re safe here, Miss Merriweather, I assure you.”

But the higher they climbed, the more Puck began to doubt that, at least for himself.

A few sour-faced women cracked open their doors to glare as they passed by, their venom fixed on Puck.

Whenever a curious child tried to push past her mother—nearly all of the children were little girls—the older woman tugged the kid back inside and shut the door.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. “You think we’re both safe, Arcadie?”

“You will be,” Arcadie assured him. “Though I’d recommend you keep your voice low and your head lower.

The women who take refuge here are looking for a space free from men and their influence.

Women with small boys are permitted to stay, but those boys leave come their eighteenth birthday.

You’re likely the first man some of these children have seen outside of their abusive fathers or uncles or what have you. ”

“Right.” He tried to make himself as small as possible, show them in some largely insignificant way he wasn’t a threat.

“Welcome to the life of a woman in Leora.” Pru tilted her hip into his, and he took it as a playful effort to push his mind somewhere else. “How’s that shoulder? Still feel limited in your abilities?”

She winked, but he couldn’t bring himself to smile. “It’s stiff. And I don’t know, I feel … off .”

The features in her face snapped straight and serious. “What do you mean?”

He opened his mouth to tell her, but something scratched at the back of his mind.

It wasn’t words, exactly, more like one of those steel insects scraping at the part of his brain that made decisions, willing him not to say anything.

It will only worry her. And there’s no need to worry her. You’re just tired.

“Just … lack of sleep, probably. I want to jump out of my skin.” Don’t even go that far, the needling sensation told him. “It’s hard to explain.”

“You’ve gotta be half mad, missing Bea.” When she hooked her arm around his, some of his unrest settled. “You’ll feel better when you see her.”

“Oi!” shouted a voice from above. The three of them lifted their heads to see an older Black woman with long white braids leaning her head out the window. She held a stone in one hand and looked ready to lob it right at Puck’s head. “Mother’s milk. Is that you, Arcadie?”

“It is, Mistress Dawkins, it most certainly is.” They took off their hat and pressed it to their chest before dipping into a bow. “How are we this morning?”

“Might be better if you explained to me why you’re guiding that through our hamlet.”

Puck tensed. He’d never been referred to as a that before. In an attempt to be friendly, he waved at the woman—which only seemed to piss her off more.

“Giselle Dawkins,” Arcadie muttered under their breath.

“She’s … well, she was on her way to becoming an attorney in Avondale when she got married and her husband refused to let her practice.

Had him killed and decided to retire here rather than fight against pinheads in the courts, she said.

” They grinned up at her. “Didn’t Lady Florence speak to any of you? ”

“About the redheaded wee one she brought through a few days ago? Sure. Said her people would be coming for her in a bit, and we were to be civil.”

Arcadie looked at Puck, and because he didn’t know what else to do, he raised his left hand and wiggled his fingers in a not-entirely-sarcastic wave. “I’m her people.” He nodded over at Pru. “And her, though she’s mostly here for shelter from a maniac.”

“I’m also a Hell Witch who’s killed a duke and a Zeraph, so …” Pru eyed the rock, then slowly stepped in front of Puck. “Maybe put that down.”

Puck breathed easier as the woman set the stone down on the windowsill. “You come to join the Ladies?” Giselle asked.

“Maybe,” Pru shouted up at her. “Like to meet them first.”

Giselle cocked her head to one side as though confused. “Well, that’s going to be a bit difficult. Most of them left this morning.”

A stone hardened in Puck’s stomach. Arcadie perked up, obviously nervous. “What’s that?”

“There’s only a few Ladies up at the manor. Hetty, Shea, and some of the others took the young ones to the temple in preparation for the Blood Moon. They won’t be back till the end of the week.”

“Did they treat the redheaded girl before they left?” Puck’s pulse quickened, his wound throbbing in time with his heartbeat.

“How the hell would I know?”

The panic he’d been bottling for days blew wide open, coursing through his veins like a toxin.

The world shrank in around him, transforming Pru and Arcadie into simple blurs of color.

Bea became the focal point of his mind: her clammy hands as he’d raced to Mari’s house, how she’d quaked in his arms as the seizures took over, how he’d truly believed he wouldn’t be able to save her.

If the Hell Witches had refused to heal her … if everything Florence had told them was a lie …

You’ll what?

What terrified him most wasn’t the voice itself but its tone. It wasn’t judgmental; it was encouraging, like it wanted him to choose violence before he knew whether it was necessary or not.

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous,” he muttered to himself.

Pru frowned at him. “Who, me?”

“No. Sorry, don’t know what that was.” He gritted his teeth, forcing the panic—and the rage that came with it—back into its usual prison. “Come on.”

His boots beat against the packed earth of the path, and while every step sent a jab of pain shooting through the stab wound, he ignored it. He couldn’t do a leisurely, lumbering pace anymore. He needed Bea. Now.

He wasn’t aware how fast he was moving until Pru told him to slow down.

“You tear that wound open, you’ll only have yourself to blame,” she said.

“What if she’s not up there? What if she’s still sick ’cause they decided she wasn’t worth saving?”

“Since when do you jump to the worst possible conclusion?”

“Since you lot decided to ship my kid off without permission!” His words echoed down the mountainside, and he stopped dead in his tracks and hung his head. “Sorry. I’m just—”

Her hand was gentle as she placed it on his good shoulder. “Look …” She nodded toward a bend in the path, the final bend before the peak. “We’re here.”

And suddenly, after days of running and flying, of sailing and stabbing, of fighting and pleading, there it was.

With its stormquartz facade and its rounded turrets framing two giant wooden doors, Stormlash certainly looked like a castle.

The turret towers out front were crowned with malevolent iron spires that spun up into the blue.

An unkindness of ravens circled overhead, their croaks and caws riding the wind.

Puck tried not to think of how many times the Apostles told him and the other boys in the workhouse that black birds were harbingers of doom.

He’d never been a true believer in the Lightbringer or the Faith—but indoctrination was tough to shake even for the most rebellious minds.

“Magnificent, isn’t she?” Arcadie asked as they came up behind Pru and Puck. “Every time I see her, she takes my breath away.”

“Definitely imposing.” Pru squinted up at the windows. “How many rooms does it have?”

“Oh, she’s much larger than any of the estates in the major cities. She used to be a palace. One of the princes during Galahad’s reign lived here. Not one who would inherit the throne—probably a second or third son, someone they wanted to tuck away and hide.”

Puck wasn’t concerned about the history of the place or how many bedrooms he could claim as his own. His only concern was the stone wall that looked incredibly hard to scale and the wrought iron gate locking them out. “How do we get inside?”

Arcadie smiled as they approached the gate. “You just have to know where to look .”

Then, like they’d done back at the hotel, they stuck their hand against one of the stones in the wall, splayed their fingers wide, and pressed their fingertips into nearly invisible divots Puck would’ve missed completely.

The gate’s lock came free. Arcadie pushed open the doors, ushering them onto the manor’s grounds.

Puck appreciated them for their simplicity.

Where so many Silks went all fancy with their ornate, meticulously pruned gardens, this was basically a swath of green.

Small copses of trees ran along the eastern wall, perfect for lounging beneath during the summer months.

To the right of the pebbled path, a huge root vegetable garden stretched out before them, lush carrot fronds and potato flowers all sprouting up in neat little rows.

Self-sufficient, then. For a brief moment, the pain and exhaustion took over his mind, preventing him from thinking of anything outside of what was directly in front of him.

But then, as he glanced upward, something moved in one of the windows, and he remembered Bea was minutes, maybe even seconds, from his reach.

He lunged forward before Pru caught his hand.

“They don’t like to be rushed, remember?” She squeezed once, reassuring him that they were close. He was close. “Let’s greet them together, yeah?”

Sweating through his shirt, nerves thrumming with impatience, he nodded once. Then, all too aware he did not belong here, he let her take the lead.