Page 64 of Song of the Hell Witch

She waited until the manor blurred into view. Then, using the pain and the rage to buffer her strength, she flung him away from her.

Of course, she’d forgotten what would happen once his weight was no longer there to tether her.

Her body entered a sort of free fall, the momentum from the spiral flinging her toward the ground.

On instinct, she spread her wings out wide, and the wind caught her just before she hurtled into the ground.

Shouts broke out from below, and she glanced down in time to see a swell of the hamlet women, some armed with shovels and hammers, others with pots and pans, charging the three remaining Zeraphel.

Samuels tried to take flight—and while his movements were stiff and reluctant, Puck tackled him to the ground.

Millie, the manor’s chef, pinned his wings to the earth with a pitchfork, and Mari charged with a dagger she must’ve won off another Zeraph at some point in the scuffle.

Arcadie, brandishing what looked like a rifle, shouted for a group of them to charge another Zeraph, whose torn wing kept him from taking to the skies. He limped toward the garden—and the hotelier rallied the women to chase him.

The Zeraphel are their fight.

Paris is yours.

Swallowing her desire to join her friends, Pru took off for the rooftop.

The second she crested over the ridge, Paris barreled into her. He caught her by the neck and pinned her beneath him, dragging her toward the flames. Her spine scraped against the clay roof tiles, and she tried to kick herself free, but he was too strong.

“I’m supposed to deliver you alive.” His eyes were crazed, the nearby flames burning in the black of his pupils.

“But as long as I leave your pretty face unharmed, I don’t think Hale will mind if I gift him your charred corpse to hang in one of the city squares.

The Duchess of Talonsbury, brought to justice at last. What do you say, Prudence?

Prepared to meet your precious Dark Mother? ”

Survive, survive, survive. The old rhythm drummed to life inside her, and her diminishing power gasped one last time.

She brought her knee up as high as she could, hitting him in the groin. He cried out and doubled over, and she dug her talons into the shingles to slow herself down.

Two of them broke off, and pain branched down her fingers, sharp enough to make her eyes water.

But you’re alive. You’re still—

Before she could sit up, Paris was on top of her.

His white dagger arced over his head, and he drove it into the joint of her right wing and sliced downward.

Fire tore through every nerve in her body.

Her magic sparked and snuffed out, and while she tried to battle him, it was pointless, pointless …

He smiled as he straddled her, the veins in his neck pulling taut. The bowl of hair around his head swooped down in front of his face, the ends as blunt as knives.

“There’s nowhere to go, sister of mine. Nowhere to run. And when my knife pierces your heart, I want you to think of my brother and know you were nothing but his whore. His plaything . A witch who will feel her flesh bubble and melt on the pyre for all—”

It happened so fast, it took Pru’s mind a second to catch up.

There was a blur of black, the sound of bone crunching against bone, and then Paris flew sideways as Puck knocked him onto the side of the roof.

The two of them tumbled along the tiles.

Pru pushed herself up in time to see Puck land a punch to Paris’s face.

But the blow cost him. He screamed and pitched back, grabbing hold of his skull. Pru scrambled toward him. Every muscle ached, and her torn wing punished her, but she kept going, grabbing hold of his hand.

“Puck. Puck! ”

But his jaw was clenched shut, his eyes rolling back in his head. He couldn’t answer her.

Paris’s dry laugh rattled in her bones. “The consequence of disobedience. The longer he refuses to give in to his new nature, the more he will suffer. His mind will melt, his memories will fade.” His eyes met hers.

“And then he’ll forget you and his daughter and become the killing machine we need him to be. ”

“Never.”

“Oh, don’t worry. You won’t be around to see it.”

It killed her to leave Puck’s side. But if she stayed, then Paris would keep the advantage. And she couldn’t let him have it.

She gathered her grief and trauma and anger into her center. Her mother’s suicide. Emmaline’s death. Scrounging for scraps and nearly starving day in and day out as a River Rat in the Podge. The cruel men she’d met in Belacanto. The way Frederick looked at her like some prize he had won.

And Paris. Everything he was. Everything he stood for. Everything he’d done.

Before he could launch his counterattack, she slid down the rooftop, seized his throat in both hands, and threw all of her weight against him. He crashed down onto the tiles, making to push his arms through hers and break free.

And she called on her talons again, forcing them into the sides of his throat.

Immediately, the advantage shifted. His eyes bulged in terror, and she bared down harder. Something crunched under her grip, and when he wheezed, she knew she’d broken the bone in his throat, the one that let him speak so clearly.

“What now, Paris?” She kept her grip, feeling the fight bleed out of him. “What will your general think when he finds out you and all of your men were slaughtered by a bunch of women ?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Puck go still—and the flames, claiming more and more of the manor, ripped toward him. They were feet from the tips of his wings. And he wasn’t moving, as if he were already lost, the way Paris had promised he would be.

Paris struggled beneath her, even as the blood bloomed under her hands, even as the spit gathered at the corners of his mouth. And she couldn’t let him go, could she? If he survived, if he was allowed to crawl back to Hale …

He won’t make it. Not like this.

But Puck will definitely die if you don’t do something.

The tear in her wing felt like an acid burn as she pushed away from Paris and crawled toward Puck. He didn’t wake as she gathered him in her arms, as she kicked both of them up over the roof’s ridge.

He didn’t wake as they rolled toward the ground together.

They fell off the roof, and while she tried to flap her wings, it was useless.

She couldn’t fly. Her one working wing managed to slow their fall just enough to where they didn’t break anything on impact.

At least, she didn’t. Puck took the brunt of the fall—and still he didn’t move.

“No.” She crawled up the length of his body, taking his face in her hands. He looked so peaceful … and so pale. “Don’t leave me here. Don’t you dare leave me here.”

“Pru?” Somewhere in the near distance, Mari called her name. The rustle of feet in the grass told her Mari and the Ladies were making their way out of the garden.

“We won,” Pru told him, pressing her forehead to his. “We won our first battle, you hear me? And we can’t win the rest without—”

She would hear it for the rest of her life.

The rush of wings overhead. The banshee scream that pierced her ears for a fraction of a second, then choked off like it never happened at all.

The rest of the mayhem followed: Mari roaring, Naomi screaming, and then Florence begging her to fall silent as Arcadie and the women of Stormlash dropped to their knees, hands pressed tight to their ears.

Pru lifted her head to the night sky in time to see the figure silhouetted against the moon—a winged beast cradling a child in his arms.

“ Beatrice! ” Pru sprang to her feet and sprinted across the lawn, flapping her wings, begging them Please, please, just one more. Give me one more fight tonight.

But the pain in her injured wing was too much.

She barely made it two feet off the ground before it gave out, and she fell back to the earth, rolling across the grass, peeling the skin off her arms as she went.

When she managed to push herself off the ground again, she saw that she was a few inches from the cliffside, the waves dashing against the rocks below.

And Paris and Beatrice were a mere speck in the distance, completely out of reach.

For a long time, she lay in the grass, letting her mind go blank as the cold settled on her skin. She couldn’t bring herself to return to the garden. She didn’t know what she’d find.

Or she did. A dead Puck. An alive Puck. Either way, the man she loved.

The man I failed.

A hand, wet with something that had to be blood, settled between her shoulder blades. Pru jumped and rolled onto her back, fists bared to the sky. More pain flared through her shredded wing.

Mari stood over her, tears streaking down her brown cheeks. She reached out her hand, and Pru watched it tremble.

“Come on.” She’d never heard someone sound so broken. “We can’t stay here.”