Page 7 of Song of the Hell Witch

Four

Most of Prudence and Frederick’s guests trickled out before midnight.

There was some trouble with Fortuna and Jonathan Braithwaite’s carriage.

Prudence had her suspicions about what had happened to it, but she didn’t need Frederick sending out the Watch to hunt Puck down.

The night had already been eventful enough.

“The horses probably got spooked by the thunder, that’s all. Catch a ride with Lord and Lady Beverly; you’ll be able to walk in the morning.” She said it so confidently not even Fortuna thought to question her.

The rain began as the last guests departed, first as a mist, then as a deluge.

Joy swelled in her chest, and she unleashed a laugh that probably scared more than a few of her husband’s friends.

While the stragglers sprinted to their carriages, terrified of ruining their fine coats and gowns, Prudence lifted her skirts and dashed up the estate’s front steps.

“Madame.” Bonnie, one of the more opinionated maidservants, approached her as she reached the staircase. “I know you said we could talk more about those donations to the suffragettes after the ball was done. Would you have time in the—”

“Later, Bonnie, I promise!” she shouted, her hand gliding along the alabaster banister as she ran up the steps.

She meant it, of course. She just couldn’t stand the thought of another intellectual conversation right this second, especially one as important as women’s suffrage.

She needed a clear mind, one ready to plot.

Once she reached the third floor, she cut left, hurrying past the first set of windows until she reached the master bedroom, the doors still framed in the gaudy, shimmering gold Frederick’s mother had adored. She burst into the room and headed straight for the balcony.

Throwing open the doors, she stepped out onto the slick marble, forgetting the silk of her emerald dress and how the water would ruin it.

There would be more silk dresses; the first autumn rainstorm came only once a year.

Throwing her arms out, she peered up at the sky and opened her mouth.

The water tasted of salt and smoke. She imagined the raindrops as diamonds on her tongue, and she wanted to collect them all, swallow autumn down and hold it inside her.

It was a tradition she’d kept from her old life, born from her mother’s upbringing as a Leoran vagabond.

Before their culture was destroyed by the Apostles, bands of women traveled across the green hills of Leora, worshipping the Dark Mother in secret.

Like the Druids who came before them, they celebrated every natural transition, be it a full moon, the first seasonal rainstorm, an equinox or a solstice.

Vagabonds and Druids viewed every shift in the seasons, every month as a gift given to them by the Mother.

Prudence was too young to understand it all when her mother was alive to teach her.

The stories had been enchanting, the dances in the rain invigorating.

But the night Puck found her, shivering and soaked and completely transformed, it had all made sense. Transitions were never guaranteed. When they came, a person was usually someone else entirely between one cycle and the next.

Ever since she’d become a Hell Witch, Prudence saw rain as a symbol of change and renewal.

And the first rainstorm always felt like a promise: This season could be better than the last, so long as she kept pushing to be better herself.

She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, how long it took for Frederick to come in.

He was grumbling about all the things Paris had said, and he mentioned something about Hale and the general population, how they were blind if they couldn’t see how much Hale wanted to control them.

But Prudence was barely listening. She reveled in the rain—and then, behind her eyelids, she saw Puck’s face again, the repulsion etched across his brow, threaded through his voice.

Peace slid away from her, pooling at her feet. She was almost grateful as Frederick’s hands slid onto her hips, as he pulled her against him. “Do you want to talk about what happened with that thief?”

She shook her head, grateful he couldn’t read the lie on her face.

“It was nothing. He just brought up some nasty rumors. Between that and all the demands, I finally lost my temper. Figured it was better to take it out on him than people who”—her throat clenched, like her body was trying to hold the word back—“ matter .”

“Mmm. Now that I understand.” His breath was warm against the side of her neck, a contrast to the rivulets trickling into the hollows of her collarbones. Despite her disgust with herself, she shuddered. “Are you still riled up?”

She considered stepping out of his reach, curling into a ball on the bed so he couldn’t touch her.

But the anger had been roiling inside her all night, from the time Fortuna Braithwaite brought forth her ridiculous accusation about Madame DuFresne to the moment Hornsby threw Paris out of the ballroom.

It stirred again, then slowly shifted, transforming into something else—something wilder, hungrier.

She decided that as long as she was in control, this— he —might be exactly what she needed to come down from the evening.

“I think I am,” she breathed as his tongue teased the soft spot under her jaw, her weakness.

His beard tickled her skin, a small, pleasurable pain.

Heat blossomed between her legs. It was less about being with him .

In the year since they’d started their courtship, she’d managed to find a certain fondness for him, an appreciation for the way he said certain words, how he looked when he was first shaking off sleep.

But she wouldn’t call what she felt for him love . Not yet, anyway.

In this moment, it was more about the pleasure he could give her. The pleasure she could take .

She spun away from him, twirling into the center of the room.

The burgundy wallpaper danced around her, the lamplight catching on the gold-foiled bouquets.

It was the first request she’d made as the lady of the house.

Frederick’s mother had adored pastels, and when he returned from the war to find her dead, Frederick had all but made the master suite a shrine to her memory.

It took some serious convincing, but eventually Prudence got him to give her what she wanted.

Frederick reached for her, the amber igniting in the silt of his irises. “Your mind is elsewhere.”

“No.” She lifted her chin, rising up on her toes. Always make yourself bigger than you are. That had been one of Puck’s rules for facing down enemies and winning people over. “I just want you.”

Frederick fit his palms against her face. The heady scent of his cologne, all musk and cloves, was dizzying. “Say it again.”

“I want you.”

He drew her up into the kiss, and she closed her eyes and let her desire take over. Pushing up onto her toes once more, she wrapped her arms around his neck. He fumbled with the buttons at the back of her dress while she untangled his cravat, made quick work of his shirt.

“Why in the Lightbringer’s name do we insist on so many damn buttons?” he muttered.

“Think that’s it right there.” Her ribs sighed as the boning in her corset let go, and she laughed at the sudden comfort, the freedom. “The blasted Lightbringer.”

“Oh Mistress Talonsbury.” He pushed back so she could see the expression on his face, lips puffed out, eyebrows cross as he played the Apostle, and she had to admit that occasionally he made her laugh, which was more than most Leoran women could say about their husbands. “That is blasphemy.”

The dress came loose. She stepped out of the gown, out of the crinoline, until there was nothing but petticoats, knickers, and a chemise left. “Oh, but didn’t you know? We Hell Witches, we’re all heathens.”

He moved slowly, kissing the top of her breasts, his tongue gliding down to circle her nipple. The Vultress, how she thought of the monstrous parts of herself, came alive inside her as he followed the vein in her neck back up, pressing his lips to her ear. “You know what I want.”

His fingers marched up her spine, gentle, and the instinct, crushed all night, pressed against her edges, begging please .

She loved it, hated it, but more than that, she couldn’t deny it.

Since the wings had first burst out of her back when she was eight years old, she’d never learned how, too busy trying to survive in a world that didn’t want her.

There were certain parts she’d learned to lock away, more to avoid the pain than anything else. Like the beak. The beak she rarely released.

But her wings, carefully folded up inside her, fluttered awake, and like a ripe starpeach desperate to be eaten, her skin split. They erupted out of her back, as wide as Frederick was tall, the silver-and-gray feathers sighing in the open air.

The first few transformations had been agony, like two blades trying to carve her tiny eight-year-old body in half. But after twenty years, it felt more like exhaling a hitched breath, a relief rather than a torture.

The talons came next, sliding over her fingernails, the shredding claws of a bird of prey.

She was careful as she guided Frederick down onto the bed.

He enjoyed it when she left little puncture marks, gentle scratches that marred his chest, his back, but one wrong move and she would tear him open.

She moved slowly, careful not to get too caught up.

Part of her had to stay present. Just in case.

He marveled at her, teasing his fingers through the feathers. They shuddered on their own, a reflex.

“Press them against my cheek,” he asked, and she obeyed. He sighed in ecstasy, like the feathers had their own power, offered a different kind of pleasure. When he met her gaze again, his mouth hung open. “You’re a wonder.”

“Now who’s being blasphemous?”