Page 8 of Song of the Hell Witch

“May I burn on the Lightbringer’s pyre for all eternity.”

She smiled as she straddled him, and he winced.

During one of the battles in Zafiro Bay, an explosion had sent his hip joint out of socket, and the wound had never quite healed right.

She slowed down, easing him into it nice and steady, and for the first time all day, she believed she’d made the right decision, marrying him.

Maybe she didn’t love him the way romantic heroines loved romantic heroes, but he was kind enough, and he would make sure she wanted for nothing.

She would never have to sleep on a cold floor or steal a single trinket ever again.

Yes, he was dull, but he was safe. He was warm. And that was all she’d ever needed.

His palms traced a careful path from the dimples in her lower back up and up until he found the bottom of each shoulder blade.

A pleasurable pain, like scratching an itch, prickled where skin met wing, and she leaned into it as she melted against him, fed it as she kissed him, as his fingers danced in the warmth between her legs, as she took him inside her and their bodies fell into a comfortable, predictable rhythm.

After, naked and sweating, they curled against each other, and she drifted inside the temporary freedom. Hideous as she found the wings, they were a part of her. Hiding them made them feel like something she should hate about herself. Here, in this place, she didn’t have to. She could simply be.

She cursed the servants who would come with the dawn to poke and prod and dress them. They were the only reason she had to change back.

“We should get ready for bed.” She nestled deeper into the crook of his arm, twirling her fingers—once again capped by human nails nibbled to nubs—through the tuft of hair on his chest. She drew the wings back through the slits in her skin, folded them up and tucked them in beside her spine.

They fought her more than once, as if to say How dare you.

But there was no other choice. Hiding was part of life as a Hell Witch in Leora. The most important part.

“Forget duchess.” Frederick kissed her forehead, held her closer. “You, Prudence Merriweather, are a goddess.”

If she’d been a normal woman, nestled in her bed, she would have slept straight through the sound.

She’d have taken a dagger to the gut and that would have been that.

But her power was tied to the vibrations around her in ways she still didn’t understand, and so the subtle shift in the air dragged her out of sleep.

The rustling of fabric. Footsteps padding along the bedroom floor.

And then the sound that set her heart racing: metal singing against leather, a knife pulled from a scabbard.

Her eyes, filmed with sleep, snapped open, and panic threw everything into sharp focus.

Moonlight glinted on the tip of the assassin’s blade as they stood beside her bed, the hood of their black cloak shielding their face.

They lunged before she could move.

There wasn’t time to think. To scream. To remember where she was or that Frederick slept beside her. There was merely the beat pounding in her skull, the rhythm that had kept her alive all these years: Survive, survive, survive.

It was as natural as breathing. Her satin nightgown shredded as the wings broke free, followed by the talons and the sharp, hooked beak. Her thoughts were a feral rush fed by a single desire: Kill.

Snarling, she leapt at her attacker. He slashed at her with the knife, missing her torso by inches.

Furious, she beat her wings, lifting herself off the floor.

The air whipped around her, knocking the jewelry stand off the dresser and thrusting the balcony doors open.

Perhaps, if she was entirely herself, she would have considered the servants in the rooms below, no doubt startled by the noise.

But human concerns lay coiled in a dark corner of her mind she couldn’t reach; in this moment, she was the Vultress, fighting for her life.

Her attacker retreated to the far corner of the room, face still shrouded in shadow.

“Hell Witch. One of the Dark Mother’s twisted Daughters.

” The voice was deep but thin, and if she’d been in her right mind, she might have recognized it, or at least thought to try.

But her world was a pinpoint, the shadow and the blade and the pulse of a single, violent instinct. “Scourge of the earth.”

Scourge. As brainwashed as the Leoran public was by the Apostles and their lies, only zealots referred to Hell Witches as a “scourge” anymore.

After all, the remaining witches had been driven underground, forced into hiding, and most women in Leora complied with the Faith and its calls for obedience in the home.

In her swarm of rage and fear, the realization broke through.

This was one of Hale’s followers. It had to be.

Perhaps Paris or someone in the crowd that night had reported back to the general and he’d ordered the duke and his monstrous wife to be eliminated as threats to his righteous cause.

Or maybe this was someone trying to impress Hale, a nobody who’d heard there was a Hell Witch living in Talonsbury Estate and thought to kill her, then bring her head to his leader in some show of loyalty.

Whatever he was after, the assassin rushed her again, and instinct conquered her senses once more.

The blade arced over her attacker’s head.

Flapping her wings, Prudence charged forward.

Her talons found purchase in his chest. He cried out, and she flung him away from her with everything she had.

His body crashed into the lamp on her nightstand before slamming into the wall.

The stained-glass lampshade shattered on impact, spraying shards of colored glass across the room.

The robed figure fell still, finished for the moment.

A terrible pressure on her arm. Nails digging in. A violent wrenching that told her she was about to take a blade to the back. An accomplice. He has an accomplice.

She whipped around, her hand morphing into a claw meant for rending flesh.

The logical part of her mind woke to gurgling. As the haze cleared and the room came into focus, she saw Frederick’s eyes, bulging in their sockets, glassy in the pale light slicing through the bedroom. Her talons. They were stuck inside something wet and slick.

Her husband’s throat. Her talons had punctured Frederick’s throat.

“Oh.” Take them out. Take them out; you’re hurting him. “Spheres above, no.”

There was nothing else to do, no other choice to make. The talons receded, but the gash remained. Blood gushed from the wound like ink from a snapped fountain pen, and warm, wet spray streaked across her face.

Frederick coughed, spewing blood onto her nightgown.

“No,” she said as his knees collapsed and his weight pulled her down with him. “ No! ”

His mouth opened and closed, and he reached for her face, but his hand trembled, grasping at empty air.

She lurched forward, brought his palm to her cheek.

It was his right hand, the hand that should be inked with a love knot.

He’d said he was going to get one by Apostletide, that he simply wanted the rumors to die down first. And now … now …

“Frederick, look at me. Look at me!” She shook him, trying to force the life back into his body, to make him hold on. But his gaze wandered to the ceiling. He looked surprised, like he couldn’t believe his choices had led him here.

Like he was awed by the fact that monsters killed men.

Monster. Monster. Monster.

The word splintered through her bones, unmaking her.

“No, this isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.

” She closed her eyes, repeating the words out loud, willing them to be true.

Soon, sunlight would break through the bedroom windows, and she’d open her eyes to find herself in bed beside him.

He’d sit up, tell her she was a wonder again.

Her chambermaid Lily would walk through the door with fresh starpeach juice balanced on a white wicker tray, and Frederick would turn to her and say How are you, dearest duchess of mine?

His skin didn’t feel like his skin anymore. The blood stilled beneath it, so it was more like leather pulled over wood. And it was cold.

She recalled Emmaline. “Pru. Pru, it’s cold.

Dying, it’s s-so cold.” Anytime she pictured her older sister, it was always the Emmaline she’d been in those last few days.

Ragged, desperate heaves. Breath reeking of iron.

Specks of blood, like rubies on her lips.

The night she’d died, she felt so much like a baby bird, light and fragile.

As she’d thought of baby birds and what the orphanage would feel like with her sister dead, the wish to fly far, far away from a place that had promised safety and given them illness and death instead had filled her completely.

That was when the humming had started, soft at first and then louder, until it felt like all she’d ever been able to hear.

Now, the same survival instinct purred to life.

The same hum flooded her ears, drowning out the soft groans coming from the assassin crumpled against the bedroom wall.

She waited for the monster to seize hold of her again, but there was only a dry emptiness eating its way through her center.

An emptiness and the old melody drumming survive, survive, survive .

She pressed her lips to Frederick’s forehead for what she knew would be the last time. Her tears glistened like glass beads on his brow.

“Forgive me,” she whispered, forcing herself to her feet.

She scurried over to her bedside table. Her fingers hesitated, but then she pulled the top drawer open and took out the small, worn journal.

The golden card jutted out where she’d pressed it between the pages that day in Belacanto, confident she would never need it.

Grabbing the card, she slammed the drawer shut and moved on.

Next, she darted over to the wardrobe, yanking her traveling cloak off one of the hangers and grabbing a pair of boots from the wardrobe’s pine floor.

With her things in her arms, she padded over to the balcony and scampered out onto the railing.

The rain clouds shrouded the moon, the water blurring her vision.

She almost thanked the Lightbringer for her luck until she remembered the man behind her, his life’s blood spilling onto the floor, and the zealot who’d put him there, still alive, still a threat.

In the distance, past the merchant mansions, Talonsbury shone like a bonfire, alive even in the late hour.

It would be difficult flying in the rain, but she could at least make it to the city.

To the east, the smokestacks were silent.

She’d use them as a beacon. Make it to the Stacks and it was only a few more miles to Sweetbreads and the Podge.

Please, let Puck be willing to help me.

And please, for the love of the Lightbringer, let him be at Standish’s old Curiosity Shop.

Otherwise, she had no clue where to even start looking for him.

You killed him. You killed Frederick. Your killed your husband.

Chest caving in, sick roiling between her lungs, she climbed up onto the balcony railing. Then, spreading her wings, she squinted against the rain and took off into the night.