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“I solemnly vow it.” With her finger, she drew an earnest dash over the bodice of her sage-colored dress, a gesture that meant one was swearing with their whole heart. She’d adorned her ensemble in shimmering beads and forest-green ribbing, a much more formal piece than what she usually wore around the shop. I should have known she was up to something. “I’ll let you move us again, Maven. Just give me this one night. Drink and be silly with me. Gods take you, let me dance a few times with Saul—”

“Seb,” I corrected.

Her shoulders lifted dismissively. “I’ll call him whatever you like.”

“His name will do best, I think.”

“Oh, please!” She squeezed her hands together as though in prayer. “Just come to the festival with me. Please !”

Head back, I huffed at the ceiling. “All right.”

Lisbeth let out a delighted squeal. She skipped to the broom we kept in the corner, and she curtseyed to it with all the dramatics of a skilled performer. Plucking it up into her arms, she danced with it. I hid my grin as I shucked my tall hat, letting it fall on a stack of poetry books in a box on the floor. I’d been meaning to resell them. I missed the old Frian language, the fluid flow written right to left crafted by talented priestesses long ago, a language of scribes made only to be read, not spoken. It broke my heart when it fell out of use. Verse just wasn’t written like it used to be, and I tired of these new books quickly.

“If you break something, you’ll have to clean it up all by yourself,” I warned.

She ignored me, humming an upbeat melody loudly to herself, practicing her steps.

I unlocked the side door that led to our small apartment and pulled my apron off over my head. Our room was small and untidy—fabric patterns and discarded cuts of wool scattered about—but it was home. We tried not to hoard much in case we needed to abandon it all in a hurry.

I couldn’t let us stay long in one city. I did a much better job of avoiding eyes and was more difficult to age at a glance than Lisbeth. On the streets, I was called ma’am more often than I was called miss, but it wasn’t in my sister’s nature to behave the same. Eventually the locals would notice how her youth never faded. The apples of her cheeks would remain ripe always, not at all like a witch from an elemental coven. People would talk. Talk was dangerous.

The gods hated witches like us—witches with a power that could rival their own. I lived in constant crippling fear that if I was less than vigilant even once, a vindictive deity might take notice and send trouble our way. Or an ambitious warlock like the one I had to cut into pieces and hide in the bin before we fled to make a new home in Kosh. If another came sniffing about, that could turn just as deadly, and I’d rather not have to fillet a person. It was very messy work.

My sister insisted the gods didn’t pay any attention to nobodies. They were too distracted by kings and warlords, battles and courts and the like, to harass two shop women only passably good at pretending to be common green witches.

She had a point.

That didn’t stop my stomach from sinking, though. I’d lived long enough to know how evil and unexpected the world could be. What if she was wrong?

“If you’re trying to talk yourself out of going, quit it!” Lisbeth shouted through the door. “We’re doing this! You’ve already agreed, and I’m holding you to it!”

A chortle slipped out of me that I smothered, pressing my lips together.

She knew me too well. And truthfully, the greatest risk to us was staying in Kosh much longer. She was a young witch, enthusiastic but still learning. The more familiar she became with the people here, the more likely it was that she’d have another magical accident and possess someone again. It hadn’t taken her long to regain control of her spirit, but it wasn’t worth the risk. If one night was what she needed to leave the shop and the neighbors she’d grown too attached to, then I could give her that.

“Tell me how beautiful your dress is,” Lisbeth cooed through the crack in the door.

“It’s stunning.” I ran my fingers over the burgundy taffeta draped over my bed.

Lisbeth let out another victorious squeal. Based on the energetic beat of her steps, she’d gone back to dancing. Excitement bubbled up inside me, quieting my worries. We deserved a night like this, a night of foolish fun. Didn’t everyone?

I lowered to my knees and reached under the mattress, pulling out the heavy pack I kept loaded in case of an emergency. We wouldn’t carry bags tonight, as promised, but she’d lost her mind if she thought she could talk me out of going anywhere unarmed.

I tucked an unloaded pocket pistol into the makeshift holster I’d sewn along the fur lining of my right boot. It had been a gift from Lisbeth, a pretty thing with an intricately engraved barrel. Should the need arise, I could kill someone and look fetching while doing it, she’d said.

The tinkle of shattering glass interrupted my reverie.

“Stop dancing out there with the broom like a loon,” I called over my shoulder. “You’ll bring the whole store down!”

Lisbeth gave no response. Another thud and a cascade of breaking glass followed. The bell over the shop entrance chimed sharply.

I shot to my feet. “Lis?”

The silence that answered sent my heart up into my throat. I ran for the door, throwing it open with such force it slapped against the wall and rebounded. Heavy quiet greeted me. The scent of hot bricks hit my nostrils, the smell so thick it gagged me.

“Lisbeth!” I choked. “Lisbeth, say something!”

I rushed to the entrance, my pulse roaring in my ears. The door hung wide open, and the wind beat against the glass. I searched the store front for an intruder or signs of Lisbeth, but the street was empty.

I screamed for my sister. When she didn’t respond, I ran back inside. On the ceiling, a bright red sigil in the shape of a flame burned overhead amongst the tin tiles, the source of the strange heat. It was a garm-summoning symbol, a powerful one that radiated divine energy.

I sprinted around the next shelf, sliding in fallen herbs and spilled oil, and then I froze. My stomach plummeted to my boots.

Lisbeth lay broken on the floor directly beneath the sigil, right where a nightmare-born beast pulled straight from the Otherworld had done their worst. Her big brown eyes stared at nothing, unseeing. Crimson trickled out of her mouth. Her legs bent at the knees at an unnatural angle. One of her slippers was missing.

Her lips were parted, but she hadn’t even been given the chance to call for help, to speak at all.

“We can fix you,” I rasped, falling at her feet, my voice pitching high. “It’s all right, Lisbeth . . . We’ll fix you up . . .”

I scooped her into my arms, and her head lolled.

“Don’t be gone, don’t be gone, don’t be gone,” I chanted. My eyes burned.

Blood caked her hair, mixing with shredded roots and shattered bits of glass. The mess of it dripped between my fingers. I cupped the back of her head, and a sharp bit of bone pricked my palm. A pitiful sound squeaked out of me. I shook her gently, trying to rouse her, frightened down to the bottom of my soul I’d never wake her again. Her light, the brightest, most lovely light, was snuffed out.

My vision flooded.

“Lisbeth!” I shut my eyes, squeezing tears out in hot little streams. “Don’t leave me!”

But she couldn’t really be dead! Any minute now I’d wake up in my bed in a panicked sweat. Lis would be fast asleep, safe and sound. In the morning, I’d yell at her for her terrible dream behavior and for scaring me . . .

But I didn’t suddenly wake up. Lisbeth remained broken before me.

Lifeless. Gone.

A sob shook my shoulders. Clutching her body to me, my fingers caught in a delicate chain. I pulled the amulet she had hidden under her bodice free, and fresh misery streaked down my cheeks and squeezed my lungs. The amulet was an old thing I had given her years ago. Made of copper, an image of a blazing torch decorated its center. I hadn’t realized she still wore it.

Hands tremoring, I removed it from her neck and put it around mine, tucking the amulet beneath my chemise so I could wear it closest to my heart. My chest, right where the cool metal touched, ached. The words to beg Lisbeth to return to me tangled on my tongue, impossible to press out of quaking lips. My nose ran.

Where had the garm who’d hurt her gone? I hoped it came back so I could rip its damned head off.

I lost track of how long I sat there, holding my sister, rocking her lifeless body the same way I used to rock her to sleep after she had bad dreams as a girl. Overhead, the heat began to cool, the sigil fading, its power waning with it. Her body too—it cooled in my arms.

I reached up toward the symbol but not with my hands. Claws made of gray mist burst from my chest. I grabbed the summoning spell with my spirit, trapping it in an ethereal grip. The image vanished from the ceiling as though it had never been there. I reeled the lingering god power to me, hauling the fiery magic into my body, tucking it between my ribs to fuel me.

It hurt a little. It heated my blood and made my skin smoke, but it felt right there.

As careful as though my sister were made of fragile glass, I slid her shattered body off my lap, onto the floor. I crossed her broken arms over her chest. I closed her lifeless eyes. A knot in my throat formed as I kissed her cool forehead one last time, the same way I had all those nights I’d tucked her into the bed right next to mine when she was small. My lips trembled, but I did not cry.

I was finished with tears.

My fingers curled into fists of fury. If the fool god who’d sent a beast to crush my innocent sister thought her powers were threatening, I’d show them real power. If it had been jealousy that had guided their hand, I’d give them a reason to feel envy. Lisbeth had had only a portion of the forbidden energy I possessed. The guilty god would tremble on their knees before I’d finished with them.

I’d been so careful to conceal what I was from the world for years while I’d raised Lisbeth, but I let all of that fall away, every cautiously crafted barrier that kept my powers in check like a stall for a wild stallion. I shed each lock, knocked down every mental door, and my skin steamed in the autumn air. My blood heated. I fed the god-fire in my chest my wrath, and energy sang in my veins, lighting me up from the inside out. I adorned myself in that rage like armor. Here grief and fear couldn’t touch me.

My enemies’ pleas for mercy would be in vain.

They would scream Lisbeth’s name before I ended them.

The whole world would know my pain and would cry out for her as I did.

I would kill the ones at fault slowly, I decided, the thought soothing to my burning soul. The garm who’d done this would die in pieces. I would rip Hel asunder to find them. The gods who’d crafted all of their wretched kind would die for this day, too. They were all guilty. Not even Death, The Old One himself, was safe from me for ferrying my dear sister’s soul to a place I could not go.

I didn’t know who had done this. But if I killed them all, I couldn’t miss.

The entire city of Kosh would burn for Lisbeth. For three years we had worn their clothing and followed their rituals, minded their rules, and all I’d ever asked for in return was that they hid her for me. They had failed her. They had failed me .

I was no fucking harmless green witch descended from an earth coven. I had no coven. I had no one at all now and nothing to lose. I was a witch even the divines feared.

A gray witch.

Spirit magic pumped through me alongside the god-fire fury boiling in my veins, and the new trapped sigil flared in my chest. It turned my belly molten. Its ashy soot gathered in my throat. Beneath me, the pooling blood dried in the heat my rage radiated.

I rose slowly to my feet, and when I took a step forward, one pace closer to glorious retribution, the floorboards cracked beneath me. A splinter shaped like a bolt of lightning appeared between my boots. I reached through it with spirit and wrath and the fire in my chest.

Down and down and down I reached, gray claws of magic coiled with iridescent flame.

I stretched myself past my limits, determined to pierce the Otherworld, to travel farther still, to find Hel at its belly and rip open its icy gates, to punish every beast I found there in an ethereal assault. The god Nott, Lord of Night and Mischief, would die first. His twin who ruled Hel with him, Mara, Lady of Nightmares, would die too for housing the foul garm who lived amongst them. I cared not whether they’d sent the one who’d murdered my sister. They were all to blame now. Every god in every realm that had made us live in fear would pay.

But a shadowy power blocked my way. Death himself had responded to my magical assault on his realm. Still, fear could not touch me. If he would not let me pass through his Otherworld, then he would die now.

I grabbed him up in my magical grip—as much of him as I could gather. He was massive, a never-ending stretch of midnight, but that did not slow me. I would make him smaller. I would tear and tear at him until his divine soul was tiny enough to squash beneath my boot, and then I would consume whatever remained. With his power added to mine, no force in existence would be able to stop me.

Cosmic energy poured out from the rip in the world I had created, an inky darkness dotted in tiny stars. It broke into pieces and swarmed around me like angry black flies. The buzz of it echoed and crackled in my ears. Flames shot from my feet and caught the floorboards.

The shop Lisbeth loved would be her funeral pyre.

Somewhere in the distance, a voice screamed, “Fire! Fire!”

A faraway part of me, a part shrinking by the second, recognized Bram. More shouted voices joined his, calling for buckets and water. That tiny shrinking bit of me worried what would happen to my shop, my home, the people outside, the street children that might be too close, the nearby buildings I would scorch to the ground, my beloved sister’s body . . .

Through the path of my reaching powers, Death grabbed me back, and I fell out of my realm and into his. His ethereal grip was icy and oily and so strong his might was suffocating. The fire in my chest went out with a spark and a sizzle.

I had a moment to ponder the end of my mortality, to wonder if it would be difficult to find my baby sister in the life after.

All at once, everything went dark and cold.