Page 62 of The Moorwitch

So we sit side by side, my shawl wrapped around us both, with the great, charred moor before us.

“Sylvie?” he asks.

“She’s at the house. She’s fine.”

He nods, starts to speak again, then closes his mouth. His eyes are dazed with exhaustion, pain, or both.

“So,” I begin, as the tension between us finally becomes too much to withstand. “You’re a Weaver.”

The corners of his mouth pinch downward. His fingers tense, as if he wants to curl them into fists but is stopped by the pain. “Swear you will say nothing of this to Sylvie. Tell her you put out the fire yourself.”

I watch him sidelong, half angry with him for keeping such a secret while denying Sylvie her own magic. Half pitying him, because he looks like a man whose soul is in ruins, as if the ability to channel were a disease eating away at his heart.

That doesn’t stop me from wanting to take him by the ear and shake answers out of him.

“I don’t know much,” he says. “Only a handful of spells, really. ’Tis not as though I went to a school as you did. Everything I know, my father taught me, at least until ...”

“Magic took him from you?”

“Magic has takeneverythingfrom me,” he snarls. He nearly clenches his hand again, but with a grimace of pain forces his fingers to open. Captain whines beside him and puts his head on Conrad’s leg.

“Your mother?”

He nods. “I told you. ’Tis a curse in our blood.”

I turn to the scorched land and scan the night; the moon, though unseen, casts the smoke-filled sky in a surreal shade of lavender. All around, the hills roll dark and endless.

“What started the fire?” I ask, drawing thread from my sleeve and winding it idly around my finger. “You and I both know that was no natural blaze.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he replies too quickly, too casually. “We often burn the moors to clear the old, dead brush and make way for new crops.”

Is he seriously trying to deny what just happened? “Conrad, that wasmagic. I saw shapes in the flames that—”

“I don’t know what anyone could see through all that smoke. It was just fire, nothing more.”

My lips tighten, clamping down on the outburst simmering behind my teeth.Why are you lying, Conrad North?Controlled burns? In the middle of the night? I may not know much about country life, but I am not an idiot. I also notice he makes no mention of the supposed “missing sheep.”

My fingers begin to dance, tapping restlessly, drumming my kneecaps. I feel as if Conrad’s wind-wolves are trapped in my chest, howling into my veins.

Does he think me an idiot, to believe that fire was natural? I don’t look at him, but stare straight ahead, my face stone, my heart throwing itself against my ribs.

Dread and suspicion blacken my thoughts. I feel I will fly apart. I want to rattle the truth from him. But I cannot, not if there is any chance he is what my instincts are telling me he is.

So I look at him and smile, and let him see me accept his lie.

“Your secret is safe with me,” I say.

He glances sharply at me. “What, just like that?”

“Did you want to argue about it? I told you, I will say nothing to Sylvie.”

“Why not? Why aren’t you berating me with questions? Where is your infernal nosiness now?”

I shrug. “If I asked those questions, would you answer them?”

He looks away, the muscles in his neck flexing.

“I thought not,” I sigh. “I’m tired, Conrad. I don’t have the energy to drag answers out of you. I want to go wash my face and get in my bed.”