The restof the journey passes under me in shades of green and brown. Forest, ridge, the long meadows of the eastern buffer. Lucas’s pace evens out with my weight on him. He’s being careful. I drift somewhere between sleep and waking, my arms snug against his shoulders.
The sun is dropping behind the trees when I feel him slow down.
The village sits in the hollow below us, a thin line of smoke from the smithy chimney bending east. The others shift behindthe cover of an outbuilding and change into the clothes in the backpacks tied to their legs.
Lucas runs his eyes over me. “How’re you feeling?”
“I’m fine now,” I assure him, but he doesn’t seem entirely convinced.
“Let’s go.” Darius is already walking.
The high street is narrow, the last of the market stalls coming down for the evening. I walk at Lucas’s left shoulder. The man unloading crates outside the cobbler’s pauses with a wooden box halfway to the door, watches me for too long. Two younger men leaning against the tavern wall turn their heads as Violet and I pass.
We don’t look at them.
Lucas’s hand moves from his side to the small of my back. He spreads his fingers possessively against my spine, the gesture clear. The second man at the tavern wall lifts his eyes once to Lucas’s face and promptly finds something interesting to look at on the cobblestones.
I don’t say anything. I know exactly what Lucas is doing, and I let him.
Hennessy meets us at the edge of the high street and pulls Lucas aside while the rest of us wait by the apothecary. His voice is low and quick. Lucas nods twice, and when he comes back, his expression is focused.
“Her name is Fiona,” he tells us. “Hennessy’s been watching her for a day.”
“And?” Lillian asks.
“He thinks she’s a witch.”
I look at Lillian, who is saying, “Let’s talk to her.”
The apothecary is closing for the day when we walk in. The woman who must be Fiona looks up from the counter, a cloth in one hand and a glass jar in the other. The look on her face reveals several things at once when she registers the size of the groupfilling her shop. Wariness. Confusion. Some private calculation she does in her head.
“We’re closed,” she says cautiously.
“Five minutes,” Lucas says. “If you want us out after that, we’ll go.”
She sets the jar down. Her eyes move across us. Lillian. Me. Lucas near the door with Darius behind him. Violet at the window. Hennessy, who has already broken the ice by buying things from her for the past day, gives her a small nod from where he’s leaning against the herb cabinet.
“Five minutes,” she agrees.
She walks to the door, turns the sign, and slides the bolt home.
She looks to be in her late twenties, with dark hair and the careful self-containment of a woman who learned young to keep her own counsel. She comes back to the counter, folds her arms on the wood, and waits.
Lillian and I move closer. Lucas and Darius stay by the door; a delegation of alphas crowding her would shut her down before we got a single word out of her. The women will do this.
The shop smells of dried lavender and something sharper—peppermint maybe, or wormwood. I can see bundles of herbs hanging from the rafters in the back room. The shelves behind the counter are lined with small, dark bottles, each one labeled in a careful, slanted hand.
Lillian steps up to the counter. “Are you a witch, Fiona?”
Fiona scoffs. “Witches are from stories you tell children at bedtime.” Her chin lifts, and she holds it steady. “This is a village of farmers. What sort of question is that to walk into a shop with?”
Lillian doesn’t argue. She simply lifts her hand toward an unlit candle on a display table.
The wick catches fire.
Fiona stops scoffing. Her arms drop from the counter as she stands up straight. She looks at the candle, then at Lillian’s hand, then back at Lillian.
The shop has gone very still.
