Maybeyoushould inherit the coven from Mother; you’re clearly her favourite.
Your spells are slapdash and hollow and if you need to mutter nursery rhymes to cast them, then really what is the point of having a talent at all?
The summer came again and the girl was often out of the tent, exploring the forest at odd hours; listless, lonely. She found, by mistake, Opal and the boy in the lilypond.Theirlilypond. They were entangled in each other, moaning, and the girl froze as she spotted them, Opal’s dress soaked through. Opal saw her. The boy did not. Opal looked into the girl’s eyes and she tipped her chin and smiled and kept on at it, writhing against him. For the first time, the girl saw the truth of Opal’s cruelty.
That was the smile of a person whoknew.
The girl flew from them, realising in one terrible swoop that since the age of eleven, she had belonged to Opal, but Opal had never belonged to her.
For the first time, she felt rage.
She went to Mistress Moira.
She told a lie.
And the moment she did it, she knew she had committed a crime unforgivable, but Moira had taken a portal straight away and the girl knew her mistake could not be undone. What had she wanted? A child’s reprimand for Opal’s abandonment of her? She did not know how far it would be taken, could not believe the violence that followed.
Opal wants to leave the coven.
She’s going to take a boat to Arranfol.
She plans to marry him and, once she does, she won’t come back.
Lies, all of it.
She had to find Cate. If the girl did not admit to the deception, Opal and Lio would be strung up like rabbits. Instead, it would be her. How could she have flown into such a passionate rage? Once again, she was a little girl holding a knife in the moonlight. Another home ruined by her hand.
The girl wandered much of the forest but could not find the coven leaders. Not Cate, nor Moira, nor Agytha. She came unto her tent; Opal was not there. She came to the boy’s, and there were the two of them, asleep in his bed. The bread knife was next to Opal. She had borrowed it, as she often did, to skin rabbits.
Opal,the girl had whispered.Wake up. I’ve done something terrible.
The boy had been the one to wake. He hissed for her to be quiet. He pulled the quilt over his sleeping love and stumbled out of the tent, dragging the girl with him.Whatever is the matter?
I told a lie,the girl said at once.You have to go. You have to hide.
And that was when the guillotine fell.
For Catherine Weyer stepped out of her portal and into the tent.
I Saw you! I Saw the knife. Saw it wet with blood. I know that she will die at your hand. How dare you take my child from me!
The girl seized the arm of the boy, and she sent him through a portal.Do not come back. She won’t let you live. She did not know where she sent him. The boy was gone, but Catherine Weyer,frenzied, threads falling from her pockets, did not notice, did not hear the pop of magic. She saw only the body beneath the covers, dark hair, breathing peacefully.
I’ve Seen what you will do to her!
The witch seized the bread knife from the floor where Opal had left it and brought it down, and in her shock and fury and rage, the witch stabbed the wrong body.
The girl screamed. She watched as Cate seized her daughter, rolled her.His tent. We’re in his tent. Where is he? The knife – I Saw this knife. In my threads. The blood – oh, it’s me? Am I the one . . .? My daughter – you cannot die. It was meant to be him . . . I meant to spare you from him . . .Cate crazed, babbling, turned and saw the girl.You. You warned Moira. You warned Moira, and then I had the vision and – why are you here? D-did you do this? Where is he – why – oh—
Opal wheezed, her eyes wide with the same terror as the rabbits’. Blood soaked the linen. Opal’s breathing stopped; her mother, clutching the punctured body, began to scream.
The girl flew.
She sprinted, barefoot, through the camp and out into the open forest. The sharp edges of twigs cut her feet. She knew only the rhythmic thudding of her thighs as she ran to the lilypond. Her own breathing clotted, sucked between sobs. She halted in the water, toes in the mud, and for a second considered drowning herself in it.
The girl saw the gleam of her worn reflection in that cold darkness. Warped slightly by the water, she saw her horrified features. How empty she looked; how broken and hollow.
She did not deserve the mercy of death.
