Page 119 of A Time of Witches

Her strength had been whittled away for far too long, leaving her a shell of who she’d once been.

She was alone with him, vulnerable.

Afraid.

And he knew it.

He sucked air between his teeth as his eyes devoured her. “Prison has not been kind to you.”

“It is disagreeable.” She kept her gaze locked on his, refusing to break contact, playing the only card she had. “As are the circumstances that have placed me here. All falsehoods as you are aware.”

He lifted a brow. “Am I?”

She didn’t deign to reply.

“You could have avoided this.” His head tilted to the side in a condescending show of disappointment.

“I prefer this prison to the one with you.”

The back of his hand replied for him, connecting with her jaw like a brick. Her head snapped hard to the right and the world spun for moment, knocked off its axis.

Before she could recover, his hand curled around her throat, cutting off her air.

“I could do anything I want right now.” His teeth were yellow this close, his breath fetid, noxious against the dizzying scent of ambergris and musk and nightmares.

He was not wrong. Even if she cried out, no one would come to her aid.

She was entirely at his mercy.

Panic fluttered in the back of her mind, at her inability to draw breath, and her vision began to darken. Eyes gleaming with malice, he lifted her by the neck, so her toes swirled and kicked in the air for purchase.

All at once, the pressure at her throat loosened and she dropped to the ground. Her bony limbs landed hard, but the gift of air was greater than the pain in her body and she sucked at the air in great, heaving gasps.

He withdrew a rope from his belt as he stood over her. “Give me your hands.”

Before she could lift them, he yanked her right wrist, which he bound with the coarse rope. This was followed by the left.

From his pocket, he withdrew a metal key.

Her breath froze as she realized what he planned to do.

Not just her breath, but her heart, even the very blood in her veins—all went still, afraid to disrupt this impending miracle.

He knelt and inserted the key into the lock at her ankle where the shackles left the skin chaffed and mottled with bruises. The iron clattered to the ground, the air kissing her tortured flesh. As he unlocked the second, his lip curled in disgust. “You aren’t worth the loss of these shackles when you burn.”

The iron fell away from her skin.

The power of the earth that had been suffocated into silence at the first touch of the shackles now rushed into her like the crescendo of an orchestra. Humming and singing and throbbing and pulsing and vibrating through every part of her being. A reminder of all the strength she once had and never thought again to possess.

For all the times she’d been deprived of food and water, never had she been more ravenous with need as she had been for this.

For the beauty of the earth pouring into her, fortifying her with the strength of centuries of women.

Her skin glowed to her own eyes, shimmering with the force of the energy charging through her.

She did not know how long she would have this power. Mayhap a minute. Mayhap until the flames consumed her.

Her death would be easier to bear with the earth to guide her from agony to a place of eternal rest. But she could not waste this one opportunity. She had to try to save as many as she could.