Page 36 of A Time of Witches

Essie: Oooooooh—a Mr. Darcy type?

Lilith: Just because I’m in England doesn’t mean there’s a Mr. Darcy waiting to sweep me off my feet.

Essie: But you’re SO Elizabeth Bennet!

Lilith: You read way too many romances.

Essie: You sell them to me.

Lilith: Fair enough, but I’m only appealing to your romantic sensibilities.

Essie: Which is why you’re totally going to end up together.

Lilith shook her head, smiling at Essie’s eternal romantic optimism for her future.

Essie: Gotta get Amara from daycare. Keep me posted on Mr. Darcy. 🤍

Still smiling, Lilith set aside her phone and shoveled a very unladylike forkful of lasagna into her mouth, grateful she wasn’t eating in front of Asher after all. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was.

But even as she dug into the cheesy, savory goodness of homemade lasagna, she couldn’t help but think of Asher. Not how very Mr. Darcy–like he was, but how he’d followed her so closely when they were at the manor, how he’d avoided her questions.

How he didn’t want her going to the manor without him.

Like maybe there was something hidden.

Something he didn’t want her to discover.

Chapter Seventeen

Sybil

Sybil was marched down the streets of Bury St. Edmunds as Edith had been. Mud streaked her ruined silk gown, one sleeve torn where she’d been roughly grabbed and thrown to the ground.

They spat in her face and hurled accusations, citing her as the source of all their pain. She stirred the civil unrest that led the country to war. She summoned the pestilence and robbed Bury St. Edmunds of so many lives. She killed the babes who had not been born strong enough to endure this life.

These men and women whose children she had helped through fevers and whose agues she’d soothed with salves and poultices, they called her Jezebel, a liar, a murderer. A witch.

She did not care what they called her. The only power they had was in their cruelty. She cared for nothing so long as they did not mention Jacinda.

Beleaguered, wet with filth, and thoroughly abused, Sybil staggered toward the old jail.

The exterior of the centuries-old building rose before her, crumbling and chipped, a place meant to be uninviting. A damp chill greeted her inside as she was led down a set of pitted stone stairs, worn smooth with a dip in each center.

Darkness pressed in as she descended into the depths of the prison. Her pulse quickened with the realization—they meant to keep her there. To try her. To kill her.

To burn her alive at the stake.

And who would protect Jacinda if Sybil was dead?

Sybil found strength in her connection to the earth, the ever-present hum and the beauty of nature around her. But the silence of the iron manacles was deafening. She was alone and would need to lean into her own strength.

A wall of odors hit her. Unwashed bodies, damp hay, refuse, all catching in the back of her throat.

Her heart pattered around in her ribcage like a frantic moth.

Great cages lined either side of the large room, like massive pens for holding chickens at market. But instead of hens, scores of people were locked within. Mostly women, with one cell containing a few men.

Narrow rectangles were cut into the stone near the top of the wall—too high to reach, and too small to climb through. But enough to allow a weak stream of sunlight to filter in, revealing the turn of curious faces in her direction, eyes wide and haunted.