Page 27

At the mention of my grandmother’s name, my eyes went unhelpfully glassy.

“Don’t blame yer mother for goin’ rogue. I woulda too.”

Word had traveled quick. And I knew that if he was the kind of man to side with my mother, then these weren’t my kind of people.

“Bold of her to break with the Blood Treaty,” he said. “At least, that’s the story we heard.”

Silence fell.

My heart pounded in my ears.

If Lou wanted me to recount the truth, he would be waiting for a long time. I wasn’t going to tell him about how I’d felt the cord holding my family to the Blood Treaty snap. I wasn’t going to tell him about the aftermath. Of how I cried until I was sick. Of how I stripped naked in the freezing cold so I could wash the blood out of my dress.

He didn’t want to know the real truth—that my coven hadn’t gone rogue. It had been my mother. And with my grandmother’s ghost begging me to do the right thing, I made a choice. One I believed would follow me into the afterlife.

“I bet ole Prince Bastien called what he did justice. Didn’t he?”

A sick feeling rose in my stomach when I nodded.

The silver-haired man pushed up the sleeves of his black robe. “My sister’s coven petitioned the High Prince three times about attacks on their households. Witches of the Light raiding relics,” he said. His voice was calm, which made the bitterness beneath it more frightening. “The fourth letter they sent listed the dead.”

“And did a prince come to defend your family?” Lou asked him.

The man’s expression darkened. “No.”

Hartley shifted his weight and readjusted his hold on his crutch. He looked twice as uncomfortable with all this as I was, and he was wearing one of their medallions.

A scream sounded from somewhere below the old floorboards, and I straightened. The Drowned Goose was more than just a gambling den or even a gathering place for Dark Witches engaged in demonic trade, and I needed to get out of here as quickly as possible.

Lou scratched at his beard. He didn’t look ready to release me anytime soon. I stuffed my hand in my pocket, feeling for my wand. “Hartley said you were a buyer of relics. If you aren’t going to make me an offer, then I’ll be going.”

I went to turn around and leave, but two robed figures caught me by the elbows, stopping me.

“Let me go,” I warned them.

When they didn’t, I pulled my wand and shot a festering spell at the one on my right, which hit him in the shoulder. He released his hold on me quickly enough, gripping his arm where a fresh wound was putrefying. His knees buckled, and he fell onto his back, writhing as the rot spread. Then I pointed my wand at the other.

“Call off your dogs, Lou,” I told him.

The man on the floor let out a strangled cry. No one moved to help him.

“Now we know you’re a Kemp!” Lou declared. “Just look at that spellwork. No one uses disease like Gorrath’s witches.”

Lou snapped his fingers, and his crony backed off. Then he pulled two medallions from inside his pocket and held them out. The uninjured man collected them, putting his own back on before crouching beside his companion, who was still clutching his shoulder.

That had been… a test?

Lou had purposefully taken away their protection to see what I would do to them. And now he was watching me with approval while one of his own people sobbed at my feet.

I narrowed my eyes at Hartley, who had crept closer to the door, hiding mostly in the shadows.

“You came to sell Torment, but the old records claim four relics passed through the Kemp line.”

My attention snapped back to Lou. “What records? What is going on?”

The door opened again, and the witches who had been counting coins in the other room crowded inside, forming a half-circle around me, closing me in. Sweat erupted on my skin, slicking my brow and my hands. As soon as it was shut again, Lou strode forward. Arms crossed over his barrel of a chest.

“We are The Devouring. A society of Dark Witches with a long memory,” Lou explained.