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“Is the witch in the tree?” I asked, bending over to the cat.
“Help,” the cat said again.
“What did it say?” Theseus asked, now on edge as the sun was coming up above me.
“To help. Not that it is much to go by. How do we help? Cut it down or something?” I frowned, starting to feel myself getting frustrated.
Theseus bent down beside me and picked up the branch I’d broken, frowning.
“What?”
“Why did this break?” he asked.
“Didn’t you just say that the tree is weak?” I said.
“But when I caught you, you didn’t look back at the branch—you looked down at your foot as if something was wrong with,” he said.
“Yeah, it felt like something grabbed…” I paused, now understanding. The branch broke because something tried to pull me down. It was weak.
“Witches can sometimes draw from nature for power,” he explained as he glanced back at the moss. “She is injured, as the cat said, and is trying to heal. Maybe, when you touched the branch, she felt your magic and tried to grab hold of it.”
“Can witches do that?”
“I do not know, nor do I think we should find out.” He frowned and rose back up. “If she is injured, that is her problem, not yours.”
The cat hissed.
“Theseus, I knew it was not my problem. That is why I said it was stupid and dangerous.”
“Druella.”
“I’m already here. No turning back now,” I said. I crouched down beside the cat and reached out. My finger had just touched the fuzz of the moss when the moss and the tree broke apart, and a scratched and bruised hand gripped my wrist for dear life. Her dark hair covered the scars on her face. Her eyelids snapped open, and one green and one blue eye fixed on me.
“Druella!” her hoarse voice sneered at me.
“Release her or lose the arm, witch!” Theseus snapped, but when he tried to touch her, her skin burned him.
I could smell the scent of his flesh burning before he pulled back and his hand healed.
“You…” The witch shook, gripping tighter, the tree moss falling off her more as she came close to my face. “Do…you…remember me?”
“You were one of the witches who attacked me in the museum. Part of Simone’s circle? An Omeron Coven witch.”
“Not anymore.” Her eyes filled with tears she didn’t let fall, and all of her trembled.
I could hear her heart hammering away in her chest so fast it should have erupted.
She smelled sweet…the sweet scent of her own blood as she was injured all over. “Because of you…”
“Me? Why me? You all attacked me, I—”
“You exposed him!” she screamed at me, and I could feel the same burn on my hand. “They took him away because of you!”
“Let go. I do not know what you are talking about!” I said with a hiss. I yanked my hand back and rose, backing away from her.
On the forest floor, as the sun broke through the trees, she lay like a broken doll covered in moss and wounds, staring up at me in pain.
“They took Jason!” she cried as she tried to crawl to me.
