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“You’re not at supper,” Anastazja said, enjoying the flippant turn in her voice. She didn’t sound as scared as she felt. For once.
“Nor are you, girl.” Magda’s voice traveled from the other side of the room, enveloped in darkness. None of the candles had been lit for the evening. More likely they had been, and the crone had snuffed them out, like everything else she touched. “I can smell the sex on you. It gets stronger every time you return home.” She pulled in a hard, animalistic sniff. “Same boy. Or is it a man? You think I won’t find out?”
“I don’t owe you an explanation of who I spend my time with.”
“Anything you said would be a lie anyway, wouldn’t it?” Magda laughed, but it sounded more like she was coughing up a wad of hair. The rocking chair creaked, signaling her advance. “For a young woman who has but two seasons left to her life, one would think you would use that time in a more meaningful way.”
“As I said—”
“You waste too many words, Ana. Always have. You were never wise enough to keep your own counsel. I suppose that’s what happens when a girl loses her mother and rejects the gifts of another.”
“You are no one’soma.” Anastazja snorted. She wanted a drink. Something. Anything. She could navigate to the beverage cart in the dark, but not subtly. Not in a way that wouldn’t reveal the fray in her nerves.
“Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.” Magda’s creaking steps drew nearer, but she was still obscured by the room’s darkness. “The sound of your life slipping away. Can you hear it, Anastazja? Can youfeelit?”
“What do youwant?” She ripped off her cloak and threw it. She didn’t see where it had landed.
“What a question. You can’t know all the many ways I could answer!”
“If you have something to say to me... say it in front of my father,” Anastazja answered boldly.
Magda laughed again. “If I did, he would hear the words so much differently, wouldn’t he? Just as he sees me differently.”
“They all do. But I know who you are.Whatyou are,” Anastazja charged. Spittle flew from her mouth. “I see you, witch.Koldyna.”
“More wasted words,” the crone chided. Her next step brought her into view. Though Anastazja had seen her stepmother’s true form many times, she was never quite prepared for the startling asymmetry of her ghoulish features. The degree of crook in her nose... the uneven trail of a mouth that seemed to house an eternity of evil. Deep trenches of wrinkles were on every inch of exposed flesh, and where hair should be was only a sprig of orange fuzz. Her precipitous grin revealed blackened teeth, some sharpened to points and others overlapping the ones beside them, a cramped collage of terror. “I came to tell you that we’re going up the mountain tomorrow.”
Anastazja’s breath held. It choked her.Nien. Nien, not again. Not anymore. I can never, ever...Dizziness swept down from behind her eyes, and she sidestepped into a nearby chair, gripping the soft leather. “But...”
“But the weather is foul? But it’s too soon since our last venture? But... But what?” Magda sputtered into a contemptuous imitation of Anastazja. “Save your rebuttals for someone who cares, girl. Your life will end soon and then Niko will take your place when you’re gone. Unless, of course, we find success before your time is ended. An outcome that’s entirely up to you.”
Anastazja’s shoulders clenched at the painful but unnecessary reminder. It was nevernoton her mind that if she couldn’t find a way to either satisfy Magda or stop her, Niko would inherit her pain.
“And this time, you’ll do more than lure them for me. I have something a bit morevigorousin mind for you.”
Anastazja’s tongue dried up. It kept her from asking the terrible question Magda seemed to be waiting for, but she wouldn’t give the crone a win when she’d already accumulated too many. Their trips up the mountain had been more than Ana’s conscience could carry. The thought of being asked to do more...
“Tick. Tick.” Magda grinned, a rotted black line of teeth and death. “Dawn. Meet me at the well north of the stables. Do not even think of standing me up, girl. Not unless you want me to eat your brother for breakfast.”
Magda charged forward and brushed against Anastazja hard enough to send her tripping toward the wall. The crone’s cackles contorted into sinister echoes as she thundered down the hall, claiming every sconce and stone with each malignant step. Anastazja heard them even as the koldyna descended, but she could no longer trust her senses to be certain if it was her ears or her tortured mind. It was the same sound she heard in every nightmare.
At her feet, a shiny red apple spun in a perfect circle, brushing just above the stones in the center of the doorframe. A gift from Magda.
A promise.
Anastazja, shaking, slammed the bolt closed on her door. She stared at it in horror until a soundless scream rolled up from her chest and forced her mouth wide, and that was how she stayed until exhaustion introduced her to another bout of tortured slumber.
Chapter2
Rare Red Rose
Tyreste worked his shift in a daze. It was a hectic night for the tavern, but that was true of most nights in the land of eternal winter. There was little else to do when the sun dipped behind the Northern Range in midday, the infernal cold rolling off Icebolt Mountain like plumes of smoke stepping forward to claim the night.
The Tavern at the Top of the World was one of a dozen pubs in Witchwood Cross but the only one owned by outsiders—or what the Vjestik calledstranjak. The Penhallows weren’t from the Cross, or even the Northerlands, and the tale of how they’d become exiles was one, even five years later, he couldn’t allow himself to think about.
The tavern was even busier than the one they’d run in the Westerlands, and it was precisely that bliss of perpetual motion and blurred reality he’d needed to clear his head of Anastazja Wynter.
His rare red rose.
