The Witch Born to Smoulder
Book four in the Inferno Series
Tanya Milne
Copyright © 2020 by Tanya Milne
All rights reserved.
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“Be careful who you trust. Sugar and salt look the same.”
Anonymous
For my beautiful mum, Dawn, who showed me the difference between sugar and salt.
Chapter One
Miss Wilson no longer looked like the youthful, beautiful, carefree teacher I’d admired at school. Facing me was a second-hand replica whose intended future had been stolen from her. She’d been arrested for breaking laws that had no place in history, let alone 2025. Her restitution to society was being forced into marrying a man she barely knew. The first of many brides who would be made to marry under Orpheus’s totalitarian laws.
Miss Wilson’s eyes filled again with tears. Her watery blue gaze darted to the double doors that had been locked the moment we’d entered. Outside, guards stood ready for the nervous bride to bolt.
I shook my head, scarcely able to believe I was Miss Wilson’s bridesmaid. I’d laughed when Orpheus informed me of my duties a few days ago, but the look on his face had quickly silenced me. He hadn’t waited for my response. He’d told me it was my job to get the bride down the aisle to her husband – to perform her duty…and get me in practice for my own wedding.
I reached out and took her quivering hands, then pushed some warmth into her. I spoke quietly, as though calming a spooked horse. ‘It’s going to be…okay, Miss Wilson.’
A single tear trickled down her porcelain skin.
‘Angela – please call me Angela.’
The door to the vestibule cracked open.
‘Ready?’ asked one of Orpheus’s special police guards.
Through the open door I glimpsed the congregation, packed to the rafters and chatting away like birds in an aviary.
‘We need a few more minutes,’ I said in my don’t-argue-with-me voice.
The security guard glanced to the altar, where Orpheus stood in his black tie, staring straight at me.
I swallowed before clearing my throat. ‘Please. We won’t be long.’
He took a pitying glance at the bride before closing the door, both of us risking the wrath of his boss.
Angela broke down in noisy tears. ‘I can’t…can’t do this. I need to…get out of here…now.’
I took Angela in my arms and held her while she cried, the job ahead of me feeling more impossible by the second. Finally she calmed. I pulled back and made sure I looked her in the eyes, and then I spoke, barely believing my own words.
‘Angela, I wish there was a way out of this, but you and I both know that there isn’t. Not for you. And not for me. If you try…I hate to think of what might happen.’
Angela’s eyes widened like those of a startled deer, and her face filled with what I could only imagine to be memories of what had happened to her when she was arrested.
I rubbed Angela’s bare, wafer-thin arms, which felt as though they’d been sitting in the freezer. ‘Mr Oates…James – he seems like a good man. He will take care of you – and you can look after him, as friends.’
Angela nodded.
I lowered my voice. ‘Nothing about this is right. No one should be forced to marry. But the sooner you get through this, the sooner you can go home and put this behind you.’
She stared at me as though I was someone she could trust. I turned my gaze away from her as my conscience prickled the inside of my skin. In all honesty, I could help her. I could use my powers – my witchcraft, which I’d promised my family that I would hide – to get Angela out of the church and into hiding with Jet.
‘You’re right,’ she whispered.
As our gazes met, the lies and the truth, the insanity and the expectations, the love and hate – they all mixed together and an understanding and tenderness I didn’t expect to feel towards this woman washed over me.
The truth was, we were in this together. Angela might be the first bride forced into matrimony, but she wasn’t going to be the last. With my eighteenth birthday only six weeks away and Ezra ordained as my future husband, my days as a single young woman were numbered.
‘You can get through this. I know you can,’ I said.
She began shaking, but she wiped away the last of her tears.
I passed her a fresh tissue from a nearby counter. ‘I will be there with you – every step of the way. And not just today. I’ll come and visit you.’
‘You will?’ she croaked.
I nodded and put on a smile that I hoped she would find reassuring.
‘Can you come see me tomorrow?’
I blinked quickly, thinking of what would be expected of a bride on the night and days after getting married. Ready or not, every married couple would be under pressure to start making babies. In the weeks and months ahead, the crinkled, beady eyes of the pious old women would not stray far from Angela’s tiny waist, and their tongues would be sharp as they imagined and surmised the meaning behind any slight curve.
‘It’s okay – James said we can wait…until we know each other and I’m ready.’
My mouth felt as though it had been filled with thousands of tiny paper balls.
‘Please, come and see me,’ she said, clutching my hand.
I placed my palm on the side of Angela’s face. Her eyes were red, her make-up had run and her vision of youth and beauty was blurred.
‘I will, but let’s get you fixed up. We don’t
