Running on adrenalin and instinct, Eli grabbed a blade from her belt and sent it in a perfect line after the taste of orange peel and acetone, acid sharp on her tongue.
The handle cracked the skull of someone in the crowd — Eli couldn’t see, and didn’t care to — and he fell, unconscious, to the floor.
Silence.
Eli opened her hand. Inside lay an arrowhead carved from obsidian. A witch-killer. A weapon that was forbidden in the City of Eyes. Only the Coven held these arrows and used them to discipline wayward citizens.
The trajectory would have taken it through Tav’s heart.
The Hedge-Witch knew that Tav was part witch. She had known, and had never told them. Eli’s head snapped up, eyes bleeding blackness. She turned to the Hedge-Witch, glowing with the power of the Heart.
The Hedge-Witch stepped back.
“You —” The accusation took over her voice and dried up her words. The light around her body intensified, reaching into the darkest corners of the café, showing the rot under the windowsill — and in the hearts of creatures.
“You saved them,” said the Hedge-Witch in disbelief. The plants on the windowsill had frozen. An air of uncertainty settled over the room like a heavy layer of dust. “You put yourself at risk to save them.” Colours passed over her irises like sun sliding over oil stains on the road. “You’ve changed. You —”
Frost blade through the eye. It wasn’t made for witches, but it was only the conduit. Eli had new powers, now, and so did her blades. The Heart burned with hunger, flaring up in exaltation.
The Hedge-Witch’s drained body fell to the ground in an undignified heap.
“Obsidian!” She reached for Tav, who unsheathed the assassin, the small, thin needle of a dagger that could rend even a witch’s essence.
“I’ll do it,” they said, and walked toward the slippery, silvery essence that was uncurling from the corpse like a snake shedding its skin. They hesitated for a moment, flashes of regret pulsing through their body. Then they raised the blade and plunged it into the essence, not just once, but again and again, until the smoky creature dissipated, falling to the ground as a handful of dried herbs and lavender.
Tav was shaking.
“You … you killed her!” The Hedge-Witch’s human lover cried out as if she, too, had been stabbed through the eye.
Tav stared at the dead petals on the floor, grief and anger pooling under their skin.
“Yes,” said Eli, stepping forward and placing a hand on Tav’s shoulder. They didn’t seem to register the touch. “She’s dead.”
The humans assembled in the room had lost their nerve after the death of their leader. Eli suspected many of them hadn’t actually wanted to hurt Tav. They wanted to play with magic, play at a rebellion, but they weren’t willing to kill for it.
Part of her felt envious of them. What would it be like, to be able to walk away? To put down her blades? To hide under the bed and close her eyes and wait for the storm to end?
She had been born into violence and had never had a choice.
Neither had Tav.
They were in this together.
“What do we do now?” a wavering voice cut through the silence.
“I don’t care,” said Eli. “But you might want to dispose of the body before the cops find out. We’re leaving — and we’re taking the plants with us.”
As she gathered up the magical creatures, a twinge under her left eye reminded her of an unsettling truth.
She had absorbed the Hedge-Witch’s hand.
Part of the Hedge-Witch now lived in her body.
Eli swallowed the horror that rose in her gorge, and felt it slide back down into her stomach, slimy and thick as a slug.
“Tav?”
“Hmm?”
The boi with the spirit of steel looked up, a flicker of confusion in their eyes.
“We’re leaving.” She tried to speak gently.
Tav nodded. “Yeah.” They looked around the café, and then laughed once, a hollow sound that pierced the atmosphere of quiet terror. “This place was like a second home to me. But it wasn’t real.”
Eli pushed a flowering cactus into their arms. “Then let’s go make something that is.”
Thirty-Six
THE HEIR
A girl with a sword, her hair a nest of bluegreen around her face.
A boy on the ice, his skin studded with stones. His eyes closed.
And underneath them, the murdered witches were rising from the grave.
It was up to Kite now. “I’m sorry,” she told the witches. “I didn’t know.” But that was a lie. She had known, or should have — the disappearances, the rumours, her mother’s growing power. The proof that now ran through Kite’s own veins.
She had known, at least, that the Witch Lord killed.
She had not known how. The weight of that knowledge was heavy. The ruler of the world had the power to absorb them and had grown strong on the souls of others.
Kite, too, now had this power. Should she use it? Should she reach out and suck the last drops of life from these wounded remnants of people?
Was she even strong enough to? Or would they crawl over her body like bacteria, swarming her skin and turning her into an empty sack?
She pushed away the temptation and reminded herself what she had to do: Get Cam and leave. Find the junkyard. She opened her mouth, unhinging her jaw so it hung long and wide. Fish scales spilled from Kite’s mouth, and where they touched the obsidian the witches screamed in pain.
Even an untested Heir was dangerous.
Carefully, deliberately, Kite let the tip of the blade scrape the surface of the stone, and this time it bit instead of freed — it was on her side now. A low moan broke through the harmonies, and the shadows skittered away like darting fish startled by footsteps in the shallows.
A ball of light emerged from the crack, somehow sucking the bluegreen energy from Kite and turning it into shadow. The
