Page 3 of The Crow Games

I abandoned the lavender oil on the sideboard to squint at her. The soft, sweet scent clung to me like a cloud. I rehashed each of her words, searching for a trick in there somewhere, but I didn’t immediately spot one. It seemed she was being more than fair, and her excitement was catching. It had been too long since we’d truly lived. Even I was getting stir crazy here. The unchanged routine of running the same shop, working the same garden, pinning back the same cuts of fabric—it dulled my brain too.

I bit at my lip. “Just this one night?”

She let out a victory cry.

“That wasn’t a ‘yes’!” I howled, but that didn’t stop her breaking out into dance. “I didn’t agree yet, you tosspot! I’m just nailing down the details.”

“Your gown is in our room, and it’s gorgeous,” she sang, and I might as well have been talking to the walls with all the good it did me then. She lifted one end of her skirt and twirled about, coming perilously close to knocking a set of bonnets off their stand. The sideboard rattled. Oils sloshed in their containers.

“Promise me,” I ground out, and my cold tone stopped her prancing.

“I solemnly vow it.” With her finger, she drew an earnest dash over the bodice of her sage-colored dress, a gesture that meant one was swearing with their whole heart. She’d adorned her ensemble in shimmering beads and forest-green ribbing, a much more formal piece than what she usually wore around the shop. I should have known she was up to something. “I’ll let you move us again, Maven. Just give me this one night. Drink and be silly with me. Gods take you, let me dance a few times with Saul—”

“Seb,” I corrected.

Her shoulders lifted dismissively. “I’ll call him whatever you like.”

“His name will do best, I think.”

“Oh, please!” She squeezed her hands together as though in prayer. “Just come to the festival with me.Please!”

Head back, I huffed at the ceiling. “All right.”

Lisbeth let out a delighted squeal. She skipped to the broom we kept in the corner, and she curtseyed to it with all the dramatics of a skilled performer. Plucking it up into her arms, she danced with it. I hid my grin as I shucked my tall hat, letting it fall on a stack of poetry books in a box on the floor. I’d been meaning to resell them. I missed the old Frian language, the fluid flow written right to left crafted by talented priestesses long ago, a language of scribes made only to be read, not spoken. It broke my heart when it fell out of use. Verse just wasn’t written like it used to be, and I tired of these new books quickly.

“If you break something, you’ll have to clean it up all by yourself,” I warned.

She ignored me, humming an upbeat melody loudly to herself, practicing her steps.

I unlocked the side door that led to our small apartment and pulled my apron off over my head. Our room was small and untidy—fabric patterns and discarded cuts of wool scattered about—but it was home. We tried not to hoard much in case we needed to abandon it all in a hurry.

I couldn’t let us stay long in one city. I did a much better job of avoiding eyes and was more difficult to age at a glance than Lisbeth. On the streets, I was called ma’am more often than I was called miss, but it wasn’t in my sister’s nature to behave the same. Eventually the locals would notice how her youth never faded. The apples of her cheeks would remain ripe always, not at all like a witch from an elemental coven. People would talk. Talk was dangerous.

The gods hated witches like us—witches with a power that could rival their own. I lived in constant crippling fear that if I was less than vigilant even once, a vindictive deity might take notice and send trouble our way. Or an ambitious warlock like the one I had to cut into pieces and hide in the bin before we fled to make a new home in Kosh. If another came sniffing about, that could turn just as deadly, and I’d rather not have to fillet a person. It was very messy work.

My sister insisted the gods didn’t pay any attention to nobodies. They were too distracted by kings and warlords, battles and courts and the like, to harass two shop women only passably good at pretending to be common green witches.

She had a point.

That didn’t stop my stomach from sinking, though. I’d lived long enough to know how evil and unexpected the world could be. What if she was wrong?

“If you’re trying to talk yourself out of going, quit it!” Lisbeth shouted through the door. “We’re doing this! You’ve already agreed, and I’m holding you to it!”

A chortle slipped out of me that I smothered, pressing my lips together.

She knew me too well. And truthfully, the greatest risk to us was staying in Kosh much longer. She was a young witch, enthusiastic but still learning. The more familiar she became with the people here, the more likely it was that she’d have another magical accident and possess someone again. It hadn’t taken her long to regain control of her spirit, but it wasn’t worth the risk. If one night was what she needed to leave the shop and the neighbors she’d grown too attached to, then I could give her that.

“Tell me how beautiful your dress is,” Lisbeth cooed through the crack in the door.

“It’s stunning.” I ran my fingers over the burgundy taffeta draped over my bed.

Lisbeth let out another victorious squeal. Based on the energetic beat of her steps, she’d gone back to dancing. Excitement bubbled up inside me, quieting my worries. We deserved a night like this, a night of foolish fun. Didn’t everyone?

I lowered to my knees and reached under the mattress, pulling out the heavy pack I kept loaded in case of an emergency. We wouldn’t carry bags tonight, as promised, but she’d lost her mind if she thought she could talk me out of going anywhere unarmed.

I tucked an unloaded pocket pistol into the makeshift holster I’d sewn along the fur lining of my right boot. It had been a gift from Lisbeth, a pretty thing with an intricately engraved barrel. Should the need arise, I could kill someone and look fetching while doing it, she’d said.

The tinkle of shattering glass interrupted my reverie.

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