Page 47 of The Crow Games

“She’s sweet,” I said, though I still couldn’t see why Emma was telling me all of this. Perhaps the gin had made her chatty.

Emma cast a glance behind her at her sister, who continued to jabber at a bemused Asher. “The blacksmith learned of it and came to our house. He found her in the garden and confronted her. He shouted and raised his fist at her, and I stopped him.”

“I had a little sister too who was sweet.” I hoped on this point we might finally find common ground. Were our roles reversed, I would have treated me with the same suspicion. I would have kept me at a distance, far away from Lisbeth. “We share a father. I met my sister when she was five, and I raised her. I still remember the way she grinned at me that first day, so trusting and small. Her front teeth were missing, and she had a smile that made me feel like a queen. I knew in an instant that I would never let anyone hurt her. I never wanted to see her frown.”

“Then you do understand,” Emma said, jaw firm. “I won’t see Liesel harmed. Our father was like that blacksmith. He’d shout until he was red in the face, and he was quick to raise his fist, especially at Liesel, who struggles to do her best when she’s nervous. When we got out of his house, I vowed I’d never let that happen to her again. The blacksmith raised his hand at her, and I shot him. Twice.”

Such brutality from the healer surprised me, but I didn’t let my shock give way to judgment. This was precisely why it was so unwise to discount green witches. Their skillset was broad, their capabilities as wild and untamable as nature itself. You never could know what you were really going to get.

“I don’t blame you. I would have done the same, even if I knew it would land us here.” I had done the same, in fact, multiple times.

“And then I shot him a third time. For spite,” she confessed, her tone full of warning. Her lashes lifted, and her blue eyes were ice-cold. “I blasted him right in his face just to ruin his funeral. I’d do it again, Maven.”

Emma was threatening me. Emma, the kind midwife, the crafty green witch who never had a cruel thing to say to anyone.

And I liked her very much for it.

Chapter 11

“There is no known way to stop angry shades from whispering nightmares in your ears once their mischief starts.”– Esther Weil, Renowned Folklorist

That night I had terrible dreams. I watched Lisbeth die again and again and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I woke feeling so depleted it was difficult to get out of bed.

I was growing accustomed to functioning at half my energy, and yet somehow at the start of the day I was already down to a quarter of my magic. Gray sputtered in my chest, mere fumes. Perhaps it was the gin. We had overindulged, made bold by the talk of freedom. It was such a pleasant change to be working toward something new. Something greater than just surviving another terrible day.

Freedom first, then revenge.

It was early. I crossed to Nola and Ruchel’s room. They’d pulled their mattresses onto the floor and pushed them together. I climbed into bed between them.

“Shut up and cuddle me,” I told them when they grumbled about the hour.

They listened. It helped a little.

Trial number two was known as Master’s territory. We plotted out our strategy as a coven over breakfast.

“We can’t keep calling him Master,” Ruchel said. “It’s the horrid name he gave himself. Surely we can do much better.”

“Ass-head,” Nola suggested.

“It has potential,” Ruchel said with a shrug. “What else?”

“Bitch,” Blue offered.

Ruchel shook her head. “Too insulting to dogs. I like dogs.”

“Bastard,” little Liesel offered, her voice bell-like and the dimples in her cheeks deep.

“That’s the one,” Ruchel said. “This is the territory of the beast-born brute henceforth to be known as Bastard.”

“Hear, hear,” Nola agreed, and she drank to that because she liked to drink to everything. Cocktails were her favorite breakfast.

Ruchel took the gin out of her hand. She plopped a tall water glass in front of her in its place. “Not another drop until you drink three of those,” she demanded.

Nola groused and groaned and stomped her foot, but as soon as Ruchel wasn’t looking, she did as she was told. I wondered about Asher, who was off doing whatever it was reapers did on the parts of the train where the prisoners did not go. I was curious when we’d see him again.

The Schatten chimed twice, signaling the start of the second trial. It delivered us to the platform and the gates of another residential district. Thick towering walls of unnatural ice circled the trial. The frost was hardy and blue-black, the color of dusk, an unnatural work of the divines that didn’t melt in the heat.

I imagined it was this same fearsome ice that made up the gates to Hel.

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