Page 101 of The Flame King's Queen

Tea after a long flight sounds refreshing, but there’s an uneasy feeling in my belly. “Not just now, Dad, thank you. I’d like to check on Mistress Hawthorne, if that’s all right.”

“Yes, do go. I should have checked on her myself when I saw the crows were in a flap. You run along and make sure the old woman is well.”

“Thanks, Dad. I’ll be back soon.”

I hurry up the path to her cottage, wondering what I’m going to find when I push open the front door.

I sigh in relief as I see movement inside the cottage through the tiny, murky front window. I’d begun to get a terrible feeling that I’d find her dead on the floor.

I knock, and she calls for me to enter. When I push open the door, she’s bent over the fireplace.

“Come in, girl, and sit yourself down. I’m making tea.”

I happily plop onto a stool and begin to tell her everything about Zabriel finishing off Emmeric.

“Proud of himself, is he?” Biddy passes me a cup.

“Proud isn’t quite it. He regrets that he was forced to kill his brother.”

“Regret?” she says in a strange, flat voice. “Our poor, dear Dragon King.”

When the cup is halfway to my lips, I notice that it’s a different shade of pale greeny-gold to the tea Mistress Hawthorne usually serves, and it smells faintly bitter. I remember Kane pausing suspiciously over a cup that Ravenna presented him with, and I suddenly have a strange feeling that I absolutely shouldn’t drink this tea.

“Is there something wrong, my girl?” the old woman asks, sitting across from me in her chair.

I finally meet her gaze, and all of the hairs stand up on the nape of my neck. It’s my crone who is sitting in front of me, but I have a strong premonition that it’s not Biddy who is gazing out at me from those cloudy blue eyes. Her gaze is sharp and hungry. Her features are arranged strangely, as if she’s having evil and gleeful thoughts and isn’t quite able to hide them.

Surreptitiously, I put my hand down by my side and snap my fingers, the test I use to make sure I’m not being fed false visions. They snap easily.

“Was it you who taught the witchfinders their words of power?” I ask Biddy, and I’m surprised how calm I sound while I’m panicking on the inside. “I’ve never thought about it before, but they had to learn magic from someone. You’re a human magic user. Or you were.”

Biddy smiles, but it’s a strange, pointed smile. “Me, girl? I wouldn’t teach those craven men anything, for I am a witch.”

“Are you?Rrus-nahl.” The content of the teacup glows brightly.

I upend the cup and pour the contents out on the floor.

Green light blazes in Biddy’s eyes, and she bares her teeth in an angry snarl. A scream rises up in my throat, and it’s so tempting to let it out. A good, throat-rattling scream, followed by running from this cottage with my hands in the air and sobbing.

I hear, not Biddy’s voice, but the seething, unearthly voice of the lich. “You foul, disobedient wench.”

A witch doesn’t lose her head. My crone taught me better than that. “Let Biddy go,” I order the lich.

With a spine-chilling grin on Biddy’s face, the lich forces her to reach for a sharpened knife that is laying on the table. She holds out her other arm, and I realize what the lich means to make her do.

I leap to my feet and scream the word that the witchfinders use to shatter someone’s magic.“Nah-vahneh.”

I may as well have sung a ditty for all the good that the word does. The knife sinks into Biddy’s flesh and she drags it up her forearm. Blood wells up and spills to the floor, but still my crone sits there grinning.

I scream the word louder, tears pouring down my cheeks. When I lunge for the knife to wrestle it away from her, I’m blasted off my feet. My back hits the wall and I am pinned in place.

“Do you think that word will work on me when I am the one who taught it to the priests? You cannot best me. You cannot destroy me. My revenge will be great and terrible. I am forever. I am immortal.”

I watch helplessly as the lich makes Biddy stab herself over and over. In the stomach. In the chest. In the throat. Even in her face.

“No.” I’m sobbing so hard I can barely see. “Please, leave her alone. She never hurt you.”

But the lich knows better. It possesses her, and it understands that Biddy Hawthorne has watched over me since the day I was born. She knew I was a witch before I ever suspected it myself. She protected me from the witchfinders. She guided me, giving me stern words and loving ones as I needed them. Without Biddy, I probably wouldn’t have survived long enough to summon Zabriel out from beneath the mountain.

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