Page 26 of Poison Nights & Twilight Alchemy

“Me?” He chuckled. “I’d wish to never fight for money again. Fight only for the love of it. Freedom from debt, that would be nice.”

Dulce’s lips twitched at the corners. “I’ve never attended a ring fight before.”

“Ah, well, that’s probably a good thing for a respectable lady such as yourself.”

“Perhaps this respectable lady would quite enjoy one.”

He chuckled again, then his gaze returned to her tome. “What are you reading?”

“My mother’s spell book. I stayed up all night reading as much as I could, memorizing new spells for if we need them. These were spells I should’ve learned when I was younger, but my mother wanted me to have a different childhood than she did.” Dulce shrugged. “It would’ve been useful to know beforehand, but I’m a quick learner.”

“So what did one learn as a wealthy child then? Piano?”

“Yes,piano.” She laughed softly. “But also I was fed poisons.”

Reed sputtered, horrified, “Poisons?”

“It’s a tradition in our family to start slowly at a young age, not only because I was a witch but because of the wealth and what one could do to someone to steal it.”

“It sounds like a blessing from your mother then.”

“Yes. Very much.”

“I would say to teach me the way of poisons, but I don’t have anything worth stealing,” he drawled.

“I’m not so sure about that, Mr. Hawthorne. You’re quite extraordinary.” She smiled and opened her book to read.

Him? Extraordinary? Was a swamp rat anything worthy of praise? And yet, her words warmed him, filled him with a newfound confidence.

Soon they reached the rolling hills above the town, and Reed looked down at the Glen in the distance, its swamps and ramshackle huts shrouded in mist as the sun rose in the slate-gray sky, its light nearly obliterated by cloud. They stopped every two hours to allow the horse—whom Dulce named Golden Toffee—to feed and drink, to stretch their legs and to eat something of the dried fruit, bread, and nuts Vesta had packed forthem. Reed thought he was already becoming too accustomed to eating well. He could almost hear his brother’s taunts at how he’dgonesoftin a single day…

Reed studied the sky over the Thyone Pass farther ahead. “Looks like a storm.”

“They say once you enter the pass, you can’t stop,” Dulce said.

He shrugged. “They say a lot of things, mostly involving being eaten by creatures that probably don’t even exist.”

“There’s an inn just before it. The Black Fox,” Lucas told them, eating half a sandwich in one bite, clearly proud he knew something they didn’t. “It’s the last place to rest before miles of wilderness. Grandfather says we have to stay the night there, or else Toffee will get too tired through the Pass.”

“I wonder if it’s true what they say about the creatures that live within Thyone Pass?” Dulce whispered, as if the creatures might hear her if she spoke too loudly, and Reed ate more bread to hide his smile.

“Probably not.” Lucas shrugged, speaking around another enormous bite of sourdough and ham. “Or we would have seen hunters’ trophies of them.”

“After reading through Mother’s book and seeing what La Bisou Morte’s spell has already done, I doubt nothing. Anything is possible,” Dulce muttered, her hands clutching the tome.

Rain poured from the sky by the time the Black Fox came into view through the carriage window. Sitting at the base of the jagged mountains of the Pass, it was made entirely of tar-painted wood, three stories of ebony and glass, its design foreign in its elaborate carvings likewooden lace around pointed doorways and windowpanes. Glistening white gossamer cloaked every single shrub, and he wondered how many spiders were crawling within their branches and leaves.

As they drew closer, Reed felt that the inn itself was watching him.

Beckoning him closer.

A hunched man with a bushy peppered beard appeared out of the misty rain and waved their carriage forward to halt beneath the Black Fox’s wide porch, its dark pillars carved with the faces of screaming children—or were they laughing? Reed arched an eyebrow at them before alighting, helping Dulce from the carriage as he imagined a chivalrous husband might, and Lucas dutifully retrieved their luggage packed for the journey before departing to sleep in one of the stable rooms, the party determined to keep up all appearance of normalcy.

“We don’t get many guests these days,” the man said as he led them inside, his accent unfamiliar to Reed. “Weather isn’t fine, you see. I expect we’ll get more rain before the night is through.”

The inn’s lobby was as dark as its exterior. Dulce shuddered in the cold, and Reed draped an arm around her.

The innkeeper hurried to light a fire in a hearth made of black stone, its height taller than any man.

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