Page 168 of Crown of Darkness
There’s a trail of blood leading through the snow. Footsteps churn the snow to slush, and all around the clearing branches lie broken and cleaved, as if someone threw enormous amounts of spell craft around.
Thiago wrenches open the door to the cottage, and nothing prepares me for the sight of a broken broom lying forlornly in the entry. There’s blood on the floor. Blood on the walls. Smashed toys and an abandoned boot that looks far too small to be an adult’s.
It’s the boot that does me in.
“Amaya?” I’m choking on the word, my heart pounding so hard I swear I’m going to break a rib.
But there’s no sign of any children.
I shove inside. “Amaya!”
Thiago pushes past me and slams into an invisible ward. He feels at it. “The blood wards.” The words steal from his lips. “Old Mother Hibbert unlocked the blood wards.”
“What does that mean?” I demand.
He flexes his fingers against them. “I can’t get through. Nothing can get through. It was something Old Mother Hibbert always warned us about. If we were ever attacked, then we were to flee into the cottage and hide in the cellar while she fired the blood wards.” He curses under his breath. “It was the last line of defense, and something she would only ever do if she thought the children were at grave risk.”
“Then Amaya may be inside,” I whisper, hope bleeding through me.
“If she’s in the cellar, then she’s safe. But Vi….” He swallows hard. “They’ll last for twenty-four hours after Old Mother Hibbert’s death. She’s either dead or dying. We need to find her.”
“This way,” Grimm tells me, “I can hear someone wheezing.”
And then he launches from my shoulder and flies over the snow as if he has invisible wings.
I stagger after him, careless of the others.
Grimm follows the blood trail through the snow, to where a patch of firs shiver under the weight of their frozen burden. There’s a patch of multicolored skirts, and I find an old woman propped up with her back resting against the trunk of the fir, a bloodstained flask in her hand.
The ancient hag gulps and gasps, as if her lungs have been pierced. I walk toward her in a dream-like state, even as my mind sees everything.
“Don’t… come closer,” she hisses, and she curls her hand around a femur that looks like it was snapped in two.
I don’t know why, but the sight of her ragged fingerless gloves breaks my heart a little.
She took my daughter in and raised her as her own, despite the fact she has so truly little. Ancient blue tattoos are engraved on her haggard cheeks, and her half-rotted teeth are stained.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” I call, sweeping my cape off my shoulders. “Here.” I squat beneath the firs and lay it over her legs. “We’re friends. We’re…. You have my daughter. You have my…. My Amaya.”
The worry etched on her face eases, and she stares at me for a long, slow moment. “You’re her, aren’t you?”
I don’t know what she means.
“Said they wanted… a princess. But if they couldn’t… get the mother…. They’d take the child.” She spits a bloodied mouthful onto the snow. “Wouldn’t let her go…. Not one of my babies. That filth…. That filth. Swore I’d kill it….”
She laughs and shudders, and then coughs on blood.
“Where is she?” I whisper.
Tears streak down that weathered old face. “I c-couldn’t… Couldn’t stop ’em. All I had left in me… was this….”
They took her. The fetches took my daughter.
I knew.
A part of me knew the second I saw that broken door.
I rest my forehead against hers, squeezing her hand tightly. “I will get her back.”
