Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

MAEVYTH

F rigid breaths of remorse stuttered out of me in white puffs, and I loosened my grip to find the bird no longer stirred at my side. It’d gone cold and stiff already.

After a quick glance around, I wiped away my tears and gathered it up, cradling it in my arm, as I hustled toward the edge of the wood. Beneath a winterberry bush, I found a flat rock and scraped a modest hole in the dirt there. The bite of early winter air thickened my hands, numbing them as I hurried to finish the task. Once I’d dug deep enough, I laid the bird inside and buried it. The toxic berries would keep the critters away, but for good measure, I plucked a few, sprinkling them over the inelegant grave.

The men of our parish believed the birds to be an omen of death. They believed the same of me, too, so maybe I shared a kinship with the foreboding creatures. It was said that, on the day I’d been found near these woods, ravens had flocked around my basket. I liked to think they were guarding me, but some thought it a sign. A terrible sign.

The whole parish had branded me as cursed ever since.

The lorn .

The name that’d been drawn like a scar across my heart at my first baptism, when I’d devoted myself to their god. When I’d spoken the words that’d bound me to their merciless savior. But, just like the woods that ate voraciously, always hungry for more, my piety wasn’t enough to earn their good graces. They still casted me off as something aberrant.

I could only imagine what they’d say about a silver-eyed raven.

Movement caught the corner of my eye, and I turned to where a small, thatch-roofed cottage stood at the edge of the forest, and a white-haired woman, half bent at the waist, gathered a cord of wood from a stacked supply. Enough for winter, which left me wondering how she’d cut it down herself. No one would’ve lent a hand, after all.

While I may have been shunned by the villagers, she was truly feared. The Crone Witch . Rumor had it, she’d murdered her husband and ate the hearts of children. I suspected she’d have been cast into The Eating Woods, like every other accused of witchcraft, if not for her healing skills that, years ago, had saved the governor’s son from a bad case of somnufever. A deadly fate for most. Sometimes, The Crone Witch proved useful, garnering her more clemency than I’d ever been given.

As she hobbled back to her cottage, she paused en route and turned toward me. An inexplicable dread settled in my bones. Had she seen me? Would she tell someone what I’d done? If anyone found the buried bird, I’d be questioned. Probed. Possibly exorcised for bad humors.

I wiped my wrist against the black fabric of my dress as I puzzled all the possible consequences of my actions.

I could’ve unburied it. Tossed it back into the woods, but unearthing the dead was a sin and, in my book, even ravens counted as precious life.

The swooshing flap of wings interrupted my thoughts, and I turned to see other ravens pecking around the ground for the berries I’d just scattered.

“Hey! Leave it! Go away!” I said, waving my hand to shoo them off. In all the fuss, I caught sight of a red banner with a cross in the distance.

The proclamation of the banished.

So focused on the approaching congregation, I didn’t see Lolla, housekeeper and confidante to my step-grandmother, making her way across the yard toward me, until she spoke. “What in God’s eyes are you doing, Maevyth?”

Startled, I turned to see her keeping a safe distance from the woods she seemed to fear would reach out and pull her in if she got too close.

She waved me over with her one good hand, the other arm had been crudely amputated by the Sawbones, a band of burly bottom feeders who collected debts on behalf of Governor Grimsby. Lolla, or Delores as everyone else referred to her, couldn’t pay her taxes and had been forced from her family home. Grandfather had felt sorry for her, and had taken her in years ago to serve as a companion for Agatha, though my step-grandmother often treated the poor woman like a lowly house pet. “The governor is coming, and you’re here frolicking by those wretched trees with those godforsaken birds. Please come. Quickly.” Didn’t matter that I was nineteen, a well-seasoned woman to those who kept track of such things, she still treated me as a child.

And for reasons I couldn’t explain, I still obeyed.

Abandoning the grave, I hid my wounded arm behind my back as I made my way toward the older woman, and the moment I stepped within arm’s length, she set forth with her one-handed fussing. The sleeve of her dress had been pinned to hide her mutilated elbow. Sawbones never hesitated to hack first and ask questions later, and their horrific handiwork spoke of their apathy in the task.

“By god, if anyone had seen you just now …” she said, brushing what appeared to be nothing but the invisible wind from my skirts. Unlike the floral brocade that patterned the Egyptian blue corset over her brown kirtle, my dress was the simple black that I’d been forced to wear since I was a child. At my throat, dangled the signature black choker bearing the trinity cross that the governor had long decreed I should wear as a reminder of the mercy granted by our Red God. The same symbol my father would have been wearing when he was slaughtered in the name of the Sacred Men.

I ran my finger over one of the embossed flowers at her shoulder, longing for the day I might wear something so elegant.

Ignoring my caress, she kept on with her fussing and prattling. “My goodness, ravens, of all things. They’d have surely branded you a witch.”

The villagers of Foxglove had branded me worse. After my arrival, we’d suffered the coldest winter in history, and food had become scarce. The following summer had yielded diseased crops that’d withered the harvest. According to them, I was the harbinger of famine, a mere infant responsible for blight. “You always said a witch held far more dignity than any parishioner.”

Brows pulled to a pained expression, she shook her head. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I need to keep my damn mouth shut around you and your sister. Always fueling your feistiness. Particularly Aleysia.” She tucked a stray hair behind my ear, the unruly curls refusing to stay put. “Those words will be your demise. Forget them. And any ridiculous comment I may have spouted off without thinking, while you’re at it.” As she reached for my arm, where my torn dress showed the blood still staining my skin, she frowned. “What in heavens …”

“Cut myself on a branch, is all. Nothing serious.” I didn’t bother to mention the raven. Even as much as I loved and trusted Lolla, had known her since childhood, she feared the birds like everyone else and would’ve surely given me grief.

“Well, get it cleaned up. Can’t have you looking this way for The Banishing.” Lolla’s frown softened as she stroked a gentle hand down my long black hair. “How are you holding up?” she asked, undoubtedly referring to the letter.

“In dire need of Grandfather’s most potent batch of wine.”

A smile curved her lips and she rolled her eyes. “Aren’t we all. But there’ll be none of that this early in the day.” She rested her palm against my cheek and sighed. “It’s nearly time.”

The words I’d been dreading.