Page 108 of The Witch and His Crow
Before the world had even settled I was clawing at the earth, trying to pull myself forwards. I could see my mother at a distance, her body outlined with an unnatural wave of shadows. Even with the space between us, I could see the ever-growing disappointment in her eyes. She just stood, looking down at me, shaking her head.
I tried to get up, but I fell down again. Then mother turned her back on me and walked away.
‘Wait!’ I screamed, but the sound came out raspy and small. Dirt caked beneath my nails, thorns and small stones digging into my palms. ‘Mum, please. Come back.’
But she was gone. Her voice was gone. And I was alone.
That was what the Dreading was teaching me. My greatest fear.
I leaned back on my haunches and yelled at the red-washed sky. ‘I don’t fucking understand. What do you want from me?’
The Dreading was meant to make you face your greatest fear. How was this remotely a fear? Seeing my mother was torture, but it gave me hope. I’d already lost her—thathad been my greatest fear, and I’d been living it for eighteen years. And Romy—I couldn’t understand how she played a part in this. Couldn’t the maze make me face spiders or deep oceans, or something rational? Whatever it wanted me to overcome wasn’t fucking clear.
‘Is this the best you can do?’ I screamed, unsure who I spoke to anymore. ‘I’ve spent my life chasing ghosts, and you think that is what I’m most scared of? Pathetic. This attempt is pathetic…’
Footsteps crunching over earth sounded at my side. I refused to look, to even pay mind to whatever the Dreading had conjured for me again. Who else would it make me chase? Who else would it taunt me with, knowing I would never reach them?
Was that my fear? Forever chasing those I loved whilst never being able to hold on them? Maybe. Either way, I ignored the footsteps, knowing whatever this illusion would be was only here to taunt me.
Then came the voice that turned my ice to blood.
‘Hector Briar, on his knees. What a pretty sight.’
I scrambled up, Gift brightening my eyes, ready to use it against the speaker. For once, I wished it was a ghost I was to face. Pretending was far easier than the truth.
Salem Tanner walked up the pathway at my side, shoulders back and a smile plastered across his face. His hands were outstretched beside him, a gesture that usually preceded the offer of a hug. And yet that was the very last thing I was willing to do.
Salem trailed his fingers across the thorn-knotted wall at his side, not caring for the pricks that would tear at his skin. ‘What do you fear so terribly that it has you howling at the sky?’
I didn’t speak, refusing to play this game with him anymore. Salem was the Witch Hunter. Romy had confirmed that. And whatever he’d done to her in the days she was missing had left Romy haunted. Broken. I refused to contemplate what that could’ve been.
‘Silent treatment? Oh, come on. Don’t be like that.’
My flesh prickled up my spine like hackles. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’
‘I only want to help you,’ Salem said, coming to a stop before me. ‘Don’t you want my help? Shouting and pleading to Hekate isn’t going to get you anywhere. Haven’t you worked it out yet? She turned her back on witches a long time ago.’
‘Just as you have?’ I asked, every limb of my body shaking.
Salem leaned his weight on one hip. ‘Well, between me, you, and these walls, Idohave some personal issues I’m here to… exorcise. Witches, the Coven—they all let me down. They allowed my parents to die that night, then treated me like something so forgotten I could just be handed around, given up on. A lost cause.’
I felt as though I was finally seeing the truth behind his carefully constructed mask. Intuition never lied, and the boy I remembered Salem to be was the same nasty little prick I’d watch kill that helpless witch during the Culling.
‘I know what you are,’ I said.
‘I don’t doubt it. But have you worked out that the people around you are vipers? No one joins the Witch Trials without having a motivation.’
A shiver raced across the walls that cornered me in. My Gift leaked out of me, threading in with the maze, readying myself for the inevitable. ‘That isn’t an excuse for hurting people. Turning your back on witches. Painting them all with your tarred brush.’
‘Rich, Hector. Truly. How blind do you need to be to see that you are no better than me? How many people have you killed during the Witch Trials? And before it, how many lives did you take? Witch Hunters—are they all the same? Because last time I checked,youare the murderer.Youare the monster. More than half of those Witch Hunters you ‘dealt with’—’ Salem used his fingers to make air-quotations to really drive home his point, ‘—they weren’t even born when their predecessors murdered our parents. Did you think about that when you slaughtered them like a wolf in a lamb’s pen?’
Murdered our parents.
Anger unfurled in me like a flower bud in bloom. ‘Do yourself a favour and keep their names out your mouth.’ One by one, twigs and thorns dislodged from the maze around me. They floated at my side, readying like fangs to strike Salem down. ‘Just as you so beautifully put it, I’ve hunted enough Witch Hunters in my time to know how you tick. Lies. Manipulation. I know the real viper, Salem. I’m staring at him.’
‘All this animosity, Hector. It pains me. I’d think you’d treat me with a little more kindness, consideringyouare the reason my entire family was killed.’
That stopped me. Like a fox in a trap, Salem ensnared me with his perfectly poised words. I opened my mouth, then closed it again, knowing there was no excuse or way around what he’d said. Finally, it was out in the open, the very thing I had toyedwith since seeing him. The responsibility I felt on my shoulders the moment he stepped up to me during our first night here.
