Page 95 of A Resistance of Witches
“Shall we give you another dose?” Lydia stood, her head swimming. Before Gerda could answer, Lydia blew the powder into her face, and Gerda let loose another shriek of pain and rage.
“The grand mistress gave the order!”
Lydia gripped the table for support.“Gerda.”She waited for the girl to stop her howling and look at her. “Who is your grand mistress?”
Oh, but you know, Lydia thought as she looked at Evelyn, gripping that brown paper package in her hands as if it were a bomb. As the thing in her stomach turned solid and alive.Stupid, naive girl. You already know.
Gerda lifted her chin and looked Lydia in the eye, defiant.
“My grand mistress is Sybil Winter.”
Twenty-Six
Lydia walked out of the room without a word. Evelyn followed a moment later.
“She’s lying.” The room seemed to spin around her.
“She can’t lie.”
“Maybe she can. Maybe we should give her another dose.”
“Love—”
“Don’t do that. Please, don’t do that.” Lydia gripped Evelyn’s shoulders for support. She felt her knees go weak.
“Do what?”
“That thing you do, that thing where you’re so calm, and reasonable, andright.” She couldn’t breathe. “Please.”
Evelyn said nothing. Lydia sank to the ground, all her strength gone. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
Evelyn knelt next to her. “Neither do I.”
They stayed that way in silence as Lydia waited for the room to go still again. She felt like a piece of dust that could blow away at any second.Sybil. It was as if she’d sustained a mortal injury. Like she was bleeding to death and nothing in the world could save her.
Finally, when she was sure she would not in fact die of heartbreak, she spoke.
“What are we going to do with the girl?”
Evelyn looked toward the kitchen, thinking. “If we cut her loose, she’ll run right back to her coven.”
Lydia looked at Evelyn. “You’re not suggesting…”
“Heavens, no. This may be a war, but I’m no soldier. I won’t murder her.” There was a moment of silence. “I understand if you have to.”
Lydia glanced toward the kitchen.This is a war, a voice whispered inside her mind.People die in war.
She had never killed before. She’d never needed to, although she suspected she knew girls who had. She imagined she could, if need be. If her life were on the line, or the outcome of the war itself.
She looked at the girl in her mother’s kitchen, spots on her chin and nails bitten to the quick, wearing her grown-up clothes like they belonged to someone else.
“I am a soldier, in a manner of speaking,” Lydia said. “But that girl is a child. An evil, foulmouthed child, but a child nonetheless. I don’t want to kill her either.”
“Well then.” Evelyn stood. “Neither of us is going to kill her. So what now?”
•••
When they returnedto the kitchen, Gerda was wearing a brave face, but the pink of her cheeks had faded, and her pulse ticked visibly under the freckled skin of her throat.
