My eyes fluttered open to the golden glow of lantern flame, and I winced, sitting up slowly, and grasped at the ground for purchase—only to crush handfuls of rose-colored petals instead. They littered the sylvan floor beneath me, made every step feel like floating. The surrounding trees were heavy with intact blooms, the air thick with their fragrance…and the scent of fresh bread. I blinked, gathering my senses.
And I remembered.
Aeren in the garden. The thorns at his throat. The vines tearing me from my feet and dragging me into the Deathwood.
I was in the woods. My blood chilled, grew colder still when I turned and found myself standing at a cabin door. It’d been left slightly ajar, as if someone had been waiting for company.
Waiting for me. I dared a step forward.
And a voice, soft and sweet, called from the shadows within. “Is there a viper at my door?”
I drew back at the sound.
But it merely laughed and spoke again. “Do come in, my dear. I’m not the one who bites.”
I steeled myself, pushed the door further open, and crossed the threshold. Candles wept in every corner—in the rafters dripping with herbs, on the table laden with copper cauldrons, fit into the empty spaces of the shelves teeming with jars of clouded glass. They burned low, throwing the room into darkness each time their little flames wavered. A figure worked in the lambent light, filling the silence with the din of silver and copperware at the stove. I saw nothing but her back—long, raven hair piled in curls atop her head, a threadbare shawl cascading over her shoulders and skimming the cold dirt of the floor.
But I knew who she was. “You’re the Bone Woman.”
“I’ve never liked that name. It somehow makes me sound…old. Does it not?” She tilted her chin in my direction.
And I caught a glimpse of her smile. Full lips and a mouth of flawless teeth—not at all the pointed edges I’d expected.
“Call me Faedraigh,” she said. “I like it much more.”
I sidestepped around the table, the warmth of my magic gathering at my fingertips. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Did I?” She turned then, gave her face to the flickering light. It stunned me—how beautiful she was. Eyes like hazel and mahogany skin. A hundred years my senior, but frozen in her youth. It was no wonder men followed her to their deaths. “I don’t believe I did.”
“Then who…” I started, my voice trailing. No one unfortunate enough to meet the Bone Woman ever left the Deathwood alive. She had no reason to lie to me now.
“Tea?” She lifted a kettle from the stove and poured me a cup when I didn’t answer, cutting the stillness with a giggle at my hesitance to take it. “Not to worry,” she whispered, as if sharing a secret. “I’m not the poisoning kind.”
“If you didn’t bring me here—” I stared into its amber surface, searched the ripples for an answer “—then who did?” Her hand glinted silver in the corner of my vision, and I raised my eyes and startled at the dagger grasped in her slender fingers.
But she turned it over in her hands and offered me the hilt. “I know every poor soul—remember every face I’ve given to my trees. All but one. I wonder why that is.”
And I recognized the markings etched into the wood.
Antlers.