Chapter 1266: The Past
Wendy rested a hand on Thylane’s head. “Believe it or not, Mystery Moon was shyer than you when she first arrived.”
“Stop — please —” Mystery Moon went rigid. “That was years ago.”
“Really?” Lorgar’s ears pricked forward. “I’ve never heard this.”
“There are so many stories it would take more than one evening to —”
“What is your condition, Sister Wendy?” Mystery Moon’s voice had climbed an octave.
Wendy paused, as though working through a decision she’d already made. “Scroll mentioned yesterday that the file room hasn’t been cleaned in a while, and she’s been very busy lately in the Administrative Office…”
“Going right now. We’ll continue tonight — please excuse the Detective Group!” Mystery Moon blinked once at the two newcomers, something between an apology and a promise, and was gone.
Lorgar watched her go, lip curling. “I’ll help too,” she announced. “Because I’m a decent person.” She moved off across the yard.
When the witches had cleared, Grayrabbit nudged Ring and murmured, “I think she didn’t want to be the one Ring was calling lazy.”
Ring blinked. “Was I? I meant —”
Momo made a small sound. Thylane turned. It was a laugh — brief and quickly suppressed, but real, the first one since before the escape. Thylane felt the absence of it more acutely now that she’d heard it.
“You’ll like it here,” Wendy said, “though it can be loud. You’ll get used to that.” She gestured toward the building. “Come — I’ll show you your room.”
The room stopped Thylane at the door.
Not because it was grand. It was not. Small windows, modest furniture, a few square meters of floor. But it was clean in a way she had not experienced as a matter of course — the kind of cleanliness that comes from caring rather than from covering something up. And the bed was extraordinary.
Wendy pressed her toward it and Thylane sat and immediately understood, on a purely physical level, why beds mattered. Her body sighed inward. The mattress gave perfectly in all directions, as though it had been designed around the exact distribution of her weight.
She had slept in a nobleman’s bed. She had cleaned other noblemen’s beds. This was better than any of them.
Momo sat on the edge of hers and said nothing, which was how Thylane knew she felt the same.
“Hundreds of springs under the fabric,” Wendy explained. “Whatever position you sleep in, the mattress compensates.”
Thylane had some vague mental image of springs as armor components, which made the concept simultaneously impressive and slightly absurd. She decided not to think about it.
The room continued to surprise her in layers. Water from the tap without a servant. A bathroom mirror so precise she could see each individual eyelash. Soft floor underfoot that resisted slipping. Lamp light powered by magic. Even the furniture — simple timber pieces, nothing ornate — carried some quality she couldn’t name, a deliberateness that made them feel inhabited rather than merely placed.
“The Witch Building has been refurbished several times,” Wendy said. “Many sisters helped with the work. What we develop here usually spreads to the Castle District and the new residential areas — but this building always has the latest version of things.”
“Can we actually… live here?” Momo asked, softly, as though the question might break something.
“Yes. You’d need to join the Witch Union first.”
Thylane looked up. “Is that mandatory?”
A shadow crossed Wendy’s face — old pain, quickly smoothed. “No. Many of us experienced things in the Witch Cooperation Association that… made the idea of forced belonging difficult. It’s your choice entirely. Do you remember what the officer asked you at the checkpoint?”
Thylane nodded. The questions had seemed random, almost baffling.
“We ask those of every witch at entry. Magic means capability for harm at a scale ordinary people don’t have. Once you’re confirmed as no threat to Neverwinter, you can live anywhere in the city without restriction. There’s also the Sleeping Spell — founded by escaped witches, led by His Majesty’s sister. Or nothing at all. I’ll help you settle regardless.” Wendy smiled. “The point is what life you want. Not what ability you have.”
She paused. Then, quietly: “If you don’t mind — will you tell me your past?”
The room held the question for a moment.
Thylane felt something she had learned not to trust: the pull toward a person who felt safe. She had trusted people before and been wrong. But she had also been wrong by failing to trust, and that error had cost her just as dearly. This woman with her red hair and her unforced warmth, who spoke of choice and didn’t lower her eyes when she said witch —
Even if it turned out to be illusion, she didn’t want to walk away yet.
She bit her lip. And began.
Before the awakening she had been an ordinary girl in an ordinary village. After it, the pattern that witches knew: banishment, hatred, pursuit. She’d heard about the Bloodfang Association as a rumor — a sanctuary, a safe harbor — and had crossed half a kingdom and survived the church’s dragnet to reach the Archduke Island and make contact.
What met her was a sale.
She had been sold three times before arriving at the master who saw the use in her ability. The “magic pill”: her power, applied to a physical object. She had never told the nobles she could infuse any object; she had let them believe pills were somehow special, which kept them from asking the obvious follow-up questions. Pain suppressed, pleasure extended, sensation amplified and held. The master had used her as an arrangement tool — loaning her to other nobles at parties, making alliances through shared indulgence. This was how she’d met Momo and learned that the Bloodfang Association had been selling witches systematically, that the “home for witches” was a joint enterprise between the association and the nobles who collected them.
One by one the witches stopped appearing at the parties. The church pressed into Wolfheart. Then she overheard the order: nobles were to surrender all witches to the church, or execute them privately.
She had listened to the forms of execution being described. She hadn’t slept for three days afterward.
When the church’s campaign tore the city open, she and Momo ran. Their escape method was simple and irrevocable: Thylane applied her ability to the food and drinks at the final party, held nothing back, and waited.
The nobles had been very enthusiastic about the food.
People could die of extreme pleasure, it turned out, as readily as they died of pain. Those who survived were too spasmed and dreaming to raise an alarm. The girl-slaves scattered into the streets, and the guards were too busy being confused to stop anyone.
The two of them had walked out into the night and never looked back.
Wendy pulled them both against her without speaking.
“You don’t despise us?” Thylane asked. Her voice was barely there. “For what we did, or what was done to us —”
“Why would I?” Wendy’s voice was soft and absolutely steady. “The church treated me that way too. I have no cause to blame the victims. The blame goes exactly where it belongs.”
“But our abilities — they could bring harm. If we stay, and someone takes the pill —”
“That isn’t your decision alone to make.”
“You don’t understand what it does,” Thylane pressed. “Once you’ve felt it, you want more. It consumes. Even kings —”
“Our king,” Wendy said, and paused as though choosing the description carefully, “is an eccentric but genuinely decent person.”
Thylane blinked. “An eccentric… but decent person?” She had never heard a king described that way. She wasn’t sure she had ever heard a king described in terms that made him sound like a human being.
“He doesn’t conform to expectations in any direction. You can’t project normal onto him — there’s no point. So there’s also no point in worrying about how a normal person would react.” Something in Wendy’s voice changed, becoming quieter, more careful. “He saved the witches from the Witch Cooperation Association precisely by being unlike anyone they’d expected.”
A silence.
Wendy looked toward Momo, whose rag was still tied across her forehead.
“You said ‘our abilities.’ Does Momo also —”
The pause lasted a long time.
Then Momo said: “My previous master didn’t want me to use my power. After I was awakened, he took my eye.”
Wendy had assumed the cloth covered a brand. The truth was worse.
Momo reached up and removed the cloth, and her hollow socket was there in the lamplight — scarred skin and absence where an eye should have been.
“They don’t know I kept my power. Removing the eye only cost me half my vision. Only the God’s Locket of Retribution could truly block what I do.”
Wendy understood the mechanism: only Extraordinaries could bind magic to the body’s tissues. Momo’s ability expressed through her sight — the eye was not the power, only the lens it operated through. Its loss was brutal collateral damage.
“They didn’t take it seriously at first,” Thylane said, her voice very low. “Until something happened. Then they took her eye and called her the Child of Hell.” She stopped. “She barely survived.”
Wendy touched the scarred socket with one finger. “What did you see?”
Momo looked at the floor. “A number.”
“What kind of number?”
“A countdown. It tells when you’ll die.”
The room was very quiet. Wendy needed a moment.
“The incident Thylane mentioned —”
“My prediction was accurate. The noble who had the smallest number died the following year.”
Wendy understood now why those nobles had mutilated a child rather than simply hide her away. No one wants to know how few years remain — especially men who had used those years as currency. A number hanging above your head, visible to a little girl you owned, was intolerable. So they had taken the eye.
“Is it always accurate?” Wendy asked, after a long pause. “What about accidents? Anything can happen.”
Both witches stared at her.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No.” Thylane shook her head slowly. “I just — I expected you to push Momo away. To ask if she’d used her power. To drive us out of the castle and tell us to stay as far as possible.”
Wendy laughed, genuinely, the laugh of someone who had also once expected nothing and been surprised. “A person isn’t their ability. The ability is only the beginning — the more we understand it, the better we can use it.”
Momo sat very still. “You think my ability could be… useful?”
“I don’t know yet. But His Majesty once told me that every ability is useful. It just takes some of them longer to find their shape.” Wendy looked at them both in turn. “If you join the Witch Union, you’ll start learning. Testing. Every newcomer begins there — understanding what they can do, then practicing it, then pushing the boundary. When you know enough, you upgrade.”
“Upgrade?” Thylane asked.
“You’ll see. The awakening is only the first door.” Wendy extended both hands, palms up. “So. Have you decided?”
Thylane and Momo looked at each other.
A long moment.
Then: “If you can accept someone like us —”
“Then we’d like to join.”
Their hands moved toward Wendy’s slowly — cautious, hoping — and then held.