Rewrite That Witch
CH020 · Rewrite
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Chapter 20: Nightingale

“Please don’t be impulsive, Your Highness. I came to talk, not to hurt you.”

Roland’s hand was still on the door frame beside the knife. He could feel the vibration of it in the wood under his palm. He breathed, once, and turned around.

The woman was sitting on his bed with her robe drawn close and her hood up. The candlelight threw her shadow across half the wall behind her, enormous and still. He could not make out her face.

“Who are you?”

She rose and straightened her robe, then dropped to one knee in a formal noble bow, precise enough to have been practiced. “I have no given name. My sisters call me Nightingale.” She looked up. “I came to express the gratitude of the Witch Cooperation Association, Your Highness.”

The pattern on her gown caught the light — fine lines worked into the fabric, three triangles in parallel arrangement with an eye in the center. He had seen it before. On the coin Barov had shown him weeks ago. The Eye of the Holy Mountain. The insignia of the Witch Cooperation Association.

“You’re a witch.”

“Ha.” A quiet laugh, brief and genuine. “Your Highness is observant.”

He let out a long breath. Not an assassin. Not his siblings’ work. The relief settled in his chest like something released. “Why has the Witch Cooperation Association sent someone to a mining town in the northern borderlands? You’re too late in any case — if I had meant to execute Anna she would have been dead before you arrived.”

“I know.” Nightingale rose from her bow and, with the ease of someone entirely comfortable in a stranger’s bedroom, sat back on the bed. “If you had killed her, I would not have come to talk. The Association prefers not to interfere in royal succession or court affairs — not because we lack the ability to, but because it serves no one. Killing a prince would bring the kingdom’s full force down on us.” She folded her hands in her lap. “But I would have made an exception. Just so you know.”

“The witch is alive and well.”

“I know. As is the younger girl.” She nodded. “I’ve been here a week. I watched everything you did.”

A week. He turned this over. He had moved through this town for a week with a trained operative in it and his guards had noticed nothing. “My men found your camp in the forest,” he said carefully. “They followed the tracks north. Into the mountains.”

“The Association has its location.”

“In the mountains during the Months of the Demons.” He kept his voice even. “That’s where you’re planning to spend the winter.”

She didn’t confirm or deny it. Her silence was its own confirmation.

“I want to take Anna and Nana with me,” she said.

“No.” The word came out before he’d decided to say it. He made himself think. “They’re safe here. No one here will harm them. What would you offer them that—”

“Their own kind. A place where they don’t have to pretend to be something else. Companions who understand them.” Nightingale looked at him steadily. “The Association is their real home, Your Highness. A noble’s castle isn’t.”

He started to answer. She continued over him.

“There is another reason. Anna is close to adulthood.”

The word landed without context.

“For a witch,” Nightingale said, her voice shifting into something less conversational, “adulthood is the first crossing. Most witches awaken young — before their eighteenth year. Every year after awakening, on the anniversary of it, there is pain. Something in the body strains against what the body is becoming.” She paused. “It gets harder each year. The crossing — the year of true adulthood — is when the magic stabilizes. Becomes complete. Sometimes new abilities develop.” Another pause. “Many witches don’t survive it.”

He stared at her. “Anna is—”

“Seventeen. Perhaps a few months from crossing.” Nightingale’s voice had gone quiet and exact, the tone of someone giving a medical opinion. “If she were with the Association, surrounded by women who have already passed through it, her chances would be better. In a castle, alone — it is more dangerous than it needs to be.”

She pulled back her hood.

The candlelight found her face: golden hair that fell straight and unimpeded, a nose with a slight aquiline curve, eyes that caught light with the particular quality of someone who spent a great deal of time watching things without being seen. She was older than Anna, older than Nana, with a kind of presence that had nothing to do with youth. She was, without any honest argument against it, beautiful.

She looked at him. He was already sitting on the edge of the bed — he had crossed the room without deciding to, pulled by the simple intuition that she meant no harm — and they were close enough that when she reached out and touched his cheek, lightly, the gesture didn’t startle him.

“Everyone else who sees us,” she said, “has fear in their eyes. Even people who don’t hate us — the fear comes first.” Her fingers dropped. “In you I see only curiosity.”

He cleared his throat. “You’re changing the subject.”

“Yes.” She withdrew her hand, composed again. “I’m asking you to let them come with me.”

“I heard you the first time.” He turned the problem over. Anna and Nana, in the mountains, in winter, with demon beasts moving through the wilderness in all directions. A camp of witches hiding in an impassable mountain range, surviving on what they could carry. Against this: Border Town, a half-built wall, and a prince who could offer protection and food but could not offer the company of their own kind or survival coaching for the crossing Anna was approaching.

“The mountains in winter,” he said. “Clean water. Food. Shelter. You can guarantee all of that, in the Months of the Demons?”

Nightingale said nothing.

“Come here instead,” he said. “Bring the Association here. Winter in Border Town. When the Months of the Demons are over, you can go back to searching for the Holy Mountain.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “Your Highness — even if you trust us, your people don’t. If we were discovered, the Church would be here within the season.”

“If the witches help us hold off the demon beasts, the people will see what they actually are.” He leaned forward slightly. “Fear is a habit. It can be unlearned.”

She was quiet again. Then: “I cannot speak for the Association. And there is still Anna.”

“Let me ask her.”

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