Lord of Embers(The Demon Queen Trials #2)(28)

A cold wind whispered over me as we followed the road past a tall white meetinghouse with mullioned windows and crooked homes. I looked longingly at the warm light, wishing I could be inside somewhere.

A few women passed us, dressed in warm shawls and bonnets and carrying baskets. They eyed us warily.

A river curved to our right, leading to the south.

When we were alone, I whispered, “Where do we find him?”

“In the old Osborne woods,” he said quietly.

I swallowed hard. That was where Mom had died.

As we walked, the cold bit into my toes, and my teeth chattered loudly. “We have coins. We might need some warm soup or something on the way.”

“I know a place. Keep your voice down.”

I was already starving again, and my stomach rumbled.

We walked for what seemed like ages in the cold—past farms, a church, a cemetery with mossy stones and hollow-eyed skulls glaring at us, past horse-drawn carts. A few people nodded and said, “Good morrow.”

When we reached a rocky hill, I knew we’d reached Salem Town.

There was Gallows Hill, where they’d hanged nineteen people on a rocky ledge. Now, in modern Salem, it overlooked a parking lot behind a pharmacy.

But I was in the grim Salem, where one of the bodies still hung at the end of a rope, a macabre warning to others.

The woman’s long gray hair hung down in front of her face, and her feet swayed over the earth. Her body looked stiff and gray, her fingers bony. Lesions covered her skin, probably from her time spent in jail.

My throat tightened at the sight of her, and a miasma of sorrow rose, choking me. Her family must have watched her die.

Never had I wanted to get away from a place so badly.

Orion kept walking along, the wind whipping his silver hair and long cloak. I wasn’t sure if he was hurrying away from the corpse or if he simply wasn’t interested.

I rubbed my hands together, blowing on them to try to warm them.

My breath clouded around me, and I walked faster to keep pace with Orion. The frozen earth chilled my feet through the soles of my thin leather boots.

By the time we reached the famous House of Seven Gables, right on the water, my body was half numb. A stark, gothic mansion loomed over the Atlantic, a deep brown building that was nearly black. The multipaned windows and sharp peaks gave it a witchy appearance, and the iron-gray ocean glittered on the other side of it. Smaller houses surrounded a town square. Here, vendors stood by market stalls, selling vegetables and baked goods.

Just in front of the mansion, a man and a woman hung in the stocks, their heads and arms trapped in wooden openings. It must be an uncomfortable position for them to hold—bent over, necks crooked. A sign at the base of the stocks marked them as .

forn icators

Mud clumped their hair and coated their hands.

“Whore!” someone shouted from a window.

The woman winced like she’d been hit with a rock.

Of course, the Jack Corwins of this world had always existed, hadn’t they?

I tried not to stare at them, but the woman glanced at me from under a curtain of filthy hair, her face etched with misery.

Could fornication be worth this punishment? Depended on the guy, I supposed.

As we crossed behind them, I grimaced at the sight of their bare backs, covered in dried and frozen blood where they’d been whipped.

They were naked from the waist down, blood dried in stripes on their skin.

Orion turned to me, looking bored. “We can eat there.”

“What?” The comment was jarring, given the gruesome scene before us. “Orion,” I whispered, “does this stuff not bother you?”

He glanced at the flogged couple like he’d just realized they were there. “I thought you were hungry. Follow me.”

He led me to a wooden building. A gray sign above the door was marked with a picture of a cauldron. As soon as we entered, the smell of food made my mouth water. I surveyed a hall of dark wood, with wooden beams that crossed the ceiling. A large iron pot bubbled on the hearth, and a few people sat at wooden tables sipping beer. Others gathered at a wooden bar in the center of the room. The warmth was .

gloriou s

Silence fell over the tavern, and everyone turned to look at us—men, women, children. I think even the cat on the bar turned to stare. But the cozy atmosphere drew me in, with firelight that danced back and forth over the room and steam rising from the hearth. After a few breaths, everyone turned back to their food and drinks.

Orion crossed to a table by the window. Steam clouded the glass, and I wiped my hand across it to peer outside. From here, we had a view of the town square. It was hard not to stare at the misery of two people in the stocks, but that was the point, wasn’t it? Control people by making the punishments public. Extra humiliating, and it also kept everyone else in line. No one wanted to be in their situation.

It took me a moment to realize that Orion was speaking to someone else, and I snapped out of my dark daydream to see a young woman standing at our table. Her hair was covered with a white cap, and she stared at Orion with wide blue eyes. “And why would you be going to Osborne, Goodman Ashur? I never set foot in the place.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “Osborne is full of evil magic and fornicators. The demon city is there, and I pray that they stay inside. But they say a devil lurks in those woods. They say he escaped in the Great War, that the binding spells do not touch him. You should not go near that place, I pray you, lest you die.”