The Year of the Witching(51)

But Immanuelle had seen, and despite her oath to Ezra, it wasn’t easy to forget it.

That evening, Glory and Honor had retired to their beds early, sick with a summer flu. For a while, Immanuelle and the Moore wives stayed awake to tend to them. But after the girls drifted off into the fitful sleep of fever, they too retired to their respective chambers for the night.

With everyone asleep, and the farmhouse quiet, Immanuelle returned to the pages of her mother’s book. This had been her ritual every night since Ezra’s formal investiture as the Prophet’s heir. She turned to her favorite drawing in the book—the portrait of her father, Daniel Ward, that Miriam had sketched all those years ago.

Now that the plague was over, she felt she had time to mourn her father in a way that she never had before. She’d always lived alongside Miriam’s memory, having grown up in the house of her childhood, but it was different with Daniel. He had never been fully real to her in the way that Miriam was . . . until that evening, weeks ago, when she’d first read her census account at the Haven and seen the witch mark beside her name, the same one that denoted the accounts of so many Wards who’d come before her.

And while a part of her desperately wanted to keep her promise to Ezra and put the past behind her, an even greater part of her wanted to understand the truth of who and what she was. She wanted to know her kin in the Outskirts, and if they suffered from the same temptations she did. She wanted to understand why she was so compelled by the Darkwood, why the witches first gave her Miriam’s journal, why they chose to use her blood as an offering to spawn that horrible plague. Perhaps it was just her pride, but try as she might, she couldn’t resign herself to the life she’d led before. She wanted answers and she knew where to find them: in the Outskirts, with the kin she’d never known.

The only thing that kept her from pursuing answers was her oath to Ezra. Still, she couldn’t help but feel that, of the two of them, she was the one made to sacrifice more. After all, Ezra knew who he was—son of the Prophet, heir of the Church—but the same couldn’t be said about Immanuelle. The question of who and what she was remained, and unless she delved into the mysteries of her past, it always would.

With a sigh, Immanuelle shut the journal and padded across the room to the window, climbed to a perch on its ledge, and brushed back the curtains. The moon was a crescent cut into the night sky. In the distance, the Darkwood was black and motionless, and even though there was no wind to whisper her name, Immanuelle could still feel its call. The weeks of denial and repression still weren’t enough to silence it. Staring at the trees, she wondered if she would ever be free of that temptation. Or if the Darkwood’s thrall was as intrinsic to her as the Sight was to Ezra.

Maybe she didn’t have a choice. Was it foolish of her to think that she did?

A dull ache throbbed in her stomach, and Immanuelle startled to attention. It took her a few long moments to realize what it was: the pains of her bleed. Sure enough, when she raised the skirts of her nightdress and checked her undergarments, she found them wet and red, stained through.

Slipping off the ledge of her windowsill, Immanuelle left her bedroom and climbed down the attic steps. She crept into the washroom and took her basket of rags from the cabinet beneath the sink. Anna had showed her how to cut them so they’d be comfortable to wear but also thick enough to staunch her flow.

She fit them into her undergarments, then washed her hands in the sink. As she did so, she was conscious of how tired she looked in the mirror, her bloodshot eyes shadowed by dark bags. She was walking back to her room when she heard a sharp rapping on the back door of the farmhouse. It was midnight, far too late for visitors. But the knocking continued, its rhythm steady as a heartbeat.

Moving a hand to the wall, she slipped into the hallway and down the stairs, entering the front parlor. There, she found Glory standing in front of Martha’s armchair, her eyes closed.

Immanuelle relaxed then, as Glory had been known to stroll in her sleep. The girl wasn’t adventurous in her waking hours, but at night it wasn’t uncommon to find her roaming the halls in her dreams. The Moores locked the doors every evening, just to keep her from wandering into the woods.

“Glory.” Immanuelle put her hands to the girl’s shoulders, trying to shake her awake. She could feel the heat of fever burning through the fabric of her nightgown. “You’re walking in your dreams again. Will we have to tether your wrists to your headboard to keep you from wandering awa—”

Another crack. This one struck with the hollow sound of a bone breaking—and it had come from the kitchen.

Immanuelle’s hands fell from Glory’s shoulders. Following the sound, she eased through the front room, pausing to lift a heavy bookend off the hearth’s mantel. As she rounded the corner and entered the kitchen, she raised it high above her head, ready to strike whatever stranger had found their way into their home.

But there was no intruder.

Across the kitchen, standing in the shadow of the threshold, was Honor, her forehead pressed to the door. Her back arched as she threw herself forward, and her head struck the wood with a stomach-churning crunch. Blood streamed down the bridge of her nose.

Immanuelle broke forward, the bookend clattering to the floor.

Honor struck the door again, with so much force the windows rattled in their casings. Then Immanuelle was upon her, dragging the child away, crying for help. Honor lay in her arms, stiff and stoic, burning with fever, deaf to her cries.