Page 52 of A Time of Witches

If so, she only had…

She reached for her phone and glanced at the screen, reflecting a few minutes past midnight.

The white numbers displayed over her background picture of Amara: Saturday, August 24.

Three days.

Three days to save Sybil—if the dream was indeed a warning.

You must help her.

Or you will cease to exist.

Chills skittered over Lilith’s flesh.

Three days to save Sybil.

And three days to save herself.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sybil

A moldy piece of bread landed in the rushes. Sybil snatched up the chunk before a lump of brown fur could fall upon it.

Man and beast alike starved in this prison.

The women in the next cell had been given their daily ration of stale bread.

Sybil had not appreciated that meager allowance until she was deprived.

The women had been separated into several cages. Hers was specifically for those who had not confessed, an attempt to lure them into admission through starvation.

This was Sybil’s fourth day with no food, and Edith’s fifth. The only sustenance allowed was a small cup of ale once a day, sour and teetering on rancid. Still, they gulped greedily with a thirst they feared would never be quenched.

They had not yet received their cup that day, and the burn in Sybil’s throat was more visceral than even the gnawing ache in her stomach.

The crust trembled in her hand. A gift from a stranger in another cell, a fraction of an already pitiful ration, tossed behind a guard’s turned back.

Sybil faced the rear of the cell and shoved the food into her mouth.

The bread was stale and sharp against her gums as she tried valiantly to chew. Her teeth gnashed in vain while the bread absorbed the scant moisture in her body, turning into a wad of thick paste that stuck to the roof of her mouth.

Bit by bit, she managed to swallow the lump where it lodged midway down in her chest.

“Oy,” a guard shouted.

Another crust of bread landed in Sybil’s cage, tossed by one of the imprisoned men.

“Who did this?” The guard reached for the bread, but a rat seized it out from under his hand. The guard screamed with a shrillness that set a few of the men chuffing with mirth.

He glowered at them, assuming himself mocked, face purpling with humiliation beneath his gray hair. A scar bisected his right eyebrow from some long-ago fight likely fueled by his short temper.

“Do you find me amusing?” He unlocked the cell and whipped his cudgel about, catching an old man on the back of the head. The man cried out and held the injury as he scuttled into the shadows.

The other prisoners lurched away, too. All but Edward Morris, who sat against the wall, his stare fixed in a different time.

“Was it you?” the guard bellowed.