Page 92 of A Time of Witches

She was powerful.

And she could do this.

She hadn’t realized she’d started to cry until the wind brushed her damp cheeks.

In this world, where she had never felt like she belonged, she understood now that she was exactly who she was supposed to be.

And perhaps if she hadn’t been comfortable in her own skin, if she hadn’t been picked at for being strange, if Mama hadn’t ridden her like she did, maybe then the rightness of this place—of Lilith understanding her own power—wouldn’t stretch so soul deep.

“I can do this,” Lilith declared aloud.

But first, there was something calling to her—a thread pulling at her that she needed to follow, and she headed back to the manor.

Chapter Forty-Three

Sybil

Sybil hobbled back to the prison, trying to push the sounds of Jacinda’s weeping from her ears. The bag of food strapped to her knee made Sybil’s gait off-kilter, but the stiffness of her abused body masked the awkwardness.

By the time she returned to the cell, Edith was gone.

“They took her not long after you were called away,” the pretty young woman said.

Sybil thanked her and the woman’s nostrils flared. “Did you confess?” she hissed. “I smell ale upon your breath.”

Sybil shook her head. “My sister came to me.” She beckoned the young woman to follow her to the corner, where the little girl sat in the shadows. “She brought me food.” Sybil spoke in an almost silent whisper. “Sit before me.”

The young woman complied, blocking Sybil from the view of others. Sybil opened the bag and handed a bit of chicken and bread first to the girl, then to the young woman, sharing before she could yield to the temptation to keep the food and drink for herself. Hopkins and his mercenaries could do what they wanted to her body, but she refused to allow prison to change the woman she was inside.

“Keep your food for yourself.” The young woman shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “You know nothing of me.”

Sybil pulled from her memory, recalling the guards as they spoke. “Your name is Margery, is it not?” Sybil nudged a hunk of meat toward her. “Eat.”

Margery pursed her lips. “I confessed. My soul is damned.”

The little girl’s eyes widened as she shoved chicken into her mouth.

“I know you confessed,” Sybil replied. “I smelled the ale on you the same as you did me just now.”

“I didn’t do it for food.” The young woman sagged back. “They threatened my husband’s commission if I did not confess. All he has ever wanted in this world is to be a soldier. I couldn’t take that from him. I love him too greatly.”

Her voice choked off, and she cleared her throat before continuing. “It was my steadfast love for him which condemned me to be here from the first.”

Chill bumps crawled over Sybil’s skin. If they exploited love for confessions, how soon might Jacinda’s name be brought up again. Especially after she had been inside the prison, using her gifts.

“Jacob Neech denounced me.” Bitterness hardened Margery’s lovely features. “He waited until my Bran had left with the other Parliamentarians and he set upon me, bade me take him as my lover. I told him I would take no lover. Day after day, he came to me, until he refused to hear my reply.”

Sybil’s fists tightened at her side at the familiarity of the woman’s pain, of the helplessness from the brutish nature of some men.

“I would never lie with another man,” the young woman said vehemently. “I am no cavalier.”

Everyone knew the cavaliers, the women whose husbands were at war and so they assumed a masculine role. Not only at home, but in pubs, consuming strong ale, speaking like sailors, and taking men to bed.

No one would ever mistake Margery for one of those women.

“I knew he would be by again,” she continued. “I…I had hidden a knife in my basket, you see.”

“You killed him?” Sybil asked.