Page 66 of Bad Witch

“H-how are you here?” she whispered urgently. “Are you even who you said you were? Or is it all some twisted game to you?”

I blinked down at her, scrambling for what to say, how much to share. “When I perform my coven’s duties, I am Matilda,” I said for her ears only as I crouched down. “When I’m here at the clinic, I’m Tempest.” I inspected her arm carefully. “I’m sorry if seeing me again is a shock⁠—”

“A shock? That’s putting it mildly. You killed my husband,” she hissed.

I went utterly still, her words slicing through me like a million blades. “I did what you asked me to. I did what was necessary to protect you and your children.”

She sniffed. “I’m not so sure anymore.”

I looked up at her. Her gaze darted around the room, avoiding mine. I took her hand, and she jumped again, but I was able to catch her eyes, and held them in my gaze. “I saw inside him. I saw what he wanted to do to you, and to those precious children. His magic had warped and taken him with it. What was done had to be done.”

Her gaze sharpened. “You say he had those thoughts, but what proof do I have?” Her lip trembled. “I thought you were someone…something special, but you’re not, you’re just like everyone else. I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

There was nothing I could say to make her believe me. She was too deep in her fear. “I’m going to set your fracture again now, okay?” She gave me a stiff nod, but again refused to look at me as I poured my healing magic into the fracture, a fracture caused by the male she was now apparently having second thoughts about. “I’ll just get a sling.”

“Everything good?” Mags asked as I joined her on the other side of the room.

“Yes, everything’s good. I’m almost done,” I said, feeling frozen to the bone. I took a sling off the shelf and headed back. Wendy watched me return, a look in her eyes that turned my blood cold. She didn’t believe I was Matilda, and she was terrified of me.

I folded and secured the sling around her neck. “Keep this on for at least two days. It’ll help prevent you from moving too much.”

She said nothing.

Magnolia walked out of the room.

I dragged a chair over from the side of the room and sat across from her, then held my hand above the break and continued to work on her. “For the sake of every female who may one day require my help, I’m asking that you please not tell anyone who I am, or what we did.”

“What we did?” she choked out. “What you did, you mean. You took him away,” she said on a sob. “We want him back. Bring him back.”

“I told you that it couldn’t be undone, Wendy. There is no bringing him back.”

“You murdered him, didn’t you? You murdered my husband. You took away the father of my children,” she said, her voice rising.

I had to nip this in the bud, now. An ache filled my chest. “I took away a male who planned to kill you. Who fantasized about torturing his own children. Whatever fantasy you’ve summoned to help you get through this, it’s just that. He was so consumed by dark magic when I got there, it had changed his physical appearance. When I found you, he’d broken five different bones in your body, beaten you, cut you, tortured you with foul magic, and your children were terrified and hiding in the garden. I did what had to be done.”

She blinked, and a tear streaked down her face. “No…” she rasped. “No, he wouldn’t⁠—”

I placed my hand on the side of her head and forced images into her mind. First, the children, cowering in the garden, then her, the way I’d found her, then finally, the awful things that had lived in her husband’s head. It was cruel and brutal, but she needed to see. I couldn’t let her sink into that fantasy and destroy everything that every Matilda before me had built. I couldn’t let her destroy our coven. Lives would be lost if someone stopped me from doing my job, innocent lives.

If you haven’t destroyed it already.

Wendy cried out and pulled away.

“That is the truth, and those were his thoughts. They came directly from him. You know it, deep down you know it.”

“I need to leave now,” she rasped.

I stood, giving her room. “This needs to be the end, Wendy. For your sake, for mine, and for every female living in the same hell you were, desperate for an escape.”

She nodded shakily and called out to her children. They ran over, and I watched them walk out, not knowing if she would keep my secret—or blow my world apart.

Chapter

Nineteen

Tempest

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