To me, Hereswith was home, beloved, even as it seemed to languish beneath summer’s final days. By late afternoon, when the sun began to set, the shadows from the Seren Mountains would reach us, and the breeze would smell of cold grass and smoldering wood and damp stone. Like old magic.

I never wanted to leave this place.

With each step I took from Mazarine’s demesne, the more my doubt began to simmer. By appearances, Hereswith felt idyllic and charming. But I began to wonder if the town was hiding something beneath its exterior.

I learned a vital lesson from Mazarine that day. One that made me vow that I would never trust appearances alone.

2

“What is Mazarine?” I asked Imonie the moment I returned home. She was exactly where I knew she would be—in the kitchen, preparing dinner. My father and I always ate well on new moon nights, just before the streets turned deadly. If it wasn’t for Imonie, the two of us would have been shriveled-up magicians with threadbare clothes and wounds that never healed properly.

She stood at the counter, peeling a mountain of potatoes. She was like a grandmother to me, although she was too young to be such a thing. She had never confessed her age, but I guessed she was in her early fifties. She was tall and trim and had threads of silver in her corn-silk hair, and while she rarely smiled, a few wrinkles touched the corners of her eyes.

“What do you mean?” Imonie asked, her attention devoted to her task. “Mazarine is a grumpy old woman.”

“No, she’s not.”

It must have been the tone in my voice.

Imonie stopped her peeling and met my gaze. “Did she threaten you, Clem?”

“No,” I said, despite the fact that there had been a moment when I’d felt afraid of her. When her gaze had met mine in the mirror.

“I’ve told you for years now to stay away from her.”

“She’s lonely and she pays me well. She also feeds me stories from the mountains.” I intently watched Imonie’s face, and I noticed how her brow furrowed. She longed to return to her ancestors’ home in the Seren Mountains.

“I could tell you the same stories,” Imonie said, and resumed her paring, viciously.

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because they fill me with sorrow, Clem.”

I fell quiet, feeling a twinge of regret. But in that silence, I thought of the mountain story she had told me often when I had begged her as a girl.