Miss Marin turned back and flourished her arm. As Perfidy watched, more forms emerged from the mist, some stepping out from where they’d been hidden behind trees. There were six of them in total including the boy—seven if she counted Miss Marin. Four males, two females. Her eyes glossed over them, not really taking in any of their features at first glance.

“I’ve never heard o’ New Dawn,” Perfidy said, skeptical.

“That’s by design, actually,” Miss Marin said. “We’re not on any map, and we don’t allow just anyone into our fold.”

“Then why am I ’ere?”

“Because you’re special, Perfidy. More special than you could possibly understand.”

Perfidy snorted. “Ye sound like my ma. Loved that word—‘special’—but it’s jest a word. I have no family, no friends, no home. If that’s whut it takes to be considered special, I don’ want it, not any of it, thank ye very much.”

“Perfidy,” Miss Marin said slowly. “There is something you need to know before we go any further. Something your mother would never have been able to tell you because she wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

Perfidy shook her head. “My ma told me ever’thin’. So if ye think ye can paint her as sum sort o’ liar, ye’ve got anuther thing comin’.”

“She was protecting you, as any good mother would.”

“Aye, she always protected me, but I couldn’t protect her, could I?” Perfidy felt a fresh wellspring of tears bubble up, but she refused to allow them to spill over. “She died fer sumthin’ she didn’t do. She was no more a witch than I am.”

“Perfidy, can I ask you something?”

“Cain’t exactly stop ye, can I?”

The woman nodded thoughtfully, as if such an observation was filled with a scholar’s worth of wisdom, when, in Perfidy’s estimation, it was just obvious common sense. “What were you thinking as you fell from the tree just a few minutes ago?”

“Thinkin’? Um, this is gunna hurt sumthin’ fierce.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Look, lady, I don’ know whut ye want from me. All I know is this ‘New Dawn’ place isn’t where I wanna be, not if it’s a place plagued with killer eagles. Where’d they fly off to anyway? Did ye scare ’em away somehow?”

This time, it was the boy who spoke. Though he was still sweating profusely and trying to catch his breath, he managed to straighten up and puff out his chest. “That was my doing,” he said. “There weren’t any eagles, at least not any real ones.”

“Course there were. I saw ’em with my own two eyes. Bastards picked me up with their talons. Earned their reward when I strangled one an’ gouged the eyes o’ anuther, heh.”