“So the baron kept his promise, and found it no hardship to do so. His wife invited them to small dinner parties or musical evenings, and slowly the witches, who had kept to themselves because they’d believed they wouldn’t be accepted, became part of the community, and they repaid the friendship they’d found by using their gifts to help the farmers and villagers.

“During that year, whenever the baron asked his brother about why the man had insisted on helping the witches, the only answer was, ‘We must never forget who calls them kin.’

“One year after the baron paid his first courtesy call to the Ladies in the Old Place, his brother handed him a sheet of paper with a poem written on it. It was the only poem he had written on paper since he’d returned home. It was the last one he ever put to paper.”

Donovan refilled his glass with whiskey, then sighed. “That poem has been handed down to the heirs in my family since that day. The original paper has been carefully preserved, and is brought out long enough for the heir to make a careful copy in his own hand, which the ruling baron checks against the original to be sure no word is lost or changed.” He hesitated. “I married Gwenn because I fell in love with her and wanted to be her husband. Before her family consented to the marriage, we made a journey, and I learned what my great-great-uncle meant about never forgetting who calls my lady wife kin.”

As he sipped his whiskey, Liam noticed the slight tremble in Donovan’s hand.

“Gentlemen,” Donovan said in a hushed voice, “I tell you plainly, the eastern barons are fools to have allowed the Inquisitors into our land. They are fools to have done so much harm. Even if they gather an army and defeat us, they will lose. Because the day will come when they kill the wrong witch, and then…And then may the Great Mother have mercy on us all.”

No one spoke while whiskey glasses were refilled again.

Perhaps it was because he was no longer quite sober that Liam asked, “What does the poem say?”

Donovan stared at some distant point the rest of them couldn’t see. Finally, he recited:

“Do not wake the Mother’s Hills.

Do not break the quiet dreaming of

The ones who walk there.

If roused, their wrath can

Shake the world,

And men will not see the

Light of day again.”

“Mother’s mercy,” Liam whispered just as someone rapped softly on the dining room door.

Breanna entered, followed by Gwenn.

“Please pardon the intrusion, gentlemen,” Breanna said, “but I—”