“Clearly you do,” Lina snarled, surveying his gaunt face. “I could get you the remedies you need.” Her eyes lifted behind him. “I’m sure your crew hiding in the shadows looks as dreadful as you. If you help me, I can get you aid.”

“The winter was hard,” he muttered with a dismissive wave of his hand. “We’ll be fine come summer. We’re fae. We don’t need brown witches to heal.”

Bri frowned at his sunken in eyes. “Your face says otherwise.”

“Augustus may have no money, but he has magic like I’ve never seen and the Witches’ Glass to boot.” He shook his head, looking at them like they were the delusional ones. “Just because Renwick Vostemur broke his curse, doesn’t mean Norwood isn’t a threat to all of Okrith still. He could curse the witches anew for all we know.”

“He’d need witches with weakened minds to do that,” Bri said, her gut clenching at the memory of the cursed blue witches in the North, the Forgotten Ones. They were the perfect group to prey upon, their minds shattered from years of torture in the blue witch fortresses. There wasn’t any other group like it—a collection of witches too far gone to fight off a mind-controlling curse. “The blue witches are safe now; who could he possibly use?”

“I can think of a few.” The king chuckled, wine dribbling down his tunic as he gulped back his drink. He passed the empty goblet blindly behind him to be refilled. “All I know is he has a powerful witch stone and a witch who knows how to use it on his side.”

Lina inched forward. “Who is this witch?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You claim to hear the secrets whispered throughout the realm and you don’t know?” Bri reminded him as she chucked him a pouch of coins.

He caught it one-handed, sharp and fast, despite his glassy drunken eyes—a reminder that a monster existed beneath the surface, one that had killed many people.

He mused at the coin purse and then extended out his hand. Rolling her eyes, Carys tossed him another coin pouch. He weighed the second bag in his hands.

“I don’t know her real name,” he said. “But they call her Baba.”

“Baba?” Carys gasped. “As in, a High Priestess?”

“They say Balorn’s witches were just a swarm of ants to Augustus,” the king said, pocketing his coins with a satisfied smirk. “He had a witch of sound mind helping him too.”

“Who are they?” Lina pushed. “What kind of witches? Where are they from?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You’ve seen that purple smoke.” His eyebrows lifted as he flashed an unsettling grin. “The violet witches are back.”

Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

Baba. The word whirled through Bri’s mind. How many violet witches were there still in existence?