Dradus bowed low and backed out of the room, leaving Hayden alone with his thoughts once more. A dying nursemaid who had sought to unburden her soul in hopes of redemption had been an unexpected boon for him. Varn’s daughter and his dead aunt’s child. He wondered briefly whom she might resemble then shrugged the thought away. It mattered little. She was a child of Berberi and Castagher, and the means by which Hayden intended to extract just due from his neighbor.

CHAPTER THREE

The ancient fir that stood sentinel over Niamh’s grave had borne silent witness to a few of the spring and autumnal rituals the witch performed when she lived. Imogen thought it fitting the tree watch over her mother’s body where it lay buried beneath black earth and a mound of stones.

Niamh had died a week earlier, and the daffodils she so admired spread across the forest floor in a vast white and yellow tapestry. Imogen set a spray of the flowers atop the grave and bowed her head.

“It’s very quiet now, Mother. I miss you.”

As if in answer, a zephyr wind smelling of rye and apple blossoms blew across her shoulders, fluttering the tendrils of dark hair that had escaped her plait. A fanciful indulgence it might be, but she liked to think Niamh’s spirit lingered where her body rested, if only to greet Imogen when she visited the grave each day.

Some might think it strange that she came each afternoon to sit by the grave and talk to a pile of rocks, but Imogen didn’t care. Niamh had been her only companion her entire life, the one person who shared conversation with her. Her grief was still too fresh to give that up now, even if Niamh never replied.

Imogen fished in her apron pocket and pulled out the journal her mother had given her the night of her death. She kept it with her these days, reading it, as promised, during spare moments between chores and in the evening just before bed. The journal revealed a Niamh Imogen had never known or imagined.

The ground beneath her was dry and sun-warmed as she sat down cross-legged next to the grave and removed her gloves. Imogen liked to read here best, with the spirit of her mother close by and her memories revealing themselves in a flowing scrawl of faded ink.

Recipes for elixirs occupied the pages alongside lists of spells and commentary on the politics of the Berberi court. The spells and recipes were familiar. After hours of lessons and singing repetitious songs with ingredients and chants as lyrics, she knew them by heart.

But it was her mother’s observations of the vagaries of the aristocrats that captured Imogen’s interest. Astute, observant Niamh; she’d been less than impressed with the shenanigans perpetrated by spoiled, entitled nobility.

Imogen had gone wide-eyed at the discovery that Niamh had once been the pampered mistress of King Varn, and she blushed as she read those entries. Niamh waxed poetic and graphically about Varn’s physical prowess.