He fed energy into his mate’s body until it began washing back at him. He stopped—and was very, very careful not to take any of that energy back into himself, in case some of it was not his. He’d done that once when he had been very young, and he’d felt as though he was going to turn into the Hunger that Devours. Except that he wasn’t hungry for flesh, not even human flesh.

He’d gone to his grandfather because going to his da would have been disastrous. It had taken days of the old man’s prescription of fasting and sweats to make Charles feel normal again.

“Gray witchcraft,” his da would have called it. “Poison” was what his grandfather had said. Charles just knew he never wanted to feel like that again.

Anna fell asleep with a happy sigh. Likely she’d have been asleep earlier if she hadn’t been hurting. Charles moved away from her, found a comfortable position, and sat cross-legged, hands loose, eyes closed, and sought balance as a precursor to binding the witchcraft away again. If Anna hadn’t been there, he’d have sung one of his grandfather’s songs. He used those songs to heal his spirit and cleanse his mind the way a shower cleansed his body.

He paused. Had that been what Anna had done when the Singer caught her? She had played a lament to the broken land—which is exactly how his grandfather would have begun to heal it. It was a way of connection, of opening up to the damaged spirit.

He examined his memories of the events in the amphitheater and decided that was probably what had happened. Anna, like most people, was mostly blind to the spirits in the world around her, which didn’t mean the reverse was true. A lesser musician might have simply been playing a folk song. But Anna didn’t play music that way. She had opened herself to her audience—and something had taken her up on her invitation.

He considered the amphitheater with its haunted atmosphere, and wondered if Anna’s actions had only been an accident. Brother Wolf had examined that recorder with all of their collective senses. He had discovered nothing that suggested it was anything other than a rather well-made instrument. But it had survived in the open air for months, even if it hadn’t survived Brother Wolf.

Music, he considered, as a trap. Had Anna picked up that recorder from her own impulse? Or had there been something more sinister at work?

His patrilineal witchborn magic had taken advantage of his distraction and was leaking out into the tent, seeping into the ground. Likely a real witch would have considered this a result of failing to contain their abilities. He understood the magic was curious and bent on exploration. He centered himself and began the process of coaxing it back.