Page 18 of Reign

Adder kissed my neck, making me squirm. “You smell like copper,” he said, sniffing my skin.

Dog growled from behind us.

Adder stumbled backward, releasing me. “The Black Shuck,” he stammered.

Dog bared her teeth, her red eyes glowing like rubies as she edged closer.

“Witch,” Adder gasped.

Before he could taint my skin any further, I swung the pail into the air. It struck his head with a sickening thud. Adder staggered back, tripping over his own drunken footing as he collapsed beside the stone well.

By the time I could process what had happened, my feet were running away. The village melted into a blur as I hastened to my front door.

A shriek echoed throughout Green Vale.

“The Black Shuck!” a man shouted as I threw myself through the door, slipping on the straw-covered floor.

“What’s going on?” Henry mumbled, stumbling out of his chamber.

Mother appeared beside me, helping me back onto my feet. Her eyes fell on my bloodstained chemise.

She peered through a crack in the curtain. “Go to sleep,” she demanded.

Without a question, Henry shuffled back to his bedstead.

I quivered like the last autumn leaf, clutching the barren branch it had always known as home.

“She saw,” I whispered, trembling uncontrollably. “She was going to have us killed.”

Mother gently shook me. “Who?”

“Magic,” a cry echoed through the Wetlands.

“Avice is dead,” I said, glancing out of the window, fearing I’d see a group of villagers with pitchforks coming for me.

Mother pulled me away from the pane. “You promised me you wouldn’t venture into the forest,” she said, her voice panicked.

“Are they going to kill me?” I pressed.

“I don’t—you need to vanish.”

“No,” I pleaded, desperate for life to return to how it had been that morning.

“How else will you explain how you survived, and she didn’t? The Lord will claim that you’re a witch, and you’ll die,” she said, hastily unfastening my kirtle. “Get changed into Finn’s clothes. You cannot be recognized, ever again.”

Mother ran into my brothers’ bedchamber, returning with my disguise. The moment my bloody garments were off, she threw them onto the fire. Smoke plumed from the hearth as the cotton and blood turned blacker than coal.

Once I was dressed, Mother grabbed a knife. She took my hair in her hand and, with one slice, cut the lengths. My once flowing locks now sat inches above my shoulders.

“You’ll get less trouble if people believe that you’re a man,” she said, placing the blade in my palm. “Promise me you’ll act like one until you’re safe?”

I nodded, tucking the knife into my sock. “Where should I go?”

“Head to the Walled City. No one will find you there. Live your life as a freeman.”

“I don’t want to go. I want to stay here—”

“You either go and live, or stay and doom us all to the gallows before sunrise.”