QUEST WORLD

DRAGON'S BREATH WHISKEY

WHEN SELA HAD SAID that they'd meet an augurwitch in Arderis, Tan had envisioned someone like Sela, but shadowier, as augurwitches tended to be. Draped in darkness and hallow-cheeked like they had one foot in the afterlife.

But he had not expected Osra to be someone so . . . old.

Hedgewitches got old. Seawitches got old. But an augurwitch? They were so feared and so powerful that Dynwar's rewards for their capture or deaths were too much for any adventurer to resist.

So for one to have gotten as old as Osra was impressive.

And absolutely, bone-deeply terrifying.

Amelie, completely unaware of the danger in Osra's very being, stepped up to Sela and touched her arm. "We can give you two a few minutes alone, if you need—"

"I'm ready," Osra cut in.

Amelie gaped at the augurwitch.

"You're the one who used magic in Morine," said Osra, her voice flat. Not emotionless; just veiled. This was a woman who gave nothing away for free. "I felt you, as all magic users did."

"You . . . you knew I'd come to you?" Amelie frowned.

That earned a small, lifeless smile from Osra. "I am, after all, an augurwitch. Give me some credit, child."

She reached out and plucked a hair from Amelie's head.

Amelie jumped.

"You know why we've come to you, then," Sela said. "I wouldn't have risked it if it wasn't important, but—"

"Yes. It's quite important. And I have it all prepared." Osra looked at Amelie with something like softness. "Your friends can go down to the tavern and have themselves a tankard while the magic works, hm? Give us those minutes alone."

Amelie nodded, rubbing her scalp. She glanced at Tan, who felt the focus of the otherwise empty hall shift.

"Prince Thertan," Osra said in that void of a voice. "Princess Imina. Locks of your hair."

Imina stepped forward without a hesitation and offered her head. Osra fingered a strand and pulled.

Everyone turned to Tan. Osra's green eyes screwed into his face. If there had been any compassion in her features before, now there was nothing, a cold, barren expanse of ice and jagged disdain that set Tan on edge.

He fought not to reach for a weapon. But what good would it even do?

His mind whirled. Osra had known Amelie was coming. She'd survived this long. She knew who he and Imina were—children of the man who kept her life in danger. She knew what Tan especially could do to her, famed adventurer that he was, and her lifetime of careful hiding from others like him was undone by Sela bringing them here.

But Osra wasn't afraid.

Which meant she had ways of silencing Tan, or stripping his memory, or any of the other vile and horrifying things augurwitches could do that made them such valued prizes.

Tan swallowed, hard, and couldn't stop himself from fisting his hand around his sword hilt.

Another hand landed atop his.

"Bad idea," said Steel, and the unexpectedness of the squire staying his blade broke Tan out of his life-or-death panic.

He swallowed again and nodded his thanks at Steel, who removed his hand from Tan's slowly, as if worried Tan might be tricking him and whip his sword out to decapitate Osra.