A snippet of the first chapter! Still hasn't been edited...

There was nothing quite like being glared at by a hundred witches who wanted your heart on a platter and your head on a spike. Looks of disgust, looks of contempt…I’d endured them all throughout my nineteen years, but none came a league close to the loathing burning in each of their eyes like wildfire. 

Well, most of their eyes. The dark pair assessing me from the plateau of the box glittered with something far more sinister. Cruel amusement, fading only when one of her subordinates passed her a hefty leatherbound tome, wrinkled with age.  

Of course, the witches had defeated such an enemy when shedding away their mortal skins in favour of one tougher, one blessed with the subtle glow of immortal youth. But surveying them all now, the identical sneers twisting their lips…I wondered if excessive age was not a virtue, but a vice. Wisdom mutilating into arrogance.

Agnes was proof enough of that. She’d oozed arrogance since our introduction a bare hour ago ; it exposed itself in the curve of her smile, the predatory gleam of her eyes, the drag of her serrated crimson nails down the book’s black leather.

“Reyna dear,” the high witch crooned, voice cloyingly sweet, “do you have any inkling what this book might be?” 

I cast the tome a brief, dismissive glance, and lifted my eyes to Agnes’s. 

“I know it.” There wasn’t a soul on the better side of The Veil that didn’t. “The Book of Shadows.” 

My own research on the subject told me that while each witch had their own private, personalised make this mammoth lying before Agnes was the official document. Overflowing with both the spells and curses that had intimidated an entire race into meek submission, and the elixirs that could save the very same race from death and disease. 

Not that the witches would find it in their hearts to do such a thing. 

“Indeed.” She cocked her head, and the motion would’ve passed as inquisitive if not for its feline quality. No - a challenge was what it was. “And are you aware of any of the rules your king imposed on us?” 

Dread curdled my gut as it hit me where this was leading. 

“A couple.” I squared my shoulders. “There’s only one I can recall fully. Section five, I believe? That any situations not specified in the sections provided be brought to the king’s attention immediately in the event of them occurring.”

A ghost of a smile distorted Agnes’s lovely face. 

“One of the last rules Kostinus decreed,” she mused. “To send off one of the flares they’d kindly granted us atop Ivory Tower and wait for aid.” 

Without looking behind her, Agnes asked in a voice like cool midnight silk, “Is the Ivory Tower the one that crumbled to the ground nine moons ago?” 

I wasn’t surprised that no one immediately replied. If I gave the incorrect answer about the text we’d been reading to my mother, additional work was the worst I’d receive. With Agnes, the high witch, I had a feeling the punishment would be far more severe. 

Bunny’s turquoise eyes widened in alarm beneath a mane of pale blonde hair. “You’re thinking of the Left Turret, Vala.” 

“Of course.” Agnes sighed. “I suppose that means we could send a flare.” 

Hope took root within my chest. I’d set out to Cailleach with the intention of bargaining but being here, infinitely despised…an ‘accidental’ dagger to the heart seemed far more imminent. A flare could act as my safety net. 

“There’s only one issue,” Agnes continued, and my heart dropped to the floor. “You see, we found ourselves incredibly bored a number of decades ago. Sick to the teeth of books and gardening and groaning…you get the picture. So we secured for ourselves a rare piece of entertainment.”

Nausea twisted my stomach into knots, and for the first time it had nothing to do with the little food I’d had in the recent nightmare of days. 

Agnes must have seen the devastation scrawled on my face for she made a show of pity. “A shame, isn’t it? Foolish me.” 

I dared a fleeting glance upwards to Bunny. Perhaps it made me a fool to hope I’d find some sort of support from the witch. After all, she’d likely been instructed by Agnes to put my frayed nerve endings at ease this morning, rather than out of any genuine kindness. But I hoped anyway - no, prayed, a buried part of her was still human. 

But as soon as our eyes locked, the conflict warring on her face was replaced by a bland play of interest. Just like that, I realised I had nothing more to lose.