Page 122 of Ravenous

They’d failed to consider one important fact: She was only half a witch.

Ditch burned to dominate. To raze. To rule every denizen in the Skein.Enrage not a demon.Much less one sprung from sulfur to frolic with serpents. Fate had battered Ditch; her demonic grudge was againsteverything.

She could never be a healer with her destroyer’s heart.Hell spreads.Her influence would as well. She would rule this place as her personal queendom. All of it.

I will keep it safe.

But only in the palm of my hand.

She wouldn’t heal it. She wouldstealit.

Movement drew her gaze. A giant spider clambered by then, leg fur shimmying, his spinneret full and ready for action. “Hello, Webmaster,” she murmured. “Looking glorious as ever.”You too belong to me.She’d made sure to exclude wildlife from her traps—

Wait.She stared out the window. Blinked.Where in Hecate’s name are my traps?The wards she’d woven were gone. Weeks of work stripped bare.

Rosewyn. Had to be.

Stupid. Shortsighted. Dangerous.

Was Meera involved? Had they compromised anything else? The containment spells in Craigdúr—

A sudden blow smashed into her chest and drove her to her knees.

She sprang up, searching for an attacker, but the tower was empty. The blow had come through magic.

Straegan. He’d hit the enchanted bars, and the impact had blasted into Ditch like a siege ram.

What in the name of every dark goddess was happening in Craigdúr? Gritting her fangs, she clamped down on the spell, horns and tail sparking wildly. She felt another run at the bars, and then another, as Straegan hammered at his cage, a rabid piston.

Panting, she scanned the grounds around the keep. All that work sabotaged. All her traps.

Rosewyn, you fool.

The coven was now exposed to every creature in the Skein, many already sliding toward a murderous frenzy.

Ditch felt the surge rippling across the land—howling through the moors,rattling the seacoasts, unsettling the mountain clans, and stirring the demon borders to the south.

One witch’s pain. And the whole Skein was slipping into madness.

Chapter 47Inkletter

“Oh, good, you’re here,” Nadje said as she swept into her room, still in her maid’s uniform. The corridor’s gloom pooled behind her, chasing her into the dim candlelight. “I’ve got wild news and a job for us, which I could’ve told you about sooner if you would share your symbols—”

She stopped dead.

Her eyes flicked over his face, his posture—then down the solid, unmistakable muscle that came from fresh sex.

“You’ve fed,” she said, the words frosted sharp enough to cut.

“Yes.” Ink’s gaze took in her flushed cheeks, the stain of new strength humming beneath her skin, her lips darkened to a bruised coral. “Apparently, so have you.”

He’d known her diet of animal blood and mead couldn’t last forever. He’d known the time of her feeding neared. But he hadn’t expected his reaction. The idea of another throat beneath her mouth hit him like a mortal fever, heavy and nauseating.

She crossed her arms. “You look so hale and fit that you must’ve had a feast. And here I thought you were closeted away,studying.” Her tone was cool silk wrapped over some jagged emotion. Almost jealous.

His chest gave an answering twist—unwelcome, unbidden.

But he forced the feeling down. “A strange energy is gripping the Skeintonight, infecting immortals with anger. Moon madness, spell work, I don’t know. I’m untouched, but I came to check on you.”