Prologue: The End. And Also the Beginning.
The Queen created the word “witch” and cursed my people in one breath. And in the next she condemned Hecate, my Hecate, to die.
We had been walking through the square when the Queen’s guards grabbed her. Hecate went with them, even though she was stronger. Even though she could have stopped them with a breath, a whisper, or a turn of her wrist. She let them lead her to the square and tie her up. She let them start a fire beneath the pyre. She kept her lips sealed. She did not move a muscle in protest. She let them take her from me. From all of us.
From me especially.
Hecate was the most powerful of us. She was the Future of Les Soeurs, my mentor, and sister to us all. But I didn’t know she was my mother until the moment before her last breath.
When I could move again, I touched my face. It was wet. I realized that I was crying. I had never seen another member of the Entente cry—not Hecate on the pyre, not Galatea as she was watching her. But I was crying now.
I should have known she was my mother, but Hecate had always been so powerful that her wishes were opaque to me—like she never wanted or felt anything other than what she was doing at the time. But as she burned, her eyes met mine. The flames curled around her. She should have been screaming—instead, she spoke to me in a voice I could only hear in my head.
I wish I’d told you, Farrow. But it is not our way.
I tried to scream, to get to her, but I was paralyzed where I stood. As a man dressed in the livery of the Queen’s guard read off a list of offenses, saying things like “malevolent sorcery against the Queen” and “treasonous inciter,” my mouth would not open; my legs would not move. I didn’t know if Hecate was using what power she had left to stop me from fighting when she should have been fighting to stay alive.
Don’t fight.
Suddenly Galatea, my older sister and the Past of Les Soeurs, appeared in the center of the square.
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