Ruth Warburton - Witch Finder

‘We must get going.’ He stood, painfully, feeling his exhausted muscles complaining and his stiff joints cracking. His hurt leg screamed as he stood, but it was not broken – just stiff and sprained. He put out a hand and Rosa scrambled to her feet and stood brushing down her charred silk gown with a rueful face. ‘Where will you go?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, we can’t stay here.’ Luke looked at the sky and then the river. ‘The police will come soon. And Knyvet will be back.’

Rosa shivered.

‘He has everything now: Southing, the factories, the Chair . . . But not me. And he would kill me for that, if he found out I was still alive. I cannot go home. Can we go back to your uncle’s? To the forge?’

‘No.’ Luke shook his head. ‘I told you, I was sent to kill you – the price for failing was death. My death.’

‘So, your people are as barbaric as mine,’ she said softly.

‘Not William,’ Luke said. He swallowed against the pain in his smoke-scorched throat. ‘William loves me. But I can’t – I can’t make him choose between me and the Brotherhood. I must go my own way, alone now.’

‘So must I.’ She took his hand and a faint prickle of magic, like a flame, lit her face for a moment, like a ray of warmth in this dreary fog-muted dawn. ‘So we are not alone.’

Luke nodded.

They turned, and together they began to walk towards the rising sun.