It takes a moment for his words to set in.
“My stigma is gone?”
“Yes.”
I don’t know what to feel. Relief, maybe; my stigma is what made me a witch hunter, what tied me to Blackwell. Worry, perhaps; my stigma is what protected me, what kept me strong. Fear, certainly; because anything can hurt me now. Anyone can cause me pain. That frightens me more than I want to admit. Especially when I know what’s out there.
And who.
“Blackwell,” I blurt. “What happened to him? Is he alive?” I have so many questions, I don’t know where to start. “He had a lodestone; he used it to escape. But where did he go? What about the king? And Caleb—” I stop. It hits me in the chest, knocks the air out of me all over again. The last time I saw Caleb, he was dying.
Caleb is dead.
I press my hands to my face, against the tears that spring to my eyes. Nicholas falls silent, allowing me to grieve again for my friend who became my enemy, who I still love despite all of it.
“Blackwell escaped,” Nicholas says, finally, his voice gentle. “But he didn’t go far. He made it back to Greenwich Tower, injured but alive. From what we’ve been told, he reappeared at the masque shortly thereafter.”
“How?” I pull my hands from my face, look at Nicholas in disbelief. “I cut him in the face. With the Azoth. It was a terrible injury. I saw it. How could he just walk away from that?”
Nicholas shakes his head, the answer as obvious as it is obscure: There’s no telling what magic Blackwell used, what magic he is capable of.
“At midnight, Blackwell unmasked. Revealed himself, just as he told you he would. Said he was a wizard. Said he was a victim of Malcolm’s rules, that he was commanded to carry out laws he never believed in. That now he only wants what’s best for Anglia, and he’s the one to bring them the peace they desire.”
“Where was Malcolm—the king—during all this? Where was the queen?”
“Just before the unmasking, they were taken away. Blackwell had them sent to Fleet.”
“Is he going to kill them?” I don’t like Malcolm; he took a part of me I can never get back. But he was a victim of Blackwell as much as I was; so was the queen. I don’t want to see them die. Then it occurs to me. “Or has he already killed them?”
Nicholas shakes his head. “No. And he won’t, at least not while there’s no advantage in it. Because if he kills them now, it might make martyrs of them. It might create sides when right now, there are none. It might even incite an uprising. And Blackwell, of all people, knows what a disadvantage an uprising can be.”
“But—Blackwell is a wizard,” I say. “He lied to everyone. People can’t believe what he says now. They can’t be happy he’s king, can they? Surely someone is questioning him? Or protesting?”
Nicholas smiles then, that hard, bitter smile I’ve seen before.
“Blackwell dispatched the king and queen with ease, in front of the most influential people in Anglia. Not a single person made a move to help them, not a single person uttered a word of protest. Perhaps people believed him; perhaps they were too frightened to pretend otherwise. But for now, he’s made good on his word. He’s repealed the laws against witchcraft. The burnings have stopped; the tablets are gone—all of them. He’s going to mold Anglia into a country of his making. It’s no longer a matter of Persecutors against Reformists. It’s those who want peace against those who do not.”
“Peace?” I say. “Blackwell doesn’t want peace. Not unless it’s on his terms.”
Nicholas nods. “And we don’t know what those terms are yet. He’s approached us, of course. Sent word through channels that he’s open to discussion. He claims he doesn’t wish to cause us harm. He just wants to discuss a truce.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“None of us do. We know too much about him now, what he’s capable of. As long as we’re around, we are a danger to him and his rule. He knows we will try to stop him, and he will come for us. Maybe not today, not tomorrow. Maybe he’ll give us enough time to contact allies, to build an army of our own. But chances are he won’t. And we need to be ready.”
There are those words again. We. Them. They. Us.
I don’t belong to any of them.
I look up to find Nicholas watching me carefully.
“We received your note within hours of your leaving Humbert’s. In it you said, ‘make sure nothing happens to them.’ Not a word about yourself, except your confession to Peter and your apology to all of us.”
I flush a little, thinking about the note. I didn’t think I’d be alive for anyone to cite it back to me.
“I want to thank you, Elizabeth. What you did for me, and for John. For all of us. It took a tremendous deal of bravery.”
I shake my head. I don’t know if it was bravery as much as it was fear. I wish I knew the difference. If I did, I could be brave despite my fear, not because of it. If I’d been brave instead of afraid, things would have turned out very differently.
Nicholas nods, as though he can read my mind.
“You can’t undo your past. You know that as well as I. But you also can’t foresee the future. Not even Veda’s prophecy can do that. What you want to do next, who you want to be, where you want to belong, that’s entirely up to you. As I always say, nothing is written in stone.”
I look up then and see John standing in the doorway. He looks at me and smiles.
He walks with me through the physic gardens behind his home, a beautiful rambling stone cottage at the edge of a river. The grounds burst with life, green and purple, orange and red, a riot of color against the oppressive gray skies. I can’t go far, not at first. But days turn into weeks and slowly, I get stronger. John is patient: holding my hand when I am weak, letting me go when I am strong. I stay in his house, with him and his father. He takes care of me, and he loves me. And never once does he blame me. His father says I saved John’s life. He says I saved his.
But the truth is, they saved mine.
I don’t know what will happen next or what will become of me. But I know what I have now and I know what I have to lose. And this time it’s not an illusion.
This time it’s real.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It takes, as they say, a village, and I dedicate this book to mine.
To Kathleen Ortiz: Superagent, cheerleader, voice of reason, fearless and fearsome warrior. Thank you for saying yes. Without you, none of this would be possible. You know I’ll always answer your calls, even while driving.
To everyone at New Leaf Literary: Joanna Volpe, Suzie Townsend, Danielle Barthel, Jaida Temperley, Pouya Shahbazian, Dave Caccavo, Jess Dallow, Jackie Lindert. You guys are the coolest. Thanks for inviting me to join the club.
To my editor, Pam Gruber: Thank you for loving this story, for loving the characters in it, and for knowing exactly how to make it the best it could be. You are fiercely talented and a genius collaborator, and if there’s a better way to be guided through the publishing process, I don’t know it. Thank you for making my debut unforgettable.
To the team at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers: Megan Tingley, Andrew Smith, and Alvina Ling, thank you for your support and for giving The Witch Hunter the best home possible. To Kristen Dulaney, subrights director, for taking it back where it started. My copy editors, Christine Ma and Tracy Koontz, for your clever, witty edits and for suggesting what I now refer to as “the infamous bed scene.” Leslie Shumate for being a fellow Anglophile. Mark Swan for your beautiful, bold cover. Kristina Aven in publicity, Renée Gelman and Rebecca Westall in production, and Emilie Polster in marketing, thank you for being on my team.
To all my foreign publishers: Thank you for giving my book a home in all corners of the world.
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br /> To my 2015 YA author debut groups: the Freshman Fifteens, the Class of 2K15, and the Fearless Fifteeners, for your friendship and support. Special thanks to Lee Kelly and Chandler Baker for the vault, Lori Goldstein for knowing, Stacey Lee for your wisdom, Alexis Bass for the hashtags. Also thanks to Renée Ahdieh, Jen Brooks, Kelly Loy Gilbert, Kim Liggett, Jessica Taylor, Jenn Marie Thorne, and Jasmine Warga for reading, for your encouragement, and for your heartfelt words when I needed them most.
To Stephanie Funk and Jaime Loren for the laughs.
To April Tucholke for your generosity and your love of Thomas Tallis.
To my husband, Scott. If it weren’t for you, I’d never be able to write the good guys, only the bad. Thank you for finding me, thank you for keeping me, and most of all, thank you for giving me a life I thought only belonged to other people.
To my beautiful children, Holland and August: HI, BOOGIES! Look, you’re in my book! I love you the most, my sweet darling babies.
To my family and friends, both here and afar. Special thanks to Drake Coker, Megan Hollingshead, Sarah Sirna-Gammill, and Jennifer Savage Allison for being my first-ever readers and for saying, “Hey, I think you’ve got something here.”
To you, my reader, thank you for picking up my book, for reading my words, and for sticking with them to the very end.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Virginia Boecker
Map art © 2015 by Dave E. Phillips
Stigma design based on art © by Tricia Buchanan-Benson
Stigma design © Virginia Boecker
Cover art by Emily Scott/Gem Photo
Cover design by kid-ethic.com
Cover © 2015 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
First ebook edition: June 2015
ISBN 978-0-316-32718-3
E3
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