The Witch of Duva (Grishaverse, #0.5)

by Leigh Bardugo

There was a time when the woods near Duva ate girls. It’s been many years since any child was taken. But still, on nights like these, when the wind comes cold from Tsibeya, mothers hold their daughters tight and warn them not to stray too far from home. “Be back before dark,” they whisper. “The trees are hungry tonight.”

Stupid girls, you think. I would never be so foolish. But you've never known real hunger.

The khitka might take any form, but the shape it favored most was that of a beautiful woman.

her lips turned down like peeling bark, her long, slender fingers like raw spokes of branches, stripped bare by a hard wind.

The next day, Nadya’s father did not rise until after noon. When he entered the kitchen and Nadya handed him his tea, he flinched away from her, eyes skittering across the floor.

She knew from stories that you must not eat at a witch’s table.

She's fattening me up, thought Nadya, her lids growing heavy. She’ll wait for me to fall asleep, then stuff me in the oven and cook me up to make more stew. But Nadya found she didn’t care.

Fuck you Nadya's dad

She learned which herbs were valuable and which were dangerous, and which herbs were valuable because they were dangerous.

sometimes she felt her curiosity clawing at her like a different kind of hunger.

Karina hovered behind him, watching as she always had. There was fear in her eyes, but something else, too, something troubling that looked almost like gratitude.

Karina who had given herself to a monster, in the hope of saving just one girl.

There are some who say that when the moon is waxing, she dares things not even Magda would try.

Now you know what monsters once lurked in the woods near Duva, and if you ever meet a bear with a golden collar, you will be able to greet him by name. So shut the window tight and make sure the latch is fastened. Dark things have a way of slipping in through narrow spaces.