The Bane Witch

by Ava Morgyn

For everyone who has suffered violence and abuse at the hands of a loved one or stranger. You are the real heroes.

The good days dot my memory like sand dollars on the beach. Prizes to collect, dead as they are.

But I am forever trying to get gold stars, to be the good little girl it is impossible for me to be.

that. A very little poison can do a world of good. It’s all about how you apply it.”

She smiles in the soft light. “We don’t fear men in this house,” she tells me. “Men fear us.”

If I had shown up on your doorstep, told you that you were an ancient weapon magically designed to be a defender of women and children by taking the lives of predatory men, an instrument of justice and vengeance older than time, a poison eater,

I would have ruined it all. I would have devastated you.

I will not be set aside, looked over in my own family as if I am some kind of apparition rather than a woman of flesh and blood, desire and aversion. I did that with Henry for the last two years and it nearly killed me. I will not do it again.

“We’re not interested in fair in this family. We are interested in justice.”

“You’re murderers! All of you. This is not justice. It’s death.” She cocks her head, eyes crinkling at the corners. In her lap, Rowena ruffles her feathers. “Sometimes,” she says wisely, “they are one and the same.”

The men we kill are not victims. But you are. And you should know better.”

“We are products of their violence,” she says softly. “As long as they commit crimes against our sex with such impunity, as long as the imbalance exists, so will we.”

It’s not fair, but it’s fact. You either live as a bane witch, or you die as one. There is no in-between.”

alive. There cannot be room for error without making room for death.”

“You died to an illusion of weakness,” Bella says to me, “so that you may live your strength.”

together. A witch on her own is a dead witch.” “Those who hunt alone often starve.

The world as we know it has long festered a hatred for women, let alone witches, a hatred for everything we are and stand for. There is nothing it despises more than a woman with power. We are everything they want to eliminate.

“You can’t let your fear guide you, Piers. Not anymore. You must let the witch guide you now. And the witch is fearless. She is power and she is cunning. She is instinctive, not impulsive.”