The Amalfi Curse

by Sarah Penner

streghe

chills ... his mom is streghe

Isn’t that why men fear witches, anyway? A woman using her powers to destroy them?

But now, I knew he was a man who’d fallen in love with a witch of the sea. A man who’d been determined to return to her. A sailor who hadn’t gone down at all.

He bent forward, both arms braced on the top of the desk. My breath caught: my hair band was still on his wrist.

Sacrifice, Lia was quickly learning, was the greatest form of love.

Lia had always been led to believe that no men knew of stregheria. She understood now that this was far from the truth. Some men, like her father and Holmes—who would not leave Mari’s side, and Lia quite liked him for it—knew the women’s secrets, knew everything they were capable of. But, being the good men they were, they never breathed a word of it.