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But what plagues me now, the questions I ask myself as I stare down at her little violets, as I sense out the elements in the earth beneath their roots until I can feel the cold charred edges of her bones and assure myself that that is all that remains of her—those questions are these: is it different, to withhold life than to end it? What moral obligations does my power come with? And, more selfishly: if I don’t bring her back, how long until her followers turn on me?

Something in your mother's acceptance of my cruel words makes me see how, for a moment, I am the pathetic one. I’ve seen those eyes before. I’ve seen them on the faces of Surna girls who come to me to do the dampening and I know they’re carrying unwanted Innachor children inside them. In her eyes, I see for a moment how even the lucky ones who are pretty and pass and marry into Innachor upper ranks—sometimes, even those with a good life and caring husbands—are still every bit of Surna fate.

Featuring new cover art: "Hilltop" by returning BCS cover artist Dominique van Velsen. Their Eyes the Shape of Orchids by Eleanna Castroianni. The Shapeshifter’s Lover by Autumn Canter. BCS Audio Vault 037: What the River Brings, and What It Takes Away by Natalia Theodoridou.

Oh, she knew it was foolish, but she was still so much a girl—trying on womanhood as one might try on shoes. Her ragdolls still rested on her pillow, arms akimbo. During summer storms she would clutch them to her face and soothe herself to sleep, dreaming of princes and kisses soft as moth wings. The crow's kisses were not as she imagined. They were far better.

It was only months after she'd moved to the cabin, months of teeth cracking on stone, that she thought the witch may have meant her harm. Not a conspiracy between women, one free thanks to age, the other free thanks to cunning and constitution, but a punishment intended to ruin her. And yet Sapo kept at it, kept eating the mountain, stone by stone by stone, because she feared that if she didn't, it would come, and she didn't want it.