I won’t take very long before I give you what you came for, I promise. All I have right now is one simple request: if you haven’t posted a review for Song of the Hell Witch, can you do that for me? Can you share something about it on social media? Tell a friend about how much you loved it?

I want to make this second book happen, but I need your help to do it. So spread the word, please, pretty please.

Taylor Hartley's cozy writing cottage is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

AND NOW…the moment you’ve been waiting for…the (very rough draft) beginning of Book 2, which HAS a tentative title…but one I’m not ready to share just yet…

“And the Lightbringer decreed that men must treat their wives with understanding, for…for…” Beatrice Reed stopped, stumbling over the holy words for two distinct reasons. The first was that she was embarrassed. She knew she was eight years old, and the fear nested in her gut wasn’t helping matters, but it still took her so, so long to figure out exactly what the words were saying, so she didn’t always know where to place the emphasis, where she should pause or change the pitch of her voice. Meanwhile, Lenore, perched on the end of her bed, her wide brown eyes unblinking as she waited for Bea to finish, could read so beautifully.

The second reason was that the part of her mind that could still remember her father’s voice, her mother’s laugh, and the brief lessons she’d learned in the company of the Ladies of Leora, lit up in protest, until every word tasted wrong.

“I can’t read this.” Bea crossed her tiny legs beneath her and shoved the Epistle of Light, bound in ivory leather, toward Lenore.

The other girl, fourteen and the daughter of some lesser lord in one of Leora’s northern provinces, tilted her head, which told Bea she was either confused or pretending to be, an act she often put on just before she slapped Bea across the face. For such a skinny girl, she hit with the strength of a full-grown man.

“Why ever not?” Lenore asked. “Father Hale will be disappointed, you know. He needs the people to understand that the Dark Mother stole the power from the Lightbringer’s chosen to make her Hell Witches. And we must do everything we can to make Father Hale proud, yes?”

Lenore spread her bony arms wide as she gestured to the chamber. It wasn’t much, with its curved stone walls, its lancet windows, and a cherrywood desk, where a candle that smelled of lavender burned beside yet another copy of the Epistle of Light, the one Hale made her study each night before bed. But Lenore and General Hale always talked about it as if it were a palace, mainly so Bea might remember that Hale could have placed her in a cell instead.

“He’s gifted you all of this despite your wicked nature,” the girl continued, the bangles on her wrist chiming like bells, the ruby-colored crystals burning bright in the torchlight. “You know, I used to be a Hell Witch, too. My father could hardly look at me. My mother swore our family had been cursed.” She blinked again as she tucked her mousy brown hair behind her ear, shrinking as she spoke of her own shame. “But I have learned to overcome the evil within my blood. And Father Hale wants to give you that same chance. Don’t you see how blessed you are? Don’t you know how thankful you should be?”

“I-I know, but…” Bea stared down at her own bracelets, the ones Lenore had gifted her when she’d first woken in the chamber, minutes or hours or days after General Maximus Hale slit Paris Talonsbury’s throat. Yes, it had been horrific to watch, but Bea couldn’t help but feel like Paris had deserved it. He had kidnapped her. He’d kidnapped her after he and his men had attacked the manor in Stormlash, the place the Ladies of Leora had called home. He’d killed Rita Leon, the kindest Lady of them all, slaughtered her like a pig.

And he’d turned her father—Puck, your father’s name is Puck—into some sort of winged monster.

“Not a monster, a Zeraph,” Lenore had said that first night, when Bea had first told her how she’d come to be there and asked if she might help her. “Your father is saved. You will see in time.”

Once the memories started, it was hard to get them to stop. Other moments, earlier moments from her life, rushed in, one after the other: her father going pale in the booth of a restaurant while a succubus strangled his heart. A scream, tearing out of her chest as a song—her tune, someone had called it, though she couldn’t remember who—trilled through her blood.

A woman, with grey vulture wings and a blood-soaked nightdress, come to…to…what had she come to do?

“Beatrice?” Lenore’s voice sounded so far away.

One last horrible vision, from years ago: her mother, already half-dead from Storm Lung, flailing beneath a pillow Puck had crushed against her face.

Bea reached for her tune, certain it could save her, give her the strength to obliterate the fear and destroy anyone and anything that tried to hurt her.

A banshee. That was what she was. A fierce, unstoppable banshee who didn’t have to take orders from this skinny little nobody perched on this old, moldering mattress.

Except try as she might to summon it, the tune wouldn’t come. Where the vibration used to be, there was a peculiar numbness, pins and needles branching through her veins.

The fear dug in, lancing through her insides and up into her throat.

Then, the voice sounded in her head. Smooth as velvet, it sent a warmth threading through her veins, burning the fear away: “Worry not, little witch. You are perfectly safe.”

She glanced down at her bracelets again. They weren’t bangles like Lenore’s, but more like cuffs, the silver covering most of her wrist. The ruby-red beads embedded within the metal hummed so loudly, she could feel the vibration in her bones. And while the same voices in her head that had told her to stop reading the Epistle wanted her to believe these beads were dangerous, that she should toss them away, she knew that was a lie. The beads—the crystals—were beautiful, their song soothing. Why would she ever want to take the bracelets off?

The jewelry also covered the bruises blooming on the inside of her wrists, radiating out from the bite marks that hurt if she thought about them too much.

“You must practice the verse, my girl,” the velvet voice encouraged her, pulling her focus away from her wounds, and she suddenly remembered with a smile who it was that was speaking to her. The general. General Hale. Father Hale.

“Father.” She closed her eyes as another wave of warmth crested through her. She forgot her fear, forgot the manor in the Wild Fang mountains and the attack that happened there, forgot the journey along the Whip and how she’d come to be in this chamber with Lenore.

All she knew was that she wanted to please the man who had saved her, the man who would bring her into the Light, as he’d promised.

“You and Lenore are Leora’s salvation,” Father Hale said, and as Lenore threw her head back, Bea knew she could hear him, too. “Together, we shall cure those witches willing to seek redemption and punish those who threaten our cause. We shall purify them through fire. But you must show the people it is possible. Show them a Hell Witch can find absolution in his Light. Preach to them from the holy book so they may know that you believe.”

“I…I will, Father,” Bea promised him, hoping he could hear her, hoping she could make him proud. She grabbed the Epistle of Light and dragged it back across the mattress. With Lenore watching, she picked up the holy book and cradled it in her hands.

“Start again.” Lenore pressed her palms together and bowed her head, preparing for prayer. “From the beginning.”

Bea took a breath. She cleared her throat. Then, she began to read.

“And the Lightbringer decreed that men must treat their wives with understanding, for as the weaker vessel, women may stray from the righteous path and be tempted toward wickedness.”

Taylor Hartley's cozy writing cottage is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.