Chapter Ten
For the last ten years, Lucia had been alone. She'd lived on a mountaintop full of women who looked like her, dressed like her, talked like her, and walked like her. And she'd been completely and utterly alone. The seclusion within the shared dormitories had crushed her spirit. The silence on either side of her during heated debates at mealtimes deafened her ears.
"Let's get this off you, my dear,” Karyn Alcede said as she stripped Lucia bare.
Where most witches had two or three sheaths to their name, Lucia had a closet full that her mother had left behind. She had her pick of clothes, but she'd left them all behind. And now the one garment she had, a sheath which had belonged to her mother, was torn, sullied, and left in tatters.
Karyn tugged the hem of the bodice down and
