Witchlight

One warrant. One witch. One very long hour under the Witch Moon.

For a year, Captain Daveth Okoro of the Varrow Night Watch has climbed the iron stair to the Moonhouse once a month, sat shirtless on the hedge-witch's potting bench, and let her rub salve into the old sword scar along his ribs without once laying a hand on her. He is thirty-eight, huge and gruff and stubbornly honorable, deep brown skin, close-cropped black hair, a short full black beard, a broad, smooth, heavily muscled chest, tooled leather bracers and a sword at his hip. He has never been tempted to break the law in his life. He has been tempted by her every single month.

Tonight he has come with a Magistrate's warrant in his coat, and orders to shut her glass house on the city wall and bring her in by dawn.

Isolde Fenwick is thirty-two, the best hedge-witch in the city, and the driest tongue on the east wall. Long, loose platinum-blonde curls, fair skin, green eyes, red lips, and curves her wide-sleeved black velvet gown makes no attempt to hide, its lace-edged plunging neckline framing a very generous bust beneath a little silver crescent moon. She makes remedies and salves and charms for toothache. She has never sold a love charm in her life, and she isn't about to start pretending.

So she offers the captain a wager instead. Stand in her greenhouse until the moon crosses the center pane of the glass roof. Don't touch her. Not once. Win, and she'll walk down the stair with him as quietly as a nun.

She has a few silk ribbons. She has a single safe word. She has a whole hour among the moonflowers and the lanterns to make him regret ever saying yes.

She has badly underestimated how much he has been holding back.