“Ow,” I said. “I think we might have gone overboard last night.”
“Jas, what’s that on your arm?”
Lifting my arm, I squinted at it, my vision fuzzy at the corners. “Just the blood magic runes.”
His finger touched the edge of my wrist, beside a symbol I didn’t recognise. Did I draw that?
“That wasn’t there before.” He propped up on his elbow. “Was it?”
“I… did I draw it last night?” I couldn’t have, right? “Uh… Evelyn?”
No reply. I rolled off the bed and left the guest room we’d slept in, finding my clothes strewn around the living room. The fire was still alight, but there were no signs of Evelyn.
Keir followed close behind me. “Jas, what is it?”
I gave the symbol on my wrist another scan. “Did Evelyn possess me while I was asleep?”
“Why would she do that?” He picked up the ritual book from beside the fireplace and handed it back to me.
A gasp escaped, and the book fell from my hand. On the page was the same symbol I wore on my arm—the symbol I had no memory of inking on my skin.
“That’s not an energy transfer spell,” Keir said, reading the book over my shoulder. “It’s either a binding, or…”
“Unbinding.” I sank to my knees on the soft carpet. “She cut herself loose. She’s not bound to me any longer.”
The words on the page swam before my eyes. Evelyn had ripped herself out of my body, taking my magic along with her.
“She doesn’t have a body of her own, though.” Keir rested a firm hand on my shoulder. “I don’t think she thought this decision through.”
“I think she did.” I twisted to look at him. “Tell me. When I did the energy transfer, did it feel like a vampire was feeding on you?”
“That—” He broke off. “Yes, it did, but not exactly.”
“Because I don’t need your life force to survive,” I said. “Doesn’t mean I can’t transfer energy from anyone to me in the same way. No wonder Lady Montgomery kept it under wraps.”
“But what has that to do with Evelyn?” His eyes grew wide. “Your spirit. She was feeding on you…”
“Until she got strong enough to go it alone.” The image of her furious expression in Cordelia’s cave came to mind. “I guess setting that Ancient free was the last straw.”
“It’s not your fault.” Keir set about gathering our clothes, and we dressed quickly. “Evelyn’s incapable of thinking outside the box she’s been stuck in all her life.”
“Perhaps, but she’s raging mad, and I don’t think she should be allowed into the forest in that state. Especially without me to rein her in.” Being without a body hindered her, yet the symbol on my wrist was more than an unbinding. She’d untethered herself from me, perhaps for good.
“Wise idea.” He passed me my coat and I pulled it on, along with my shoes. I suspected I wouldn’t be coming back here anytime soon. Packing Lady Harper’s journal in my bag along with the book of ritual magic, I swung the rucksack over my shoulders and joined Keir by the door.
Once we set foot outside, I spotted her instantly, standing alone on the spot where the spirit line overlapped with the hillside. From this distance, she looked almost solid. How much did she take from me?
“What the hell are you playing at?” I called, marching towards her.
Evelyn turned to face me. “I got bored watching you screw up, Jas.”
“How exactly did you plan to get rid of that fury when nobody can kill it?” I folded my arms across my chest. “You’d have let it destroy half of Edinburgh, wouldn’t you?”
“So what?” she said. “I told you, if you cared for those friends of yours, you’d have left them alone, Jas. If you had, the mage would never have been able to summon that monster.”
“That isn’t true,” I said. “He figured out how to do it without my help. And I didn’t mean to free the fury…” I trailed off. “It was you.”
Her head inclined, a slight affirmation.
“You set the vampires loose,” I said. “It was you. You went back into the lab without me there, set all the vampires and the fury free, and let me take the blame.”
That wasn’t all she’d done. She’d deliberately jumped into the river to shock me back into my body when I’d almost had Lord Sutherland cornered, breaking my phone to impede me from contacting my friends. Her secret meetings with the Hemlocks, too. How had I not seen it?
Because I didn’t want to. Because I thought I understood her.
“I should have been chosen as heir,” she said, “and if not for a freak act of nature, I would have been. It’s time I took what’s rightfully mine.”
The forest took the place of the hillside, and magic swirled around Evelyn. Hemlock power, boundless and raw. My own magic ignited in response. My Hemlock magic. I still have it.
Evelyn landed on the forest path, the trees swaying on either side, leaves rustling together like a chorus of whispers.
“Don’t,” I warned. “Whatever you’re doing—don’t.”
“Relax,” she said. “The Hemlocks have plenty of magic to spare. You, however, won’t be so lucky.”
I don’t understand. Why would Evelyn betray me now? She’d saved my life several times over, and I’d done the same for her. Maybe our goals would never be in exact alignment, but I hadn’t thought she’d turn on me with no warning.
I called my magic to my hands, forming a rippling shield. “I’ll protect the whole forest if I have to, Evelyn.”
Her mouth twisted. “You shouldn’t have any power left.”
“I guess we were bound for too long.” I raised my palms, and she bared her teeth. “Get out of here, Evelyn. Cordelia, back me up here!”
For a heart-stopping instant, I thought she’d take Evelyn’s side, condemning me to my fate. Then a sharp current of power bolstered mine. Evelyn floated backwards, anger shining within her eyes.
“If I cannot take the power for my own, then you shall not either, Jacinda.”
The mark on my wrist ignited. I screamed aloud as devouring pain pierced me, body and soul. Keir shouted my name, his arms around me—from the pain, my arm should be ablaze, my whole body burning from within.
Then it stopped. I lifted my head from the forest floor. Keir’s steady hands helped me to my feet.
“She is no longer in the forest,” Cordelia’s voice said. “Find her, Jas.”
“We will.” Keir wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “She can’t escape in the spirit realm.”
I hardly had breath to speak, but the forest disappeared in an instant, depositing us outside the disused train station.
I sagged against Keir’s side, and pushed up my sleeve. The mark on my wrist looked darker, a brand burned into my skin. The other marks had faded already. That was no ordinary witch mark.
I reached for my Hemlock magic and felt nothing. Not even the spirit line.
“She…” My knees buckled. “She took it. My Hemlock magic.”
“She can’t have,” Keir said. “Cordelia kicked her out.”
“And she kicked me out in return.” I held up my wrist, which tingled with the aftermath of the intense pain she’d inflicted on me. “I can’t sense any of it at all. Even…”
I turned on my spirit sight, relieved to see the spirit line still flowed overhead. My necromancer powers were in full working order. Yet without my Hemlock magic—
“Jas!” yelled a voice. I looked up to see Ilsa sprinting full-tilt towards the bridge. She skidded to a halt in front of me. “Jas… she stole my talisman. Evelyn did.”
“Evelyn did what?” I lowered my hand. “She can’t do that. She doesn’t even have a body.”
“The book is partly incorporeal.” Ilsa’s face was pale. “It shouldn’t be possible, but through the spirit realm…”
“Shit.” Horror coursed through me. “She stole your talisman because it contains the power of an Ancient.”
Since Evelyn looked like me, the guild�
�s defences would have let her pass without a fuss. She must have gone there the instant she got out of the forest.
“I let my guard down after the battle,” said Ilsa. “Why would Evelyn steal from me?”
“I don’t know, but she also took my Hemlock magic and broke our link,” I said. “Even the other Hemlocks couldn’t stop her.”
Evelyn had always said the Hemlocks’ magic went far beyond the magic in the forest. She’d made no secret of the fact that she wanted more, and the other Hemlocks had done nothing to challenge her ambitions. What had they been telling her during their secret meetings? What other advantages had they given her?
I won’t let her win this.
“She’s done holding back,” Keir said. “You know that time I nearly drifted through the gates of Death? I thought I saw you beforehand, but now I’m sure it was her. She was playing both of us. Even when she offered to let me feed on her when you were gone, she was trying to cover her tracks. To retain your trust.”
“She’s way too smart,” I said. “She must have spent the last few months figuring out how to distance herself from my body until she was ready to separate altogether.”
While helping my friends so I wouldn’t suspect anything.
“But you still have your necromancer magic,” said Keir. “You can stand against her.”
“I bloody well hope so.” I tapped the spirit realm, but of course there were no signs of her on the other side. She’d had months to learn how to hide herself. “All she needs now is a body.”
“She can’t control the book, though,” said Ilsa. “It belongs to the Gatekeeper. How—how did she separate herself from you?”
“With this.” I unzipped my rucksack to remove the ritual magic book, and a piece of paper fluttered out. Keir caught it before it blew away. “Ah. That’s Lady Harper’s map.”
“Where’d that come from?” Ilsa peered at the map. “What’s that writing?”
I took the map from Keir, upside-down, and a familiarity caught me in the chest. I knew that layout. “Uh… why does Lady Harper have a map of the Ancients’ realm? Written in code?”
“That’s not code,” Ilsa said. “That’s the faerie language.”
I nearly dropped the map again. “You can read it?”
“A few words,” Ilsa said. “Hazel—my sister—is better at ancient languages than I am, but I do know the basics. Is that your mentor’s map?”
“It was,” I said. “I didn’t realise it shows the Ancients’ realm. The layout is exactly the same.” I traced the lines with my fingertip. The old cathedral-like place was on the right, while the sloping hillsides were copied in detail.
“What does the X on the map point to?” Keir asked.
“I never found out.” I peered closer, then turned the map over. “I think Evelyn knows, and she’s heading into that realm herself to start a war on her own terms.”
“You’re joking,” said Ilsa. “What are you going to do?”
I lowered the map. “I’m going to finish what Lady Harper started. And I’m going to stop the Hemlocks’ magic from tearing the realms apart.”
Thank you for reading!
The story concludes in Witch’s Sacrifice (Hemlock Chronicles #5), coming soon.
Find out more at http://smarturl.it/HemlockChronicles
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I hope you enjoyed Witch’s Secret. If you have a minute to spare, then I’d really appreciate a short review. For independent authors, reviews help more readers discover our books, so if you’d like more books about Jas, Ivy, Ilsa and the others, I’d love to know what you thought!
Other books by Emma L. Adams
If you’d like to see how Jas and Ilsa met, you might like Hereditary Magic, Book 1 in the Gatekeeper’s Curse series.
Ilsa Lynn has made it her life’s goal to avoid the curse that binds her family to serve the Summer Court of Faerie, but when she discovers volatile magic inside a family heirloom, she must learn to wield it before her family faces a fate worse than death.
Find out more!
If you’d like to see how Ivy’s adventures started, you might like Faerie Blood, the first book in the Changeling Chronicles series.
When faerie-killer Ivy is hired to find a missing child, replaced with a changeling, she’s forced to team up with the seductively dangerous Mage Lord, at the risk of exposing her own dark history with the faeries—and this time, running won’t save her.
Find out more!
If you’re curious about what happened in the time of the faerie invasion, try Alight, Book 1 in the Legacy of Flames series. Dragon shifter Ember must risk it all to rescue her sister from the supernatural-hunting Orion League, even if it means kidnapping a lethal ex-hunter who'd like nothing better than to add her name to his kill list.
Find out more!
About the Author
Emma is the New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of the Changeling Chronicles urban fantasy series.
Emma spent her childhood creating imaginary worlds to compensate for a disappointingly average reality, so it was probably inevitable that she ended up writing fantasy novels. When she's not immersed in her own fictional universes, Emma can be found with her head in a book or wandering around the world in search of adventure.
Find out more about Emma’s books at www.emmaladams.com.
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