Warrior Witch: Malediction Trilogy Book Three

by Danielle L. Jensen

  “There are worlds beyond count for you to explore, and yet you’d waste your time watching this mortal life?” he asked. “Why?”

  “Because it is my life,” I whispered, forcing the vines to grow apart so that I could see once more.

  * * *

  Cécile remained on the farm in the care of her family and Sabine, her cheeks regaining their color even as her stomach took on a noticeable curve. Visitors came and went. Tips, whom Aiden had taken on as an advisor, came often, keeping her informed of the developments of the Isle as though she were queen. Marie and Zoé, whom Aiden was now courting, arrived with bolts of silk and velvet from the continent, regaling her with gossip from the city. Chris, who had returned to his father’s farm, took her riding often. And when she grew too large to do so comfortably, on carriage rides up and down the coast, Souris sitting at their feet. Everyone came together for her eighteenth birthday, the farmhouse filled to the brim with those who loved her.

  For all of them, she smiled.

  For all of them, she laughed.

  For all of them, she pretended.

  Only when she was alone, in the darkest hours of the night, did she unleash the hurt, curling in on herself. Soaking the pillow with tears. Muffling her sobs with a quilt. Every time it tore me apart, filled me fury, and sent me in pursuit of my uncle, where I begged, pleaded, and raged that he allow me to go back.

  The answer was always the same.

  * * *

  Childbirth was not easy for her. Two days of pain, Sabine and Josette’s eyes filled with the fear that they would lose her, the marks on my fingers tarnishing and blackening at the tips as she labored and bled.

  Then our son was born.

  From the lands of endless summer, I watched the arrival of this small half-blood boy who would never know me, but whom I already loved above all things. So caught up was I in examining his perfect little features, that at first I didn’t feel the flux of power as a portal formed between our two worlds. Noticed only when the room filled with a warm glow and my uncle stepped into the room.

  Cécile lost her mind, throwing herself from the blood soaked bed and crawling between him and our child. “You cannot have him, too,” she screamed. “You cannot take him.”

  He bent down to say something in her ear; then, ignoring her pleas, his insubstantial form passed through her so that he could bend over the wailing infant and whisper a name in his ear. A command, binding him from using his magic before he ever knew he had it.

  Then he was gone, leaving Cécile to clutch our son to her chest, all the anger, pain, and fear she’d pent up over the months unleashing in a torrent.

  I tore into his court, my fury splintering into countless nasty creatures that clawed and bit, scattering all those present until my uncle’s creations rose to battle with them. Monsters made of fear and thought multiplying and attacking. We stood in the center of a war of nightmares, and in countless worlds, the seas rose high and the winds raged.

  And finally, his temper snapped.

  “You do not belong there,” he snarled, a storm of wind and heat, thunder and lightning punctuating his words. Claws caught me by the throat and hurled me to the ground, defeated.

  “You could have told her that I love her,” I said into the dirt. “You could have told her that I can see her. Hear her.”

  A scaled foot tipped with bloody claws dug into the ground next to my face. “And what would knowing do for her?” he said, shape blurring and shifting into a human form. “How well would she live her life knowing you were constantly looking over her shoulder?”

  “It might be some small comfort.”

  “For her? Or for you?”

  * * *

  They were wise words. Not that I listened, the stubbornness that was my best and worst ally pushing me back to my portal to watch the life I longed for. The life that should’ve been mine.

  Cécile, by contrast, lived.

  With Sabine and our son, who’d eventually informed her his name was Alexandre, in tow, she moved back to Trianon, where she met with the banker, Bouchard, about taking the reins of the businesses she’d inherited from Anushka, the foremost of which was the Trianon Opera House. She took control of it with characteristic ferocity, ruthlessly firing those who stood in the way of her vision, while hiring the best and brightest stars, who she paid exorbitantly, or in her words, “Precisely what they’re worth.”

  It took several months of work to repair the damage done to the opera house while it had housed refugees, and I smiled every time she muttered, “It’s your cursed gold that’s paying to fix this, Tristan.”

  And on opening night, she took to the stage in front of a sold out crowd. I opened a portal in Bouchard’s box, watching over his shoulder as she sang her heart out.

  She did not stop there, investing in opportunities with a keen eye for business that I wouldn’t have expected from her. For Sabine, she provided the funds for a dress shop, and my coconspirator swiftly became the most in demand designer in Trianon, her creations worn by nobility and songstresses alike. After much argument, she convinced Chris to accept the gold needed to import stock from the continent, and he spent his days surrounded by horses and Souris’s growing number of progeny.

  When all was settled as she wanted it, Cécile toured the continent, singing on every great stage and becoming as famous for her voice as she was for her role in the events that had taken place on the Isle, which had become legendary throughout the known world. And with her, she always brought our son, raining affection on him even as she castigated him for all the less desirable traits he’d inherited from me.

  He was a clever boy, dark-haired and slight, and constantly getting into trouble. As he grew older, he took liberal advantage of his fame and good looks, and kissed half the girls in Trianon before Aiden and Zoé’s daughter took a liking to him, thus ensuring he never looked twice at another girl ever again.

  Time passed, and Cécile lived it well. But it was a mortal life.

  And all mortal lives must come to an end.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Tristan

  It came on slowly, and then very quickly.

  A chill caught on a ship coming back from the continent. Then a cough that took hold of her during auditions, causing her to excuse herself lest she disturb the young performers. “Just a tickle in the throat. Nothing that a cup of tea won’t cure,” she assured her assistants.

  But it hadn’t. Not a cup, nor a pot, nor all the potions and tonics on the Isle had any affect, and before I knew it, the cough had moved into her chest. A deep rasping thing that drained her, leaving her weak and frail. Blackness began to creep up the bonding marks on my hands, and I knew.

  “Let a witch see to you,” Sabine had said, but Cécile only shook her head. “You can’t heal age,” and then, “I want to go home.”

  The farmhouse in Goshawk’s Hollow was the domain of her sister, now, their father long since passed, and Fred a senior officer in Aiden’s army. Joss and her husband had a legion of children, and even a few grandchildren, and the home had been expanded to accommodate. They kept a room there for Cécile, and it was in that bed they lay her, almost too weak to speak.

  “Someone needs to send for Alex,” Sabine said to Chris, who had come as soon as he’d heard. “She isn’t going to last much longer.”

  Though I’d known it was coming, the words were a blow.

  For many years, I’d been wondering how this moment would go. Whether, now that I was immortal, her death still had the power to kill me. Whether I wanted it to. Or not. And in the wondering, an idea had come to me, little pieces of a lifelong puzzle falling into place. That idea had blossomed and grown, and turned into the wickedest of all things: hope.

  Closing the tear, I made my way to the hedge maze that stretched higher than I could see, meandering through the paths that changed depending on his mood, allowing only those whom he cared to see through to the center. The maze opened up into a clearing, at the middle of whic
h lay a lake of molten fire, its surface heaving and shifting, the air above it shimmering with heat. The sun.

  “She’s dying,” I said, and the lake settled, my reflection appearing on the smooth surface. “Will you let me see her through?”

  An enormous tear opened in front of me, and with a bittersweet ache in my heart, I stepped back into the world of my birth.

  * * *

  The opening was in a field on the de Troyes farm, and I stood motionless for a moment, savoring the crisp scent of pine on the spring breeze that still had the bite of winter. Icicles dangled from under the eaves of the barn, drip-dripping into the barrels beneath them with a sound like music. The sun overhead was warm on my back, and I stopped to pat the head of the dog sitting on the front porch before adjusting my cuffs and knocking at the door.

  It swung open to reveal Chris standing in the front entry. He’d grown sturdier with age, crow’s feet marking the corners of his blue eyes, but his blonde hair was untouched by grey. He stared at me for a long moment, then said, “You pretty-faced troll bastard. How dare you show up looking like you haven’t aged a day when the rest of us had to go and get old.”

  A grin – the first in longer than I cared to admit – pulled up the corners of my mouth. “I’ve missed your compliments. No one else phrases them quite like you do.”

  “Did I hear you say…” Sabine pushed past Chris, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “Stones and sky,” she whispered. “Is it really you?”

  Not waiting for an answer, she flung her arms around my neck. “Oh, Tristan. Cécile, she’s…”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.” Her eyes met mine, and she gave a slow nod of understanding.

  They led me inside, where Joss stood next to the same scarred wooden table she’d once sat me at. Without saying a word, she lifted my hand, tears flooding down her cheeks at the sight of my blackened bonding marks. “I’d thought maybe…” She scrubbed a hand across her face, wiping away the damp. “It’s good that you’re here – it will mean everything to her.”

  Sabine took my arm at the elbow. “She hid it well, but we all knew she never recovered from losing you,” she said. “And of a surety, she never stopped loving you. Not for a moment.”

  My chest tightened, and for a second, it hurt to breathe. “She never lost me.”

  Boots clattered down the stairs, and my son stepped into the kitchen. “Aunt Joss–” he started to say, then froze, his inability to use his own magic doing nothing to dampen the sense of mine.

  “Alex, this is–”

  “I know who he is,” Alex said. “I’ve seen his portraits, and even if I hadn’t… Well, I do own a mirror.”

  “The ego does not fall far from the tree,” Chris said, but I ignored him, knowing well what my son’s wit was hiding.

  “If you’re here, then…” Alex looked away, jaw tightening as he struggled to contain his emotions, wiping a hand across eyes that were more blue than grey. So like his mother.

  I nodded, confirming his fears. But what was there for me to say in this short moment when I was allowed in this world? I’d watched him born, watched him grow from a boy into a man under his mother’s guiding eye. I knew him, but to Alexandre, I was a stranger. Little more to him than the sum of the stories told about me. He was older than I’d been when I left – than how I appeared to him now – somewhat shorter, but filled out by his adult years and hours spent training with his uncle. Though he was everything I could have wanted in a child, sentiment between us would be awkward and strange.

  But neither could I leave having said nothing. I was not my father.

  “When you are playing cards,” I said, “you might consider losing from time to time. Especially when you’re playing against your Uncle Fred. He takes great offense to cheating, and he’s starting to become suspicious.”

  His eyes widened, then he crossed his arms. “I don’t cheat.”

  I laughed. “All trolls cheat at cards – it’s in your blood. The lying on the other hand, that came from your mother.” Clapping him once on the shoulder, I started up the stairs, goodbyes seeming unwarranted now that they knew I could see them when I wanted.

  Her labored breathing filled my ears before I even entered the room, and for a long time, I stood with my hand on the handle, searching for the courage I needed.

  “I know you’re there.” Her voice was weak, but familiar. “So quit skulking, and come in.”

  Smiling, I opened the door.

  Thirty years had come and gone, but even though illness had rendered her frail, she was as beautiful as she’d been at seventeen. Her crimson hair had grown long again, and it hung in a thick braid over one shoulder. The scar on her cheek had faded into a thin white line that was fiercely lovely, and the faint creases near her eyes spoke more to character than age. But none of that mattered, because her blue gaze was filled with pain, fluid rattling in her lungs, and her heartbeat weak. It would not be long now.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she whispered as I sat next to her on the bed, taking her hand. “But I was starting to think you wouldn’t come. That you didn’t…”

  Twin tears rolled down her cheeks, and mindful of her fragile state, I pulled her close. “I told you once that I’d love you until the day I took my last breath, and that is true now as it was then. But how did you know…”

  “He told me,” she said, her breath ragged against my throat. “When Alex was born, he told me that I’d see you in the end.”

  And how many times had I accused my uncle of being heartless and cruel?

  A rash of coughing took her, and I held her slender form through it, fear building in my chest as her heart stuttered. She was dying. Cécile was dying.

  “It hurts.”

  My eyes burned. “It will be over soon.”

  Cécile took one last breath, and then her heart stilled.

  The pain was incredible, like I was being gutted, my chest ripped in two. The silken thread of our bond stretched and frayed, but I clung to it, held on. Refused to let go.

  Please, was the only thought in my mind as I tore open a path to Arcadia and stepped through.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Cécile

  The air was warm and humid with the taste of a lurking summer storm. The sweet scent of some unknown flowers filled my nose, and against my cheek, I felt the press of a linen shirt, the skin beneath burning with unnatural heat. And a heartbeat in my ear that was as steady and familiar as my own.

  “A dream,” I whispered, because I’d lost track over the years of how often I’d lost myself in his arms, only to be torn awake and find myself in an empty bed.

  “Not a dream,” Tristan said, and I lifted my face to gaze into silver eyes, his face exquisite and unchanged.

  “Then I’m…?”

  He nodded, the hand pressing against the small of my back warm through the silk of my sapphire dress. My body, I noticed, had reverted to a state it had not seen in decades. You are as you imagine yourself to be.

  “How?” I asked, casting my gaze around at the lush green of Arcadia, the landscape shifting and changing and full of strange life. “I’m human.” And I knew better than most how much iron ran through my veins.

  “A human body cannot pass between worlds,” he said, “but a human soul, it turns out, suffers no such impediments. That’s how my uncle was able to bring you here before, however temporarily.”

  “Much can happen in the time between two heartbeats,” I said, repeating what the King of Summer had told me while we stood in the heart of Winter.

  “Or when a heart beats no more,” Tristan said. “Our bond was what kept your soul from going… elsewhere, but–” He cleared his throat, looking over my head. “It could be broken, if that’s what you want.”

  I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him, drinking in the taste of him even as I banished that foolish thought from his mind. I could’ve kissed him for another lifetime and still not had my fill, but I lowered down onto the sole
s of my feet. “Is Marc…”

  He shook his head, and even though the wound was old, the pain seemed fresh again. “But the twins, Martin, Roland – they’re here and well. I’ll take you to see them.”

  I bit the insides of my cheeks, afraid to ask my next question, but knowing that I had to. “How long can I stay?”

  A smile curved his cheeks. “Forever.”

  My eyes burned and I shook my head slowly, letting the sweetness of that singular word sink into my heart. “Why didn’t you bring me sooner?”

  He tucked a curl of hair behind my ear, then cupped my cheek with his palm. “Would you have wanted to miss it?”

  Instinctively, I knew what he meant: my life. All the places I’d gone, things I’d seen, people I’d known and loved. A thousand accomplishments, mine and those of my family and friends. My son, growing from a tiny baby into a man of whom I was immensely proud. My life, which should’ve been our life together. “No,” I whispered. “I wouldn’t have wanted to miss a minute of it. And I’m so sorry you had to.”

  “I didn’t.” He kissed my lips. “At least, not entirely. There are some advantages of being able to see all.”

  My chest ached as I imagined him watching all those long years. The depth of his love and loyalty to me, to our son, to our friends, that he’d not turned away and forgotten. “I wish they knew. Alex… He’ll take my death hard.” And though he was a man grown, it was hard for me to accept leaving him.

  “Sabine suspects,” Tristan said. “She’ll know what to say. To him, and to the rest of them.”

  It was as though the last of my burdens had been lifted, and I took a deep breath and savored it, knowing that I’d done all I could for those I loved best. For those I’d left behind. Their lives were theirs to live. As was mine. “Tristan…”

  “Yes?” His face betrayed none of the nervousness I knew to be roiling through him.