A Breath of Frost

by Alyxandra Harvey

  Nearly there.

  He could see the magic flowing from the portal to the Sisters and from the Sisters to Emma. She was nearly completely possessed now. She waited obediently, strung up like a marionette.

  Just a little farther.

  He brushed against the side of her hand. It was frigid despite the blazing of her witch knot undoing itself. She twitched violently.

  “You told me ‘don’t fight’ was the worst advice you’d ever heard,” he said hoarsely, ice clogging his throat. “Remember?” he begged. “So fight, Emma!”

  “Drain him,” Lark snapped. “He talks too much.”

  He could just make out the silhouette of antlers in the portal. He smiled.

  Magdalena paused, instantly suspicious.

  Too late.

  Ewan strode out of the portal, swinging his spectral ax. His antlers were like a sweep of majestic oak branches. The Sisters sensed his arrival, turning one by one. Lark shrieked at him. “Blood traitor! You should be one of us!”

  “I told you, you can’t have her,” he returned darkly. “My daughter’s a Lovegrove, not a Greymalkin.”

  “Emma, can you hear me?” Cormac begged. Her eyes still blazed, like sunlight through an amethyst. Despite the pain in his shoulder and the toxic grasp of the vines, he was finally able to curl his fingers over her palm, gripping her tightly. He tightened his hold even when the fire of her marked palm seared into him.

  The waves of magical energy linking her to the Sisters faltered. He felt it trying to sear through his hands, and his bones. After a long grinding moment, the magic fell away, retracting with flickers and sparks. The connection was severed. Cormac smiled again, his split lip lined with frost, even as he and Emma tumbled off the wall, and landed in a heap. He curled over her, trying to shield her with his body.

  She stirred, confused. “Cormac?” When she looked up at him, her green eyes glistened with tears. “What’s happening?”

  “Your father’s here,” he whispered, brushing the hair off her face. She turned her head sharply.

  Ewan and the Sisters were facing off on either side of Emma, magic crackling acid-green all around them. The house grew brighter, drinking in the power. The torches and the candles in the tarnished candelabras burst into flame. Dust blew away and paintings of Greymalkin ancestors straightened on their hooks. Somewhere down the hall, the door to a cellar filled with warlock bones creaked open.

  Cormac scrambled to his feet to help Emma when she rose. “I’m all right,” she whispered.

  A few feet away, Ewan’s ax tumbled from his icy fingers. Chains of frozen snow had him lashed, winding around his arms and pinning them to his sides. The Sisters tossed ropes of ice into his antlers, driving him to his knees. He fought them as they tried to force his head to bow down.

  “Can you walk?” Cormac asked, touching the small of her back. “We have to help your father. And the others.”

  “I can do more than walk,” she promised, just before she called the lightning back.

  It sizzled through the broken window, making her hair drift around her as if she was underwater. The force of it slammed Cormac back into the wall. The shards of glass at his feet were slippery with ice and blood. Wind prowled through the hall and slammed doors on the second floor. Rain and snow hung suspended in the air, frozen in the same vitriolic shades of green and violet.

  The wintry bindings melted off Ewan. He leaped back up, shaking melted ice out of his hair. When he swung his ax at the nearest Sister, Emma stopped him. Lightning arced between them. She was forcing the battle to a standstill but Cormac couldn’t decipher the expression on her face. She’d released her father but she hadn’t moved against the Sisters.

  The ice coating the floor cracked. The banisters gleamed, newly polished. Colors seeped back into the rugs and tapestries and the dried flowers in tarnished silver bowls bloomed yellow and white.

  When Emma lowered her hand, he saw her witch knot, unfurling even now.

  Her eyes might have gone back to normal but she was still tainted by the Sisters’ magic.

  Bottles break and knots undo but the only real binding is love that is true.

  There were different kinds of love.

  And they would clearly need them all.

  “Gretchen!” Cormac shouted. “Penelope!”

  After all, Emma was a Lovegrove witch, not a Greymalkin warlock.

  whatever the Sisters might have to say about it.

  Chapter 62

  Emma felt the lightning go through her. It burned away all doubts, all fears, all questions of right and wrong. It was primal, beyond any judgment; it couldn’t be contained, not even by the Order.

  It was liberating.

  It sliced through the magic gathered in the hall and seized it, both amplifying it and holding it in place. The Sisters were nearly flesh and bone now and even Ewan had lost that otherworldly glow, except for his antlers. Lightning wreathed her own tines, traveling to his, like spiderwebs linking branches in the woods. He looked kind, if weathered. Because of her mother’s spell she knew more about him than she did about the man who’d actually raised her. She should probably care about that.

  Right now she only cared about the storm. She pushed the winds into every corner, sweeping the others away like litter. Colette and Sophie were shoved aside. Even Cormac. Especially Cormac when he reached for her.

  Some small part of her was aware that she was being controlled, that the dark magic of the Sisters was tainting her.

  But it was so much stronger than she was.

  Icicles dropped from the ceiling, nearly stabbing Gretchen when she climbed in through the window. Cursing, she reached back to pull Penelope through after her. Both of them were wild-eyed.

  “She needs you,” Cormac grunted at them, pushing back at the wind that pressed him to the silk wallpaper. She couldn’t hear what else he told them. There was too much magic and it was intoxicating. And it didn’t matter, anyway. She didn’t need them.

  She was home.

  She felt the house’s pleasure. It was opulent and beautiful, nothing like the gray desolate building the Order had tried to burn to the ground. The walls were covered in silk, the chandeliers dripped crystals and diamonds. The marble fireplace was flanked with statues of winged Pegasus.

  “Emma, stop it,” Gretchen shouted. “You’ll kill us all!”

  “Don’t interfere,” Emma snapped.

  “Then stop being such a termagant,” Penelope snapped back.

  “Shakespeare?” Gretchen muttered. “Now? Really?” She reached for Emma.

  Ewan’s antler dagger sliced Gretchen’s hand, stopping her.

  The second dagger nicked Penelope’s finger, slicing it along the outside knuckle and pinning her sleeve to the window frame.

  Cormac pulled her loose with a savage yank and sent her with a push to Gretchen.

  “I’m on your side,” Ewan told Emma.

  But his aim had been careful.

  He’d bought the cousins a moment in which to act and when they grabbed Emma’s hand, their witch knots were slick with their own blood. She jerked away but it was too late. They held fast, tangling into a complicated labyrinth of fingers. Blood dripped to the floor. Light poured between their fingers.

  The wind died abruptly.

  Emma’s head snapped back.

  The combined magic of their Lovegrove lineage, their witch knots, and their own bonds of friendship, slapped the house with a violent flash of light. Ripples of energy spread out farther and farther, momentarily stunning the Sisters and sending them staggering back. The house trembled, struggling to absorb the sudden outpour of additional magic.

  Emma’s pupils flared purple again, then acid-green, and finally went back to their normal green of an oak leaf in summer. She blinked, orienting herself. “Bloody hell.”

  Gretchen’s laugh was startled and grateful. “She’s back.”

  Chapter 63

  As Emma, Gretchen, and Penelope let go of one another’s h
ands, a man dressed in finery fit for a ball entered the house, followed by a veiled woman and several Keepers. There were more in the garden, trying to hold back the bewitched following the will-o’-the-wisps.

  The veiled woman didn’t look around, didn’t even pause as the vestiges of magic crackled and shot overhead. Veils frothed from the brim of her beaver hat, obscuring her features. Dozens of silver chains hung with pendants and baubles, rings, and bracelets adorned every inch of her. She set an earthenware jug down on the floor, unstoppering it. The gargoyle face stamped into its side leered.

  The last of Magdalena’s insects clung to her hair, too weak to fly. “You think to trap us, Lacrimarium?” she hissed. “And Lord Mabon.” She laughed disdainfully. “You think the Order and its iron baubles can stop us now? Now that we’ve finally reclaimed our house?”

  The Lacrimarium began to whisper some kind of a spell. Emma had never seen anyone more serene. “Who’s that?” Penelope whispered.

  “Bottle witch,” Emma whispered back. “She can trap familiars.”

  The house shuddered in response. The shutters slammed, and the door locked with an audible snap. The torches blew out, one by one, until only the candle in Lord Mabon’s iron lantern remained.

  Ewan launched himself at the furious Sisters.

  They retaliated with such force, the cold snapped one of his tines. It bled slowly, like tree sap.

  Taking advantage of the distraction, Cormac flung an iron dagger to Colette, who had climbed up onto the balcony. She caught it easily, slicing through the rope used to lower the chandelier when the candles needed replacing. She jumped off the railing, swinging down with the heavy candelabra acting as a descending anchor. Her dagger dragged through the portal, before slamming into the small salt, rowan berry, and iron-nail fire she had started earlier.

  The Sisters turned away from Ewan, shrieking. “You’ll pay for that,” Rosmerta promised darkly. “Slowly.”

  No one noticed Sophie stirring. Lark was on her knees, looking dazed. Ewan’s last spell had felled her tenuous control. “Roman?” she wept. “Where are you, beloved?”

  Ewan used Colette’s abandoned dangling rope to steady himself. The raw scrapes and ice burns on his arms shimmered with a sickly lavender hue. The scar from the arrow that had killed him blistered. He was seriously wounded but the sheer volume of magical energy in the house had nearly completed his reanimation. It recognized him as family. He was flesh and blood, a real man who might yet be reunited with her mother. Only his antlers were spirit, glowing and sparking silver and violet. The Underworld still had a hold on him, but not for long.

  The gate flickered brightly, distended and misshaped around the line drawn by the dagger. It sizzled, greenish-black steam shooting out of the mended tear. The burned edges clung to each other. It was nearly closed. Emma held her breath.

  Gretchen suddenly clapped her hands over her ears. “It’s not enough,” she said. “The spell needs something else.”

  “Hush.” Magdalena snapped her fingers and Gretchen reared back, her lips stuck together. She made mewling sounds, trying to speak.

  “Come here, little Whisperer,” Rosmerta said, vines snapping out to grab her. Penelope tried to stomp on the tendrils as they rushed toward Gretchen’s feet. Emma’s lightning came from the ceiling this time, slashing through the vines. Rosmerta howled, a gash opening just under her rib cage.

  Sophie dragged herself slowly toward the Lacrimarium who slumped over the witch bottle. Blood dripped unseen from her nose. The gate continued to leak the slightest traces of violet light.

  “It will have to be closed from the inside as well,” Ewan said, confirming Gretchen’s opinion that the spell was incomplete. “They’ll try to stop me,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “That’s when you get the hell out of this house. If I can’t take them with me, they’ll follow you, and you let the bloody Greybeards finish this, do you hear me?” His eyes were hard on Lord Mabon. “Don’t risk yourself for the Order, Emma,” he added.

  “You can’t either!”

  He laughed but there was no humor in it. “Not for them,” he said. “Never for them. For you. For Theodora.”

  “But I just found you,” she said. He was leaving her, just as her mother had left her.

  “I know,” he said gently. “But I’m so proud to call you my daughter, for however brief a moment.”

  “Then stay! There must be a spell to undo whatever the Order did to you.”

  “You know I can’t. There’s no time.”

  “But you’ll be stuck there again.”

  He smiled sadly. “Tell Theodora I am waiting for her. However long it takes, we will be together again.”

  His ax was the first to return to mist. He leaped onto the banister, used to climbing trees as a boy, and to the agility of a spirit as a man. The temporary magical mending tore like paper.

  And then he was on the other side, a silhouette of himself outlined against the crackling energy. He slashed down once with an antler-handled dagger and the portal began to properly seal itself. It was an ocean whirlpool sucking everything in its path to its dark mouth. The stairs shook, the chandelier beads lifted, and Emma was dragged across the slippery floor.

  She didn’t even have time to mourn her father’s second death by magic.

  The Sisters were dragged behind him, fighting the magic of the gate too desperately to be able to keep her or the others trapped inside the house. They howled, acid-green and violent purple energy flinging off them like elf darts. The floorboards began to peel away, popping nails.

  She wouldn’t let all of this be a waste, wouldn’t let her father, or Strawberry and Lilybeth and the other girls die for nothing.

  She wouldn’t let the Sisters win. Not now. Not ever.

  “We have to finish this,” she said wearily.

  “We can’t,” Cormac said savagely, staring at the slumped body of the veiled woman next to Sophie.

  The Lacrimarium was dead.

  Chapter 64

  Emma dove out of the house and rolled down the steps, curled protectively around the Lacrimarium’s bottle. Gretchen and Penelope dashed after, the silencing spell falling away from Gretchen once she was outside. Cormac and Colette dragged Sophie between them. Cormac was slipping a jet-inlaid iron-wheel pendant around her head, but too late. Emma knew Sophie had killed the Lacrimarium. She’d recognized the collection of odd small injuries on the woman’s body, a result of Sophie’s talent turned backward.

  The garden was eerily quiet as the house shook with light. The drained and dead bodies of the innocent people the Sisters had lured to the house were scattered over the grass. Emma held the bottle in her hands carefully, standing between the gates, one of which hung crookedly off its hinges. This was a Threshold place. It was the best she could do. There wouldn’t be a proper Threshold day until May Day and they couldn’t afford to leave the Sisters loose until then. This was their last and only chance.

  It had to be now.

  And it had to be Emma.

  She’d read everything she could find in the school library. She was as prepared as she could be. Never mind that the Lacrimarium had rare gifts and trained for years before attempting the kind of spell she was about to try. The Lacrimarium had prepared the bottle before she died. It was infused with the right magic, created on a Threshold day, under the three nights of the full moon and buried in salt and graveyard dirt for a year and a day.

  And though Emma wasn’t a Lacrimarium, she had an advantage they didn’t have. Her connection to the Greymalkin gave her power over them. She could work the spell without the necessary training or talent.

  In theory.

  “I need hair from all three,” she murmured to Cormac. “Or blood. Just in case my … in case Ewan doesn’t succeed.”

  “I can help with that,” Colette said, just as a hawk erupted from her chest, feathers bright as moonlight on water.

  “Gather the horses,” Lord Mabon ordered the Keepers who hadn’t remaine
d inside the house. “Circle the grounds so no one can escape.” Within seconds, white horses appeared all around them, thick as fog. Their hooves shot sparks like falling stars. “Keep the Sisters contained if they fight the gate. We’ll have to bind them until another Lacrimarium can be located.” He snapped his finger at Emma. “Get back, little girl.”

  “I don’t think so,” she replied coldly. “You need me.”

  “You are still wanted by the Order.”

  “Even though she’s the only reason you’ve gotten as close to the Sisters as you have tonight?” Gretchen pointed out acidly. “Closer than you have in decades, if I recall correctly.” She smiled blandly. “And I know I do.”

  “Ewan Greenwood sacrificed himself to save us,” Emma added, her voice shaking. “I won’t let it be in vain. Now you can help me, or you can get the hell out of my way.”

  Several Keepers swung their heads to goggle at her. No one spoke to the Order that way. Especially not a young witch with a spotty family lineage. Lord Mabon looked taken aback. Cormac hid a grin.

  “Here they come,” Emma warned.

  The Sisters floated out of the house, having already lost the weight of their bones to the battle and the magical wards. Sinister glee and fury rolled off them like steam from a kettle. Paint peeled off the doorframe.

  Her father was gone. He’d managed to close the gate, but he’d lost the Sisters.

  “Steady on,” Cormac said softly as they approached.

  The newly regrown garden began to wilt under a coating of ice and frost. A mouse darted out of the bushes and froze solid, burning with the Greymalkin mark.

  Lord Mabon elbowed Emma back imperiously. “I can do this,” she snapped at him when he showed every intention to ignore her plan. She shoved him back for good measure.

  “Just like your mother,” he muttered.

  “You’d best hope so,” she muttered back.

  Colette’s hawk had possessed a real hawk in the nearby park and it now swooped down with a vicious jab, flying away again with two strands of hair in its beak. When Rosmerta and Magdalena turned to fling a curse on it, Moira’s gargoyle dove down between them. The dark magic cracked the stone. The hawk returned, sneaking in from behind and pulled one of Lark’s tangled hairs out. She barely noticed.