Except her aunt had proven that emotion could carry the same strength. And when you combined blood and emotion together, you could do things that no sorceress was supposed to do. A sister’s love, and a mother’s love for her child, had bound them all deep into this mess. Did that mean an equal measure of love could help undo it?
I’m not doing this as your bodyguard. I’m doing this as the man who’s already planning his collection of embarrassing pictures of our future children.
Elena shook the thought away, fingers gripping the wood far more tightly than necessary. She wasn’t about to trust Cam’s life to theory unless she absolutely had to. “Open the door, Nigel. I’m tired of trying to talk to you like this.”
It took far too long before Nigel spoke again. “How many people will be watching when you take my blood?”
Elena hesitated, not having expected that response. The simplest—and most satisfying—thing to do would have been to knock him unconscious, but then she’d have no choice but to agree with Cam. And just when she might have finally gotten him to understand how much she didn’t want to risk losing him . . .
She turned to Bishop, hoping he’d have some clue to what the prince was really trying to ask.Bishop leaned close enough to whisper in her ear. “The more of an audience he has, the more people he risks shaming himself in front of.”
“He already had a nervous breakdown and put us all through an absurd clown routine,” she whispered back. “How much more embarrassing can he get?”
“Cam and his family are commoners, which means they don’t matter in his eyes,” Bishop explained. “You need something from him, and are at least willing to pretend that the previous incidents never happened. He can’t get the same assurances from anyone else who might be in attendance.”
Elena bit back a less-than-polite comment, feeling a headache start to form. Her treacherous thoughts kept telling her things the rest of her didn’t want to hear, and the amount of patience she had left for Nigel was burning away by the second.
She took a deep breath. “There will be other sorcerers and sorceresses there,” she admitted, working to keep her voice unthreatening. “But it will be over soon, Nigel, I promise. Please let me in so we can get ready.”
There was another long, silent stretch, then Elena heard the sound of the lock being clicked open. Resisting the urge to shove her way in, she signaled for Cam to wait a little while before following her and carefully stepped inside.
The common area was in better shape than she’d expected, only a table knocked over and a few cushions out of place, but Nigel himself hadn’t fared so well. He was standing against the far wall, breathing hard and holding something half behind his back. A closer look told her it was the spindle he’d tried to attack her with more than a month ago, which she’d transported onto one of the shelves in her room. The fact that Nigel had apparently been searching her closets was not a good sign. The fact that he thought the spindle might still be of some use to him was less so.
“Nigel.” Staying where she was, Elena waved Nigel toward her. “I need you to come with me and help us get ready for the spell. I promise you no harm will come to you except for the cut we need for the spell.”
Nigel swallowed. “About that.” He lifted the spindle into view, and behind her Elena heard both Cam and Bishop step forward.
She held up a hand to stop them both. If Nigel tried anything, she could throw a freezing spell before he got anywhere near her. “You know that hurting me won’t get you anything, right?”
The prince looked appalled. “I wasn’t going to hurt you! How can you even think that?” He lifted the spindle up higher, holding his other hand up so that the palm was parallel to the spindle’s point. “But if I get the blood now, we won’t need to do it in front of everyone else.”
That might be bad. She took a step forward. “Nigel, we really need to do this in the circle.”
Nigel had the gall to actually scoff. “Only because no one else has been intelligent enough to do it this way.” He looked down at the spindle, confidence fracturing as the panic flickered in his eyes. “I can do this. I’m a prince.”
Elena had known she’d have to protect herself from Nigel with a freezing spell, but she hadn’t expected to have to protect Nigel from himself. As his hand came down she lunged forward, Cam only a step behind her, but they were both too late to stop Nigel from plunging the spindle into his hand. The metal sank into his hand almost an inch, the blood welling up red and thick around the edges of the wound.
Nigel stared at his hand as if he couldn’t believe what he’d done. “See,” he said, voice already wavering. “There was no—” Before he could finish, his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the floor in a dead faint.
Elena stared at the unconscious man, then turned around and kicked a chair hard enough to knock it backward onto the floor. Out in the corridor, she could hear the sound of footsteps on the staircase.
Bishop cocked his head as if he could hear them as well, then sighed in anticipatory exhaustion. “Forgive me, Elena,” he said quietly, studying Nigel as if he could somehow discover how he’d missed this particular eventuality. “Shall I send for pages to carry him upstairs before our company arrives?”
“There’s no point.” Elena closed her eyes, rubbing the bridge of her nose as if that would somehow be enough to chase away the headache. She could cast a spell to get rid of it, but unless her life radically changed in the next few minutes it wouldn’t disappear for long.
She opened her eyes just as Alan and Marie stepped into the room, their gazes going to Nigel’s unconscious form. Marie’s eyes then flickered to Elena, and it took all the bravery Elena possessed not to look away.
Thankfully, Bishop took their attention. Elena turned back around, needing the escape, and Cam moved to stand close. She tensed as he laid a hand on her shoulder, her thoughts from earlier spinning together with all of the arguments Cam had made. “I know this proves your point, Cam, but I still—”
“I wasn’t going to keep arguing,” he murmured, the faintest hint of amusement in his voice. When she raised an eyebrow at him, he even smiled a little. “I swear I wasn’t.” He squeezed her shoulder. “You kind of looked like you wanted to hit something, which I decided was probably my cue to try to be comforting.”
She couldn’t stop herself from leaning into him a little, or wishing that it was an appropriate time or place to ask for another hug. “Wise man.”
“I try.” As if he’d read her mind, wrapped his arm around her. “We’ll figure this out, Elena. Even if you don’t use me, we’ll come up with something else.”
Elena leaned her head against Cam’s shoulder, feeling better than she had since Cam had first suggested she use him in the spell. Even though he’d been the one to upset her in the first place, his support steadied her better than anything else she’d ever found. With that steadiness came strength, and a will to do things she never would have been brave enough to attempt otherwise.
Together, emotion and blood were enough to bend the rules of magic. They had the emotion, and her potion-sped brain was happy to suggest any number of alternative ways to use the blood.
Don’t make me be the one who’s left behind. But if she could go with him—
Taking a deep breath, Elena looked up at Cam. “Do you trust me?”
She could see the flash of surprise in his eyes, chased away by certainty. “With me? Absolutely.”
Lifting her head, she made herself step away from him and walk over to his mother.
The strain was still evident on Marie’s face, and Elena felt her throat tighten as she touched the older woman lightly on the arm. “I won’t use your son as a mirror,” she whispered. “He’s too important for that. But what I need him to do might be even more dangerous.”
Now every eye was on her. Still, it was Marie who spoke, her voice far steadier tha
n it had been. “You have a plan.”
Elena could feel Cam walk up behind her, laying a hand against her back. She squared her shoulders, trying to sound confident. “I want to form a blood bond with him, as formal and magic-infused as possible. My aunt proved that emotion can have an effect on magic, and when you combine emotion and blood together you can get around rules everyone thinks are absolute. I need him in there with me.”
Bishop looked skeptical. “Why did no one bring this up in the planning discussions?”
Elena decided it would help nothing to admit that Nigel had technically given her the idea. “Because it’s never been tried before, and I’m not even certain what effect it will have on the spell. But it should keep me awake as well as the mirror spell, since there will be two people to absorb the backlash instead of just one. After that—” She lifted a hand in silent apology for her lack of answers. “We’ll work with what we find.”
Alan’s face was emotionless, but his gaze was intent. “Why do you trust this more than the mirroring spell?”
Elena hesitated, trying to lay a framework of logic around what essentially amounted to a gut feeling. “With the mirroring spell, I would be using Cam as something of a human shield. He would take the brunt of any attacks, but not much more than that. With a blood bond, however, the magic should see each of us as an extension of the other.”
“And the curse will envelop both of you,” Bishop said.
“I’m fine with that,” Cam said quickly.
Elena’s throat tightened at the thought, but she forced herself to speak. “I don’t believe he’ll get the brunt of it, like he would with the mirror spell. The connection came after the curse was already cast, so the only part of Cam that should be inside the boundaries of the curse is his connection to me.” She showed the others the layering effect with her hands. “He won’t be with me in the curse. He’ll be anchoring me to safe ground outside of the curse.”
Alan and Marie looked at each other for a long silent moment, then back at Cam. “It wasn’t our decision either way,” Alan said quietly.
“I’m with her,” Cam said, pressing a kiss against Elena’s hair. “No matter what.”
Elena swallowed. “But I want to know that you both forgive me for agreeing to this.”
Startled, Marie turned back to meet Elena’s eyes. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said, laying a hand against Elena’s cheek. “We knew this was going to happen one of these days.” She looked over at her son, expression rueful. “We just wish it hadn’t happened quite this dramatically.”
“Hey, it’s Dad’s fault,” Cam said, voice deliberately light. They were all trying. “He’s the one who introduced us.”
Alan held his hands up in a cease and desist gesture. “Don’t try to pin this one on me.”
Bishop rubbed his chin, looking thoughtful. “Your logic seems sound, but I’m no sorcerer. What will your mother say about this?”
“We’re not changing our plan of attack against the curse itself, and if she was willing to risk you to keep me safe, I doubt she’ll complain about this,” Elena said. “The theory is as sound as everything else we’ve tried.”
Which, translated, meant that it was nothing more than a desperate shot in the dark. But this one, neither of them would be taking alone.
Bishop nodded. “Then we should tell the others.” He ushered everyone toward the door. “On the way up to the workroom, remind me to find a page to take care of Nigel. There will be legal difficulties if he bleeds to death on our property.”
Chapter 24
Brace Yourselves
Cam may not have understood magic as well as he liked, but knowing Elena had taught him one important thing about sorcerers and sorceresses—there was nothing they liked less than going into a situation blind.
He wasn’t surprised, then, when they didn’t take Elena’s explanation of her new plan very well.
They all sat around a table in the queen’s workroom, giving each other weighted looks that Cam couldn’t decipher. Finally, Dr. Flyte was the one to break the silence. “I see your logic, Elena, but what you’re proposing has never been tested. Braeth’s plan was dangerous, but at least the mechanics of the spell were understood well enough that we knew what would happen in theory. Here, the way you’re planning on utilizing the blood-emotion connection is wildly different than the way Ariadne did. We have no idea what the effects will be.”
“We had no real idea what the effects of the mirroring spell would have been,” Elena said, iron determination radiating out of every line of her body. He was sure she had the situation in hand, but she wasn’t about to sugarcoat anything. Cam couldn’t help but be grateful his parents had left with Bishop to deal with Nigel. “If it registered my blackout as a physical condition or a defense mechanism rather than an attack, then it would have failed to redirect it and we’d be left with nothing. This way, at least, I can be absolutely certain neither Cam or I will face the curse alone.”
Ariadne shook her head. “It won’t work. The blood and emotion work together as a conduit for magic. Your guard is powerless, which means he’ll give you nothing.”
The dismissal sparked Cam’s anger like a match, but he wrestled it back down. He didn’t have much to argue with, and he knew it—Elena herself didn’t seem entirely sure how his presence in the spell would help her. But if there was a chance she might need him, he’d follow her through each and every one of the thousand hells.
Especially when she stared people down with that fire in her eyes. “You guess.” Elena told her aunt, voice cooled just enough to carry a warning. “But you’ve guessed wrong before. Personally, I’m far more willing to trust my instincts than I am yours.”
Ariadne’s eyes flashed, but then she gave her niece a small, tight nod. Elena, accepting it, let her expression ease slightly. “We all know how experimental this is,” she continued, now addressing everyone. “But all of our options at this point are experimental. And this is the only one that doesn’t leave me absolutely terrified.”
Her voice didn’t change, but her fingers pressed against Cam’s in a silent request. He closed his hand around hers, holding on for all he was worth, and she shifted imperceptibly closer.
“Indeed,” Braeth said, his attention flickering between Elena and Cam as if he’d watched their wordless exchange. “Unfortunately, the only other blood-bond ritual I am familiar with is used to bind a servant to a master. Those of us in the darker arts tend to see such a tie between equals as little more than an impediment to world domination.”
“I know one.” The queen spoke for the first time, her voice brimming with about a dozen different emotions she refused to let all the way out onto the surface. When she looked at her daughter, however, Cam could see the shimmer of tears in her eyes.
Next to him, he felt Elena lean forward ever so slightly as if she was resisting the urge to stand up and go to her mother. “Mom.” Her voice caught on the word. “I have—”
The queen smiled, lifting a hand to stop whatever her daughter was about to say. “I’m not about to argue,” she said, voice thick. “I’m just happy to see you want something this badly.”
Elena tried to answer, but the words seemed to catch in her throat. Abandoning the attempt, she took a deep breath and dashed a hand across her eyes. “Well.” She let out a long breath, hand still tight in Cam’s. “We should get everything set up.”
~
The bonding spell, it turned out, was simple enough that even Cam could understand it. All they needed was a ritual knife, the circle Elena had already drawn, a candle, a glass of water, and a bit of dirt from the castle gardens.
He and Elena were standing together in the middle of the circle, facing each other in preparation for the binding spell. She held the ritual knife against her chest, her other hand firmly wrapped around Cam’s own. Braeth, Dr. Flyte, the queen, and Ariadne were st
anding opposite each other on all four sides of the circle, the glyph that represented their chosen element on the ground in front of them. They were discussing the finer points of the spell, wanting to make sure they got it right the first time.
Elena was busying herself explaining it all to Cam. “The mechanics will be similar to what we’ve been doing with the curse—a physical manipulation of our magical energies—but it will be less tiring because the ritual helps us direct it. We also won’t be casting a projection spell, because there are certain projection elements written into the binding. I’m not sure if it’s for the sake of theatricality or simply that the casters wanted proof of what was happening.”
He’d figured most of this out already, but there was just enough nervousness in the words to suggest all this focus on detail wasn’t really for him. Still, distraction was probably in order. “You know, you’re cute when you go into lecture mode,” he said. When she blushed, then scowled at him, he reached over and pulled the hand holding the knife into his grip as well. “Hey, I’m not complaining. I probably would have liked school a lot better if I’d had you in one of my classes.”
She squeezed his hand. “I just want you to be absolutely sure you know what you’re doing.”
“I’m sure.” Cam bent forward enough to kiss her hand, a little surprised at how calm he felt. He’d been wrestling with frustrated adrenaline often enough the last few weeks that he’d expected to be chomping at the bit right now. If nothing else, it would have made sense to feel some of the charge that always hit when he knew he was about to catch the bad guy.
Instead, he felt like he was in a life-or-death battle with someone just a little better than he was. When you were in those kind of fights, all that mattered was what you did next. If you didn’t make the right choice then nothing else really mattered.
Dr. Flyte, lighting the candle in front of him with a murmured word, smiled slightly. “I did some quick research while we were setting up, and it turns out that the dragons still use a variation of this spell.” He paused a beat, for effect. “They often pair it with poetry and incorporate it into their marriage rituals.”
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