Poison and Potions: a Limited Edition Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection

by Erin Hayes

  The realization almost pulled me out of the magical current entirely—the Fae might have to take witches’ power in order to use magic, but it was not because they were powerless on their own.

  No, they had power; they had magic of their own. But it lay dormant within them.

  They simply could not access their own magic without the use of a witch’s magic.

  Once I’d solved our current problem, I would need to consider that, look at the potential ramifications.

  If a Fae lord needed power but could not access a witch’s, might he be taught to use his own?

  The question lingered at the back of my mind, but I shoved it down where it belonged.

  I forced myself to ride waves through an entire circuit, though the ripping from Kaedon’s body and back into my own was less traumatic than the first transition.

  Inside me, I saw the magic become its original pink again, confirming something I had always known but never articulated—the very magic we used took on aspects of ourselves.

  The longer I traveled through us this way, the more the passage of time seemed to slow. On one hand, I knew that the current was speeding up—some part of me could tell that, feel it.

  On the other hand, I seemed to have all the time in the world to examine everything around me—to see other lines of power sparking in different colors, spinning off to do what magic work was necessary within a body. It was when I approached the transition over to Kaedon once again that I saw it—the black winding its way into the currents I rode, like ink spilled into pure, clear water, spreading blackness everywhere it touched.

  And I was headed directly toward it.

  I knew I wanted no part of it.

  With the thrust of my horror behind the decision, I leapt my consciousness out of the current long enough to sail over the inky corruption and land on the other side. Yet much of the darkness followed through my palm and into Kaedon’s.

  It would have to be dealt with. But I didn’t have the capacity to do so now. The most I could do was attempt to block it. I had only a few seconds to complete the task, but in this strange landscape, seconds stretched out as long as I needed them.

  Once again imagining the body I no longer had, I swirled my hand into the light surrounding me, and the strands clung to me like spun sugar. They were every bit as sticky, as well. Slowing just briefly, I allowed the dark shadow to almost catch up before I lashed out and left it with the magic in my hand, stopping it from spreading by encapsulating it in the very energy it had been seeking to overcome.

  Having temporarily corralled that threat, I turned my attention to my original dilemma—how to break the connection that was holding me bound to Kaedon.

  I had to time this perfectly. As I approached the point where I would again transition to my own body, I prepared myself. The magical current shoved itself back into me, and I focused on my attention by muttering an incantation of closure. Like a taut string snipped with scissors, the lines of power running between us immediately fell, losing their direction and dropping like ribbons falling toward a floor.

  But the other side of the string was still moving, magic rushing out of my body and into Kaedon’s.

  The incantation worked yet again. I held it up in my mind’s eye, a rune of ending that slammed down like a wall between me and the exit that power had used to flow out of me.

  With a single stretch, aching, I landed inside myself, only to find my knees giving as I crumpled to the floor. Even disoriented, Kaedon flashed his arms out in time to keep me from hitting the floorboards.

  “What the hell was that?” Kaedon’s voice was ragged and raw. It sounded as if he had spent the last hour grappling with the magic himself, rather than the fifteen or twenty minutes we’d been locked in place.

  Of course, for all I knew, he had. At least subjectively.

  I assumed that the reason I collapsed and he hadn’t was because the bulk of the power had made its way into him before I had cut off access.

  “Did that feel natural to you?” Kaedon asked me, his eyes snapping with anger.

  “No.” For an instant, I was thankful for the exhaustion that showed through so clearly. Surely, he wouldn’t think I had somehow orchestrated that?

  The color drained from the Fae lord’s face, his eyes widened, and I flinched, certain he was about to turn the famed elvish wrath on me.

  Instead, he crumpled to the floor in a heap.

  Chapter Nine

  With a cry, I dove for him, trying to catch his head before it hit the floor. I didn’t exactly manage to get my forearm beneath his descending body. Still, it seemed to give enough cushion to allow him to land without cracking his skull.

  Glancing around the room for anything that might be helpful, I grabbed a small, flat pillow that had been covering the seat of one hardback chair. Tucking it under Lord Kaedon’s head, I gently patted his cheeks, hoping to wake him. When he did not move, I glanced around again, finding nothing that might be helpful. I had hoped for water to sprinkle on his cheeks or perhaps smelling salts.

  No. Those things were in the healer’s quarters.

  I wasn’t even sure I would know how to get back to the sickroom where I’d been staying while I was here. I was equally uncertain where to find anyone to help. The servants had already been going to bed when we came up here after eating. With a muttered curse, I stood and made my way to the door. Hesitating only long enough to glance between Lord Kaedon and the rest of the castle, I lifted my skirts and began racing down the stairs.

  At the bottom of the steps, I dashed across the courtyard and into the dining hall that led to the main castle. I didn’t look up, didn’t allow myself to panic over the unusual dimensions.

  Instead, I tucked my chin down, pointed myself toward the door I was certain led to the kitchen, and began running. Once through that door and into the kitchen itself, I hesitated. I had some vague notion that cooks in large castles often slept near the kitchen, though I couldn’t have said why I thought so. Nonetheless, there were several doors leading off in different directions, so I tried those first. The first two were merely storage rooms. The third one yielded results.

  In that room, the cook slept heavily, her snores echoing throughout the room.

  I rushed to the bedside, and shook her shoulder. “Hey,” I hissed. “Wake up. His Lordship has collapsed.”

  “What?” The cook sat straight up in bed with a slight shriek, shaking off the last remnants of her own sleep. “Did you say he’s collapsed?”

  “Yes, and I don’t have anything useful. I can’t help him.”

  Pulling off the white bobbed nightcap she wore, the cook swiftly pulled her hair into a bun as she dressed in a simple wrapper over her shift.

  Before we left her room, she stopped and opened the door to yet another room, this one holding little more than a bed with servant girls sleeping in it.

  “Girls,” the cook said, “I need you to get up. You, Shashauna, run up and fetch the healer. Deedrel, put water on to boil. We’ll need tea, at the very least, but also clean water hot and ready to go for any treatments the healer might have. And Eilidh, please come with us.” She moved quickly but calmly through the kitchen, pausing long enough to make sure each girl scurried off to her assigned task. Then she led me across the dining space again and up the winding stairs. At some points, I had to almost run to keep up with her—she was surprisingly swift and graceful given her round bulk.

  At the top of the stairs, I paused behind the cook, steeling myself for whatever I might find inside.

  But nothing had changed. The Fae lord still lay prone on the floor, his head resting on an inadequate pillow, his legs and arms still slightly akimbo.

  The cook moved around him quickly, feeling his face, his forehead, his cheeks, and both his wrists, even bending over to rest her ear against his chest.

  “What happened?” she asked me.

  “We were practicing a spell, and something went wrong. We ended it, though, and everything seemed okay.
” I paused. Had it really? Lord Kaedon had spoken to me in anger for the first time. After this point, he had been calm and kind. He might look like a dread Fae lord, but he was different from them.

  Or at least different from what I expected a Fae lord to be.

  The cook nodded sagely. “Practicing magic again.” She clicked her tongue. “That boy will never learn.”

  “This has happened before?” I asked. I had suddenly become acutely aware of the fact that ultimately, Kaedon’s protection was the only thing that would ever keep me safe in the Fae kingdom.

  “Not quite like this.” The cook’s voice trailed off as she frowned down at her lord.

  Bertino bustled in at that moment. Along with the cook and what I suspected was her apprentice, I happily fell away from Kaedon to give the healer room to work.

  He tried several things, opening the black bag he carried with him and pulling out various potions and ointments. When none of them worked to revive the Fae lord, Bertino began barking out orders—it was the first time I had seen him in his element, no longer the kindly old man tottering about developing potions, but a respected member of Lord Kaedon’s household.

  As more elves from around the castle began to filter into the room, I found myself on the receiving end of several suspicious stares. I withdrew to the edges of the crowd, leaning against the wall as I watched the circle we had created totally obliterated.

  Soon, the healer had four muscular young men come in to help him load Kaedon on to a stretcher. Only two of them were necessary to carry it, but the other two seemed to be in place in order to provide security.

  As if anyone would attack a Fae lord in his own home.

  From the way they looked at me as they passed, however, I suspected I knew exactly who they thought was most likely to attack their leader.

  And then he was gone in a swirl of bustling, busy people, leaving me alone in the spellcasting practice room with a broken circle and a failed spell.

  Halfheartedly, I moved around the room, cleaning as I went. One of the bottles of oil had been knocked over, leaving a spreading pool across the floor. I picked up the bottle and set it on the nearest shelf, then set out to search for a suitable cleaning utensil. I would prefer to mop, but I hadn’t seen anything of the like around. Perhaps in Fae castles, all cleaning implements stayed with the maids. On the island, we had done the cleaning.

  In the end, I left it for the maids. With no way to lift the puddle from the floor, and no idea of where and how to dispose of it once I did, I was left with few options.

  Over the next several days, I began to feel much like that puddle of oil—unwanted, perhaps a little unpleasant, and yet a constant presence that no one had any way to get rid of.

  As Lord Kaedon continued in what the healer was beginning to call a coma, I found myself at entirely loose ends. No one seemed to know my status, whether I was trusted advisor or enemy prisoner. Out of fear I might actually be the former, Kaedon’s men gave me a fair amount of freedom to roam around the castle. But their concern I might be the latter meant I was bound to be followed wherever I went.

  Mostly where I went was to pace the hallway outside Lord Kaedon’s chambers.

  I was no healer, but part of me continued to be drawn to the elf lord. I was convinced that if I were given the chance, I could discover what had happened to him.

  The healer allowed me in without a guard only once, on the third day. As I approached the curtain around the bed where Kaedon lay perfectly still, Bertino touched my shoulder and held me back. “Harper,” he said. “You need to be very careful. There are those here who would not care that Lord Kaedon trusts you—not if they thought they could get away with proclaiming you an enemy.”

  Lord Kaedon trusted me?

  I would not have guessed as much, but I was growing to trust Bertino’s insights.

  With one hand, I reached out and pulled aside the thick, heavy velvet curtain.

  Kaedon lay motionless on the bed. His dark skin had paled with sickness until it was the color of the gray light can so often found on the rocks down by the ocean shore on the island. His cheeks were sunken and his hands rested atop the coverlet over him. He was entirely bony and gaunt.

  I gasped involuntarily, holding my hand up to my mouth.

  Tears prickled at the back of my eyes, and I reached out toward him, pulling my hand back only at the very last minute.

  “Will he recover?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Bertino’s misery at having to make the statement broke through my own shock and dismay.

  I turned to face him, letting the curtain fall. “Do you have any idea what’s causing this?”

  “Only that is something magical in nature, something I don’t recognize.” His brows furrowed in dismay.

  “And if you do not find something to save him soon, what will happen?”

  “He’ll die,” Bertino said.

  “What will happen to his people?” I didn’t know exactly where the question came from, except that I was certain—relatively certain, anyway—that it would be one of the first questions Kaedon would have wanted asked.

  Bertino shrugged, one hand held out to the side—more a gesture of resignation than one made by a man who didn’t know an answer.

  “His nephew Loren is young to inherit, but he might be able to hold off any other takers.”

  “Loren would be under threat, as well?” I imagined the young elf, so eager to impress his uncle, so willing to help care for me while I was ill.

  “Absolutely. His life would be in more danger than ever before should he inherit before he is old enough to take his place in the military ranks and prove himself.”

  I shuddered at the thought of that kind of problem.

  “Then Kaedon has to be cured,” I said simply, as if the answer were easy.

  “Ultimately, I fear that is more your realm of experience than mine. This is a magical illness, not a natural one.”

  I nodded slowly. “He’s going to have to be watched carefully from here on out, just to make sure no one else tries to kill him. And even more than that, I’m going to have to break whatever spell this might be.”

  Breaking the spell was easier said than done.

  I moved into the spellcasting practice room in the tower above the kitchens, where I studied the spell we had been casting when our magic cycled through us, and he had collapsed.

  Someone had been in to finish cleaning the room, and the puddle of oil that had been there had partially soaked into the wood flooring. The stain now crossed the outermost ring around the circle, and seemed to constantly draw my attention. I found myself pacing around and around, reciting the steps we had taken to activate our powers. A ring of salt, a ring of oil, invoke the circle, step into the pentagram, and begin. I muttered the words to myself over and over, whispered them as I remembered the strange ride through the electricity that was our magic, coursing through our bodies. And every time I stepped over that blotch of oil, that stain that shouldn’t be there, something pinged inside me. It jangled, like a poorly tuned string on a musical instrument. There was something wrong with the circle we had cast. I was sure of it.

  But I didn’t know how to fix it.

  Every day, I went back to his sickroom, where the healer allowed me to sit by the bedside. Given their choice, I suspected Lord Kaedon’s guards would not have allowed it. But Bertino had grown to know me in the weeks preceding, and he seemed to trust me more than anyone else in the castle did—except, possibly, the cook, who had seen my initial reaction to Kaedon’s collapse. She was always glad to see me, and willing to put food aside. Sometimes, she sent one of the serving girls up with a plate or bowl of whatever she was serving the rest of the castle.

  And the serving maid who had helped me dress. She was my final ally in this castle full of people loyal to Kaedon. Her name, I had learned, was Marie, and she had taken it upon herself to make certain I had clean clothing to wear—nothing so fine as the dress His Lordship assigned to
me, but perfectly serviceable.

  Days passed like this—during which I continued to fail to find a magical solution—during which Kaedon grew thinner and thinner.

  Days that marked off a countdown of sorts—a countdown to the day I lost my advocates in the castle, the day any possibility of ending the war between the elves and the witches was over.

  That day was rushing toward me faster than I could imagine, and it terrified me.

  The day the Fae Lord Kaedon died.

  Chapter Ten

  Almost as horrifying to me as Kaedon’s imminent death was my growing suspicion that not only was his poisoning my fault, but that it had also been the primary purpose for my banishment from the island.

  The more I considered it, the more certain I became that the witch elders left me on that mountain pass not to die, but as bait for the lord they knew most needed a witch’s magic.

  Kaedon had been in a coma for a week, and I had taken to visiting him several times a day in between my attempts to figure out exactly had happened.

  Guards still followed me into his room when I went to visit, but I had learned to mostly ignore them, at least to the extent that I felt free to talk to Kaedon in veiled terms about my attempts to find the source of and treatment for what the spell had done to him.

  On the seventh day, I sat in the chair next to his bed with my arms stretched out beside his, holding his emaciated hand in both of mine. I rested my head on the mattress, and talked to him as I would have when he’d been awake.

  “I can’t help but think,” I said, pitching my voice to a low murmur, “that if our two peoples are connected, then either the connection or the separation had to come through magic. If we were one people in the world before, then something happened to break us apart.” I gently stroked my fingertips across the top of his. “Maybe it’s the same magic that brought us over from the World Before.”

  I’d gone back to the library to read more of the history Kaedon had shown me, but it was dense and old-fashioned, the language of an academic, and I found my head hurting before too long. I wished then, as I had a million times before, for Kaedon to wake long enough to talk to me about it.