“This will be the third time I’ve tried creating the brew. The doubt’s there for a reason.”
“Then put it aside. This recipe, that recipe, put that aside as well. What do you think—how does it feel to you? Maybe it’s not like throwing together a soup, but you’ve been mixing potions since you were four.”
Deliberately, he closed the books, knowing full well by now she could recite it all by rote in any case. “What do you say—not just from the head this time, but from the belly?”
“I say . . .” She shoved impatiently at her hair. “Where the devil is Fin? I need his blood for this, and I want it fresh.”
“He said he’d be here before noon, so he will. Why don’t I work on the order with you, and the words? Then when he comes, you’ll bleed him, and begin.”
“All right, all right.”
Time to stop fussing and fiddling and do, she ordered herself.
“The blessed water would be first. I’ve got ‘First we pour the water blest to form the pool for all the rest. Belladonna berries crushed and steeped, stirring juices slow and deep. Hair from a pregnant yak mixed with manchineel tree sap to dissolve the wing of bat. Angel’s trumpet, wolfsbane petals, add them in and wait to settle. Then . . .”
“What do you think, Branna?” Connor prompted.
“Well, I think I rushed it last time. I think this stage needs to work, to boil a bit.”
“So . . . Stir and boil and bubble and stir . . .”
“Until the rise of smoke occurs—yes, I rushed it. It should boil and steam a bit. All right.” With a firm nod, she wrote more notes. “The mushrooms, we’ll try the mushrooms as—what the bloody hell, it feels right.”
“There we are now.” Connor gave her an elbow poke of encouragement.
“Caps of death soft and white, bring about eternal night. No, no, not for a demon.” She crossed it out, started again. “Caps of death three plus two, spread your poison through this brew.”
“Better,” Connor agreed.
“And the conium petals. Ah, pretty petals sprinkled in, let this lethal magick begin.”
“Deadly magick’s better, I think.”
“Yes, deadly.” She made the change. “Blood to bind it, drop by drop, and the demon heart will stop. Power of me, power of three, here fulfill our destiny. As we will, so mote it be.”
She dropped the pencil on the counter. “I’m not sure.”
“I like it—it sounds right. It’s strong enough, Branna, but not fussy. It’s death we’re dealing, so there’s no need for frills.”
“You’ve a point there. Bloody hell, it needs to thicken, go black. I need to add that. Blacken, thicken under my hands . . .”
“To make this poison for the damned,” Connor finished.
“I quite like that,” she considered. “I want to write it all up fresh.”
“If you can’t start until Fin’s here, why don’t you—” He broke off, turning to the door as Fin came in. “Well, here he is now. She’s after bleeding you, mate.”
Fin stopped in his tracks. “I gave more than enough yesterday, and the day before.”
“I want fresh.”
“She wants fresh,” Fin grumbled and tossed off his coat. “What are you doing with what’s left I bled for you yesterday, and the day before that?”
“It’s safe—and you never know when it might be useful. But I want to start it all fresh today. I’ve changed some of the spell.”
“Again?”
“Yes, again,” she said in as irritable a tone as he. “It needed work. Connor agreed—”
“I’m not in this.” Connor held up his hands. “The two of you sort this out. In fact, now that you’re here, Fin, I’m off. It’s Boyle, I think, who’s coming in a bit later, so he can sweep up the leavings if the two of you battle.”
He grabbed his coat, his cap, his scarf, and was out the door with Kathel slipping out with him—as if the dog agreed some distance wouldn’t hurt a thing.
“Why are you so cross?” Branna demanded.
“Me? Why are you? You’ve got that I’m-annoyed-at-every-fecking-thing between your eyebrows.”
Only more annoyed, Branna rubbed her fingers to smooth out any such line. “I’m not annoyed—yes, I bloody well am, but not at every fecking thing, or at you. I’m not used to failing so spectacularly the way I am with this damnable brew.”
“Not getting it right isn’t failing.”
“Getting it right is success, so its opposite is failing.”
“They called it practicing magicks for a reason, Branna, and you know it full well.”
She started to snap, then just sighed. “I do know it. I do. I thought I’d come closer the first few times than I have. If I keep missing by so wide a mark, I’ll need to send for the ingredients again.”
“So we start fresh.” He walked to her, kissed her. “Good day to you, Branna.”
She let out a half laugh. “And good day to you, Finbar.” Smiling, she picked up her knife. “And so . . .”
She expected him to roll up his sleeve, but he pulled off his sweater.
“Take it from the mark,” he told her. “As you did for the poison for Cabhan. From the mark, Branna, as you should have done the first time with this.”
“I should have, it’s true. It hurts you, it burns you, when I take blood from there.”
“Because the purpose is the enemy of the mark. Take it from there, Branna. Then I want a damn biscuit.”
“You can have half a dozen.”
She stepped to him with the ritual knife and the cup.
“Don’t block it.” He drew her eyes to him. “The pain may be part of it. We’ll let it come, and let it go.”
“All right.”
She was quick—quick was best—and scored across the pentagram with the tip of her blade. She caught the blood in the cup—felt the pain though he made no sound, no movement.
“That’s enough,” she murmured, and set the knife aside to pick up the cloth she had ready, pressed it to the wound.
Then, putting the cup by the jars, turned back to him to gently heal the shallow wound.
Before he knew what she was about—perhaps before she did—Branna pressed a kiss to the mark.
“Don’t.” Stunned, appalled to the marrow, he jerked back. “I don’t know how it might harm you, what it might do.”
“It will do nothing to me, as you did nothing to earn it. I spent years trying to blame you for it, and should have blamed Sorcha—or more, her grief. She harmed you—she broke our most sacred oath, and harmed you, and many before you. Innocents. I’d take it from you if I could.”
“You can’t. Do you think I haven’t tried?” He yanked on his sweater again. “Witchcraft, priests, wise women, holy men, magicks black and white. Nothing touches it. I’ve been to every corner of the world where there was so much of a whisper of a rumor the curse could be broken.”
His rambles, she realized. This was their basis. “You never said—”
“What could I say?” he countered. “This visible symbol of what runs inside me can’t be changed, it can’t be removed by any means I’ve tried. No spell, no ritual can break the curse she cast with her dying breaths. It can’t be burned off, cut off or out of me. Considered lopping my arm off, but feared it would just sear in on another part of me.”
“You— Good God, Fin.”
He hadn’t meant to say so much, but couldn’t take back the words. “Well, I was more than a bit drunk at the time, fortunately, as cursed is cursed, two-armed or one, despite what seemed desperately heroic at two and twenty, when shattered on the best part of a bottle of Jameson.”
“You won’t harm yourself,” she said, shaken to the core. “You won’t think of it.”
“No point in it, as I’ve been told time and again when all attempts failed. The curse of a dying witch—and one who’d sacrificed herself for her children, to protect them from the darkest of purposes?—it’s powerful.”
“When this is do
ne, I would help you find a way—all of us—”
“It’s for me, if there is a way, and I won’t ever stop looking, as because of this you can’t give me tomorrows. I can’t ask for them or give them to you. We could never have children.” He nodded. “I see you know that, too. Neither of us would bring a child into the world knowing he would carry this burden.”
“No.” Despair, and brutal acceptance, twisted her heart. “And when this is done . . . you’ll go again.”
“When this is done, could either of us be together as we are, knowing we’d never have the life we once imagined? Knowing this”—he touched his shoulder—“stands between us even after Cabhan’s end? As long as I wear it, he doesn’t truly end, and Sorcha’s curse goes on, in me. So I’ll never stop looking for a way.”
“So her curse comes back threefold. You, me, and the life we might have had.”
“We have today. It’s more than I believed I’d have with you again.”
“I thought it would be enough.” She walked into his arms, held tight.
“We’d best not waste it.”
“No, we won’t waste it.” She lifted her face, lifted her lips to his. “If I could wish it, we’d be ordinary.”
He could smile. “You could never be ordinary.”
“Just a woman who makes soaps and candles, and has a pretty shop in the village. And you just a man who has the stables and the falconry. If I could wish it. But . . .”
As she did, he looked at the counter, with the spell books, the jars. “If we were ordinary, we couldn’t do what has to be done. Best try the spell or you’ll be bleeding me again saying the blood’s not fresh enough.”
Duty, she thought, and destiny. Neither could be shirked.
She got the cauldron, lit its fire low.
The long, painstaking process took precision and power—step by careful step. Branna ordered herself to put all the previous failures aside, to treat this as the first attempt. The toxic brew bubbled and smoked as both she and Fin held their hands over the cauldron to slowly, slowly stir.
She drew a breath as they approached the final step.
“Blacken, thicken under my hands,” she said.
Fin followed. “To make this poison for the damned.”
“Power of me,” they said together as with the words the brew bubbled forcibly. “Power of three, here fulfill our destiny. As we will, so mote it be.”
She felt the change, the spread of power and will, from her, from Fin. They reached for each other, linking that power and that will, letting it merge and, merging, increase.
Blocking all else, she focused only on that merging, that purpose, while her heart began a hard, quick tattoo in her breast, while the warmth and scents of her workshop faded away.
All light, bright and brilliant, rising in her, flowing from her. Blooming with what rose and flowed from him.
A meeting, physical, intimate, psychic, potent that built like a storm, ripped through her like a climax.
Her head fell back. She lifted her arms, palms up, fingers spread.
“Here, a weapon forged against the dark. Fired by faith and light. On the Dark Witch’s sacrificial ground, three by three by three will stand against the evil born in the black. Blood and death follow. Bring horse, hawk, hound together, and say the name. Ring bell, open book, light candle, say the name. Into fire white, all light, blinding bright, cast the stone and close the door. Blood and death follow. Be it demon, be it mortal, be it witch, blood and death follow.”
Her eyes, which had gone black, rolled back white. Fin managed to catch her before she fell, simply folded like a puppet with its strings nipped.
Even as he swept her up, she pressed a hand to his shoulder.
“I’m all right. Just dizzy for a minute.”
“You’ll sit right here.” He laid her on the little sofa in front of the fire, then going to her stock, scanned until he found what he wanted.
He didn’t bother to put the kettle on, but made tea with a snap of his fingers, poured six drops of the tonic into it, then brought it to her.
“Drink and don’t argue,” he ordered. “It’s your own potion.”
“I was there, all the light and power rising up, and the brew stirring in the cauldron, thickening, bubbling. Then I was watching myself, and you, and hearing the words I spoke without speaking them. I’ve had flashes of what’s to come before—all of us have—but nothing so strong or overtaking as that. I’m all right now, I promise you.”
Or nearly, she thought and drank the laced tea.
“It’s only when it left me, it was like being emptied out entirely for just a moment.”
“Your eyes went black as the dark of the moon, and your voice echoed as if from a mountaintop.”
“I wasn’t myself.”
“You weren’t, no. What came in you, Branna?”
“I don’t know. But the strength and the light of it was consuming. And, Fin, it was beautiful beyond the telling. It’s all that we are, but so brilliantly magnified, a thousand suns all around and inside at once. It’s the only way I know to tell you.”
She drank more tea, felt herself begin to settle again. “I want to write it down, everything I said. It wouldn’t do to forget.”
“I won’t be forgetting it, not a word.”
She smiled. “Best to write it down in any case. A weapon forged—it must have worked then.”
“The poison’s black and thick as pitch.”
“We have to seal it, keep it in the dark, and charm the bottle to hold it.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“No, no, we conjured it together, and there’s something to that, I think. So we should do the rest together as well. I’m altogether fine, Fin, I promise you.”
She set the tea aside, got to her feet to prove her words. “It should be done quickly. I wouldn’t want the poison to turn and have to go through the whole business again.”
He kept an eye on her until he was fully satisfied.
After they sealed the spell, she took two squat bottles, both opaque and black, from the cabinet under her work counter.
“Two?”
“We made enough, as I thought it wise to have a second. If something should happen to the first—before or during—we’ll have another.”
“Smart and, as always, practical.” When she started to get out a funnel, he shook his head. “I don’t think this is something we do that way. I understand, again, your practicality, but I think, for this, we stay with power.”
“You may be right. One for you, then, one for me. It should be quickly done, then stopped tight, again sealed.” She touched one of the bottles. “Yours.” Then the other. “Mine.” And walked back to stand with him by the cauldron. “Pot to bottle, leaving no trace on the air, no drop on the floor.”
She linked one hand with his, held the other out, as he did. Two thin streams of oily black rose out of the cauldron, arched toward the bottles, slid greasily in. When the stream ended, they floated the stoppers up, in.
“Out of light, sealed tight, open only for the right.”
Relieved, Branna flashed white fire into the cauldron to burn any trace left behind. “Better safe,” she said as she moved to take the bottles, store them deep in a cupboard where she kept the jars of ingredients used, and the poison already prepared for Cabhan. “Though I’ll destroy the cauldron. It shouldn’t be used again. A pity, as it’s served me well.” Then she charmed the door of the cupboard. “It will only open for one of our circle.”
She went to another cupboard, took out a pale green bottle basketed in silver filigree, then chose two wineglasses.
“And what’s this?”
“It’s a wine I made myself, and put by here for a special occasion—not knowing what that might be. It seems it’s this. We’ve done what we must, and I’ll tell you true, Fin, I wasn’t sure we would or could. Each time I thought I was certain of it, we’d fail. But today?”
She poured the pale gold wine in both
glasses, offered him one. “Today we haven’t failed. So . . .”
Understanding, he touched his glass to hers. “We’ll drink to today.” He sipped, angled his head. “Well now, here’s yet another talent, for this is brilliant. Both light and bold at once. It tastes of stars.”
“You could say I added a few. It is good,” she agreed. “We’ve earned good this day. And as I recall, you’ve earned a biscuit.”
“Half a dozen was the offer,” he remembered, “but now I think we’ve both earned something more than biscuits.” He swung an arm around her waist. “You’d best hold on to your wine,” he warned, and took her flying.
• • •
IT MADE HER GIDDY, THE SURPRISE AND SPEED OF IT. MADE her hunger as his mouth took hers on the flight. She let out a gasping laugh when she found herself sprawled under him on a huge bed draped with filmy white curtains.
“So this is what we’ve earned?”
“More than.”
“I’ve lost my wine.”
“Not at all.” He gestured so she looked over, saw a table holding the glasses. And saw both bed and table floated on a deep blue sea.
“Now who’s practical? But where are we? Ah, it’s so warm. It’s wonderful.”
“The South Seas, far away from all but us, and circled so not even the fish might see.”
“The South Seas, on a floating bed. There’s a bit of madness in you.”
“When it comes to you. An hour or two with you, Branna, in our own window into paradise. Where we’re warm and safe, and you’re naked.” And so she was in a fingersnap. Before she could laugh again, he slid his hands up and over her breasts. “By the gods, I love having you naked and under me. We’ve done what we must,” he reminded her. “Now we take what we want.”
His mouth came down on hers, hot and possessive, to send the need sizzling through her like a lit fuse. She answered, not with surrender, but equal fire and force.
The magicks merged still pulsed through them, bright and fierce, so each opened to it, and each other.
The crazed rush of his lips over her skin, brewed a storm of lust. The urgency of her seeking hands whipped the storm into a whirlwind. They tumbled over the bed as it rocked over the wide, rolling sea while inside them waves of need rose and broke only to rise again, an endless tide.
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