Prince by Blood and Bone: A Fantasy Romance of the Black Court (Tales of the Black Court)

by Jessica Aspen

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Bryanna threw her losing cards down. “I can’t take it!” She rose from the table in the parlor where she and Trina had been playing cards for hours, and crossed to the window. “It’s going to be dark soon.” She gestured outside at the long afternoon shadows tracked across the snow. “I thought Logan was supposed to be some kind of hunter?”

  She didn’t like the tall, dark man her older cousin had fallen in love with. He was fae and naturally she distrusted him, but it was the changes in Trina that set her hackles on edge.

  “Hunting is his Gift and he is amazing at tracking, but they’ll be slower because Kian can’t ride.” Trina gathered up the scattered cards and shuffled. “Tracking isn’t instantaneous, it’s not a spell. It might take them a day or two to find Aunt Theresa and Cassie, and that’s if they’re even in this part of Underhill. If they’re not, they may have to open a portal and go somewhere else.” She paused in her shuffling. “Are you sure they’re here in the White Queen’s demesne?”

  “No, I’m not sure.” Bryanna toyed with the curtains and brooded at the cold, empty clearing. “We should have scryed for them ourselves.”

  “Logan can find them, Bree.”

  Her spine stiffened. “Do you listen to him about everything now?” She turned and faced her cousin. “What happened to you? What happened to that determined girl who led us into so much trouble as kids and led us out of it as adults? Where’s the real Trina MacElvy?”

  Trina glared back. “I learned the hard way not to mess with Underhill…and to trust Logan.” She slapped the deck on the table, stood up, and crossed to Bryanna, pulling her into a long, fierce hug. Bryanna resisted. She loved Trina, but this new person who defended the fae and even depended on one—this wasn’t Trina.

  “Fae magic is different from ours, Bree. It’s wild and unpredictable.”

  Hot pressure built up behind Bryanna’s eyes. “But this is Mom and Cassie,” she whispered, giving in to her misery and burrowing into Trina’s shoulder.

  She still smelled like Trina, of green herbs and earth magic, but underneath lurked Logan’s fantastical, manly smell. Her cousin had been touched by his magic in ways Bryanna could only imagine. Would that happen if she stayed with Kian? Would she become something else? Someone else?

  “I don’t understand, Trina. You’ve always put family first.”

  “I know, but I’m thinking for all of us now. It’s not just us girls anymore.” She pulled back and took Bryanna’s hand, placing it on the slight curve of her belly. “I can’t afford to be a risk taker right now. It’s dangerous out there. You’ve no idea how dangerous.”

  Bryanna swallowed her tears back and tried to keep her voice steady. Trina had always taken care of her, but now she needed to do something. She needed to take action for her mother and Cassie.

  “But we’re not out there,” she said. “How about we don’t leave the lodge. We could scry for them right here. My Gift isn’t strong enough, but yours is. ” She swept her hand off of Trina’s stomach and encased the parlor’s four walls with a wave. “You’ll be able to see if the men have found them, and you’ll be able to check on Logan.”

  And Kian. She didn’t want to admit it, but she was worried about him. Somewhere out there the queen and Agrona hunted him. Somewhere out in the cold, dangerous forest he put himself at risk for her family. And her.

  Trina sighed and shook her head. “It’s too big a gamble.”

  “I can’t take this Trina. It’s my fault they’re lost. I tried to hold onto them. I had them in my arms, and they were ripped away.” The tears for her family that she’d been holding at bay for weeks built up again and Bryanna’s vision blurred. “Mom and Cassie might be dead,” she whispered.

  “No. I don’t believe that. You’d know. I’d know.” Trina wiped a tear from Bryanna’s cheek. “What about that locket?”

  “What about it?”

  “It works, doesn’t it? It shows you how to find them? That means they’re still alive. You need to trust Logan and the prince. They’ll find them.”

  “Two selfish elven lords? How do you know they’re even looking?”

  “Elvatian,” Trina said, her lips curving up in a gentle smile. “It’s elvatian, not elven, that’s actually an insult. And I know they’re looking because Logan wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “They say they can’t lie, but they find ways to do it, don’t they?” The words were sour on her tongue, the tang growing stronger as she watched Trina’s eyes fill with faith.

  “He loves me, Bree. He truly does.”

  Envy stabbed deep into Bryanna’s heart. She wanted that. Wanted the utter conviction that Kian would do what was best for her and not for himself. But he hadn’t always shown that, and now that he was gone, she had doubts. He’d been sincere when he’d pledged his vow to help her, she just wasn’t sure he could keep that vow.

  “One look,” Bryanna wheedled. “Just to be sure they’re looking in the right direction.”

  “It’s not a good idea.”

  “We’re safe here. Kian said the lodge is shielded, and I saw how protective Logan is about you. He wouldn’t have left you here if he’d thought it wasn’t safe. It’s getting dark, and there are wolves out there.” She looked outside and shivered. “And other things.” Large predatory cats, Troll-kin, Agrona. “Please?”

  Trina stepped to the window and frowned. Her hand went to her belly. “Okay, but just one look. And if we can’t find them, I’m done and we wait for them to come back. Learning patience has been hard for me, but I can’t see how this can hurt. Fetch a bowl of water.”

  Bryanna found a clean, silver bowl and a fresh pitcher of water the brownies had left in the dining room. It was time for some action. Soon, she’d have an answer for all the anxieties churning in her stomach. Answers about her mom and Cassie. And maybe some answers about Kian.

  Trina cleared the cards off of the small table, centered it in the room, and placed four candles at the directional points. As they had since the first time they’d done a spell together, they walked sunwise around the circle, lighting the candles and entreating the four corners for protection.

  Once the directions had been called, Trina asked for Danu’s protection. Deep green earth energy flowed into her aura. “You, too,” she said, unsheathing her athame. “You should connect with the Goddess, too.”

  “I don’t…we’ve never done that before. You always take the lead.”

  “Hey, I can see your aura. It’s a nice, healthy, cornflower color. You’ve been wielding some magic lately. Give a little pull and see what happens.” Trina raised her eyebrows and gave her a look. “And while I know Aunty T. was trying to protect her youngest the best way she could, by not letting you try a little more I think she didn’t let you get strong. Go ahead.”

  “Bossy.” Bryanna stuck out her tongue and Trina laughed.

  “That’s the spirit, now try.”

  Bryanna opened her Gift and the energy rushed in. Small hairs on her arms and legs lifted, and inside her confidence rose too. She could do magic. And it wasn’t just Kian who thought so.

  “See, more practice makes perfect, cuz. You set the circle.”

  Bryanna pulled energy from the ground beneath the lodge’s stone floor and the stars that stretched unseen overhead, and set the boundaries for the spell. Trina blessed their space and tools, and Bryanna emptied the pitcher into the wide bowl.

  The water stilled.

  Trina’s magic was wide open, the browns and greens twining through her aura and pouring out into the spell.

  “What do you see?” Bryanna craned her neck over the bowl, wishing she could see what her cousin saw, but this was Trina’s part of the spell.

  “I see the men. They’re approaching a stone castle. There are creatures patrolling the tops of the walls.”

  Cold touched Bryanna’s neck. “What kind of creatures?”

  “Troll-kin. Part troll, part elvatian. We’ve been under the protection of
King Oberon’s court and the full lords despise them, won’t let them in at all. They call them abominations.” She arched her brow. “Apparently the Black Court is less picky. I’ve heard that your Kian’s fiancée has some troll-kin blood as well.”

  “She’s not his fiancée.” Bryanna knew she shouldn’t be defensive but heard it in her voice anyway. He wasn’t her Kian either. “She might be there. Do you see a woman? She’s like a troll-elf combo, heavy on the troll.”

  “I’ll look.” Trina frowned, and the power pulsed. The surface of the water in the bowl shimmered.

  “What was that?”

  Trina’s aura wavered, and the spell wavered with it. “You see it?”

  “I see something.”

  In the water, a face with the sharp features of the fae and pale blue skin the color of a winter sky appeared. A slim hand rose from the surface of the water. Dripping, long fingers wrapped around Trina’s neck. She jerked and her aura quivered.

  “Trina!” Bryanna screamed.

  Cobalt blue veins spread from the point of contact, twining out over Trina’s skin. Between the lines she paled, until her skin was the same icy-blue as the hand choking her throat. Her breathing grew labored.

  Bryanna pulled power from the earth and sky and threw it at the arm, but it slid off, hitting the skim of ice forming on the water’s surface, and dissolving back down to the floor. She looked around for help, but there was no one but her listening to Trina’s rasping gasps grow shorter and shorter.

  There was no one else to come to the rescue. No one but her.

  She fumbled for Trina’s dropped athame as the veins spread up her cousin’s face and down into the neck of her shirt. She raised the knife high. “I call on you, Danu. Aid us!” Focusing all the power she could muster into the blade, she stabbed the arm.

  The point hit the smooth, pale skin and there was a sharp crack. The fingers tightened on Trina’s throat, the knuckles bulged out and Trina gasped. Bryanna held the knife steady, pushing it further into the gash and prayed harder.

  Dark red blood oozed from the cut. “Help me, help me, help me,” was all she could say, and hope the Goddess heard.

  The hand spasmed, the fingers clenching and unclenching as if reluctant to release their victim. For a moment she thought it wasn’t working, but the hand let go, retreating back to disappear under the surface of the bowl.

  Bryanna panted, athame at the ready in case it tried again. The face in the bowl twisted, its mouth opened wide in a silent raging scream. And then it disappeared leaving a bruised handprint collared around her cousin’s neck.

  Trina sucked in a ragged gasp, her wide eyes filled with pain. “Something’s wrong,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Something’s wrong. I think it’s the baby.” She held out her hand and Bryanna clutched it.

  “I’m sorry,” Bryanna said. “So sorry. I didn’t know this would happen.” She wanted to go to her cousin, but what if she relaxed and it came back? She sent more power into the athame, charging it with as much energy as it would hold.

  “Check it for me,” Trina begged. “Check the baby.” Her color was wrong, the cobalt veins still pulsing on her icy skin.

  “I will, but first I need to make sure that thing’s gone and not coming back.”

  “Bryanna!”

  “I will, Trina. I promise. But I need to make sure you’re safe.”

  The first rule of emergency care was to secure the area. She touched the bowl of water with her Gift. It seemed to be inert. No sign of the attacker, no sign of Trina’s scrying spell. Bryanna used the athame to cut a door in their circle and ran the bowl of water out into the next room. For good measure she grabbed the half-full pitcher of water and took it out, too. Then she came back in and sealed up the circle. Sending a quick prayer to the Goddess for protection, she opened her Gift and let her healing powers touch Trina.

  Her cousin was icy to the touch, the cold going deep under her skin. Bryanna opened her inner sight. The trace of blue that started on Trina’s throat was moving down her chest, aiming for the tiny spark of light inside her womb.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Bryanna sucked in air, she couldn’t get enough. This was her fault. She’d been so focused on getting something done that she’d exposed Trina and her baby to danger, and now something was wrong with the baby. A sheen of frost gleamed on her cousin’s pale skin and the dark cobalt veins twining down her torso.

  “Fight it, Trina. Use your Gift,” Bryanna urged.

  Her cousin’s teeth chattered. “I’m trying, but I’m so cold.”

  Bryanna held tight to her cousin, ice spreading along her palm, tracing blue light along her skin. She dropped Trina’s nearly blue hand and her own palms pinked back into their normal hue.

  “It’s spreading,” she said.

  She could hardly breathe. This was so far out of her sphere. Trina’s green magic was wilting under the withering cold, and she had no idea what to do to save her cousin, or the baby inside her belly that was no bigger than a clenched fist.

  “You have to do something.”

  The dark veins snaked another inch closer to the tiny soul-light curled up inside her cousin. The withered edge of Trina’s brown and green magic wound tighter around the baby and intensified into a richer hue as Trina pushed more of her magic to protect the babe. Frost crystallized on Trina’s skin but the veins’ encroachment slowed.

  “Hurry Bree, I can’t hold it back much longer.”

  “I’m no good at this!” She worried her lower lip between her teeth. “I’m barely a healer, let alone a warrior.”

  “You have to,” Trina panted. Small curls of frost hung off of her eyelashes and trembled on her lips.

  “I’ll try to slow it down, but you need to use your Gift and help me fight.” Bryanna blew out a breath, and inhaled a deeper one into the vise her lungs had become. She planted her feet and called on the Goddess with more desperation than she’d ever felt in her life. Power pulsed into the soles of her feet, dark, rich power that slumbered far below winter’s crust. She reached up to space and called again, rewarded with a surge of star energy, lighting every tingling cell alive.

  She placed her buzzing hands on either side of Trina’s freezing neck, touching the dark blue fingerprint bruises left by the disembodied hand. Aching cold seeped into her palms and crept up into her fingers, edging its way toward her wrists. It terrified her, but she didn’t dare let go.

  Bracing her feet, she braced her magic. She shoved the cold out of her hands, but a last painful trace of it stayed in her bones. “Trina, you’ve got to try harder, it’s not working.”

  Trina didn’t respond. Her green eyes were frosted half open, the pupils frozen and staring. Bryanna checked her cousin’s aura. It was weak throughout Trina’s body, but had formed a massive shield around Trina’s heart, lungs and inner organs, and the tiny light of the baby.

  Her mouth went dry, and her chest squeezed tight. This wasn’t working. Despite the green glow of Trina’s magic the ice continued to spread, edging ever closer to the baby. And now, it crept towards Trina’s heart. She couldn’t lose anybody else. She wouldn’t. She had to try something now or both Trina and her baby were dead.

  She rubbed her chilled hands together, tried to breathe through the panic, and went back over the little training she’d managed to absorb in her nomad on-the-run lifestyle. Everything said this was a battle—that she should push through and push hard—but she wasn’t a fighter, she was a healer.

  Deep inside, her instincts told her this wasn’t a case of fighting, it was a case of healing. She hadn’t trusted her instincts with Kian’s spell, and now she wondered if he’d be completely cured if she had. The stakes were higher now. She had to go with her gut. Somehow she had to trust she was more than a half-trained healer and doomed to fail. She had to trust she could do this—all on her own——or Trina and the baby didn’t stand a chance.

  Her cousin’s frost-traced skin had become ice, chased through by the veins of p
ower. She couldn’t worry about that. She needed to focus on what she knew, what skills she had, and the success she’d had with Kian’s curse.

  She closed her eyes and took the time to center herself solidly from within, starting with her own power deep in her belly, and spreading outward. She tugged more of the rich, moist, earth energy, and it rolled in, braiding itself into her own cornflower-blue light. She reached again for the sky, seeking out the power of the constellations.

  Here, Underhill, the stars were different, bold and bright they pulsed without the light pollution of her earth. Strong, even through the weakening afternoon sunlight, the cool, healing star energy blew down into her open chakras. It greeted the earth energy like a long lost friend, mixing and twisting until dark brown swirled with starry spirals, and her own sunny blue.

  Then it changed. The three colors merged into a solid strand of a color she’d never seen before in her own magic. Royal blue. A color only master healers had in their auras. Buoyed by the surge of energy and power, she moved forward and placed her hands back on Trina’s neck. This time the cold didn’t make it past her own boundaries. Her energy stroked out along the ice and painted it with a thin coating of the vibrant new blue.

  And just like that the knowledge came, she knew that the next step was to create a healing fever. Bright gold licked out along the royal blue pathways of her palms and spread gleaming heat along Trina’s skin.

  Lines of dark blue rimmed with gold chased scrolling lines on the ice. Tiny cracks formed, growing into deep fissures as the ice crystals shuddered and broke.

  Heat traced along Trina’s skin and the golden fever melted the ice into hissing steam. Finally, the frightening cobalt veins faded away.

  Bryanna let go. She sucked in huge gulps of air and examined her cousin for signs of success. Traces of pink flushed along Trina’s high cheekbones, and the green-brown of her magic already seemed stronger.

  Bryanna cut another door in the circle, carefully closing it after her. She went to the great-room and picked up the silver bowl of water. Before she’d even approached the front door, the magical carvings slithered around, and the door opened wide. She ran across the wide porch, down the stone steps, and heaved the water out of the bowl. It splattered into the snow and melted a hissing, muddy circle of earth.