A Witch Alone (The Winter Witch Trilogy #3)

by Ruth Warburton

  Somehow I found the hilt and hung on to it, but Marcus’ hands closed round my wrists, his grip painfully strong. He began to force my arms backwards, forcing the tip of the blade back towards my heart. I pushed against him with all my strength, but his grip was iron. The muscles on his arms stood out in the moonlight.

  The knife-point bit into my skin and I knew this was it – I’d lost.

  Then suddenly his hands, wet with blood, slipped from my wrists and he lost his grip. The blade flipped towards his gut.

  I thrust, as hard as I could.

  There was a sound like a scream – but worse. The worst scream you could imagine – high and harsh as a crow, keening as a man, with all the horror of death. And then it stopped.

  Marcus staggered backwards, gasping. He looked up at me and then down at the hilt of the knife, buried fist-deep in his charred black wound.

  He fell suddenly to his knees, then on to his side, convulsing in agony. Blood bubbled from his lips and a black stream, like hot tar, welled from the knife wound. His mouth tried to form words – but only blood came out. His head lolled to one side and darkness bubbled out from his eyes and mouth, covering his face and throat in a slick black shroud. It welled unstoppably, spilling out over his stomach and chest, until his whole body was covered, melting, consuming itself and soaking into the black sand.

  At last there was nothing left – just a handful of feathers, drowning in tar.

  I stood, looking down at my hands, soaked in blood and streaked with black to the wrist, and I tried to feel something for him. I’d murdered my cousin. I’d murdered my own cousin, stabbed him to death. I ought to feel something: guilt, horror. I wanted to feel something, even if it was only the sick, fierce delight of victory.

  But any other feelings lay buried beneath a huge suffocating weight of anguish.

  Seth was dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  He lay at my feet. His face was completely untouched, his eyes wide and open, their calm grey expression unchanged by death. He was looking up at me and his lips seemed to smile, as if to say, It’s all right. Everything’s all right.

  But it was not. Nothing could ever be right again. Seth was dead – his body broken, his blood spilled out all over the sand.

  I don’t know how long I stood, watching over his still, unmoving body. But I became aware after a while that Emmaline and Abe were there, had somehow dragged themselves down the cliff-face and were standing behind me.

  ‘Anna …’ Abe put his hands on my shoulders. ‘For God’s sake, don’t look. You can’t do anything for him now.’

  He tried to pull me away, tried to turn my face away from the carnage, tried to take me in his arms. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t look away from Seth’s face. His eyes.

  It’ll be all right.

  How could it be? I’d done this to him – from the first moment I laid eyes on him. In that moment I’d reached into his life and ripped out his heart, split him in two, just as surely as Marcus had. I’d brought him here, dragged him here in spite of his will.

  I’d brought him to his death.

  And there was nothing I could do. No spells left to cast. The emptiness inside me screamed.

  I had no magic left.

  Except …

  The jar on the sand glowed white, shimmering like liquid pearl.

  I pulled myself out of Abe’s grip and took a faltering step.

  ‘Anna …’ Abe said. Then, as I bent towards the jar, ‘Wait, what are you doing?’

  I began to struggle with the lid.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Abe asked, a sudden fear in his voice. Then, as I carried on grappling with the lid, ‘No! Don’t do this. Wait, please wait. Maybe, if we take Seth’s body home—’

  ‘You were the one who told me I had to choose.’

  ‘Not like this! How can you give this up? I won’t let you! I won’t let you do this to yourself. Em, for God’s sake, say something! She’s going to …’ He choked, unable to finish.

  ‘Anna!’ Em lifted her head, her face white and blotched. ‘Don’t do this – don’t destroy yourself like this! It won’t work!’

  ‘You don’t know that.’ The lid slipped in my stupid, weak fingers. I couldn’t get it undone. ‘It might work.’

  ‘You can’t give up your whole future for a chance!’

  ‘I have to choose.’

  ‘You don’t!’ Abe cried. He stood in front of me, the wind tearing at his hair, his black eyes full of agony. ‘I didn’t mean like this – not like this. I told you once, you could have both. Love and magic – you could have both. For God’s sake …’ His voice broke. ‘I could give you both. Please, please don’t do this.’

  ‘Will you help me open the jar?’ I held it out to him and he shook his head, tears running down his cheeks.

  ‘No!’ His voice was cracked. ‘I won’t do this to you – I won’t help you destroy your life like this. You’re throwing your magic away, for God’s sake. He’s an outwith! His body will reject it – shut down. This isn’t going to work.’

  ‘Em?’ I held it out to her. ‘Em, please.’

  ‘No.’ She looked sick with fear. ‘Please, no – you can’t ask me. Please don’t do this.’

  ‘Anna …’ Abe held me in his arms, his face white, his black eyes reflecting the jar’s light. The agony in his voice tore at my heart. ‘Please, I’m begging you. Give me a chance.’

  ‘I love you.’ I touched his cheek, where the tears lay wet and cold against his skin. ‘I’ll always love you. But Seth …’ I swiped at my eyes with my free hand and took a shuddering breath. ‘Seth never asked me to choose. Seth loved me no matter what – with magic or without.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Abe said. He looked sick and I knew suddenly what he was about to say, but he forced himself on, forced himself to spell it out. ‘Are you sure he did? What if you give up your magic, only to find it’s gone – his love is gone?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘I love you now,’ he said. ‘For real. No spells. No illusions.’

  My hands trembled, the magic in the jar rippling and lapping at the glass. My heart hurt inside me.

  ‘I will always love you,’ Abe said.

  I looked up at him. His face was shadowed and I remembered the feel of his hands, the softness of his lips, the combination of strength and gentleness and magic.

  ‘Would you?’ I asked. My voice shook. ‘Could you love me without magic?’

  His lips opened – and he didn’t speak. Behind me I heard Em’s stifled sob.

  I leaned forwards and I kissed his lips, very gently.

  ‘I have to choose,’ I said. ‘But you don’t – you can have both. But not with me.’

  I picked up a stone.

  ‘No,’ Abe said.

  I held the jar out, over Seth’s body, and smashed the stone into the glass.

  ‘No!’

  But it was too late.

  The crack spread across the surface of the glass more swiftly than my eye could follow – and then the whole jar exploded in my hands, glass and magic raining down in a shower of light, spattering Seth’s body in a fiery white blaze that lit up the beach and the black cliffs as if it were dawn.

  It poured into the huge cavity at the centre of his chest, welling up out of the wound, bathing him in a glowing whiteness that flooded out across the sand.

  And then … it was gone. And I had nothing.

  ‘Anna, come away.’ Emmaline pulled gently at my arm, her face worried. ‘It’s nearly dawn …’

  ‘I can’t leave him,’ I said.

  ‘Anna …’ Emmaline let her voice trail away. She didn’t need to say the rest. I knew.

  I’d been so stupid – so pathetically stupid and hopeful. How could that gaping split in his chest possibly heal?

  I lay down on the sand beside him and turned his face towards me. His neck was stiff, as if he was resisting, but I knew it was only rigor mortis setting in.

  ‘Anna …’ Em sounded really wo
rried now. ‘Are you listening?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said tiredly. ‘Yes, I know. Can you give me a minute?’

  ‘All right.’ She rubbed beneath her glasses, at the sore place where they pinched her nose, then straightened. ‘Abe!’ she called. ‘I’m going to try to swim out to the boat, like S …’ she faltered. ‘Like we talked about.’

  ‘All right.’ Abe stood stiffly from where he was slumped against a rock, his head in his hands. ‘Can I do anything?’

  ‘Hold my glasses,’ Em said, with an attempt at a laugh. Abe didn’t smile back. He just nodded and they began to crunch towards the water, leaving me and Seth alone.

  Seth’s eyes stared into mine, grey and calm and full of love, and suddenly I couldn’t bear it any more, I couldn’t bear his unfaltering, unchanging, steadfast gaze. I reached out and put my two fingers on his lids, closing them. Then I let the tears come, running down my face and into the sand. They were silent. I didn’t sob, or shake. Just my eyes – welling, and welling, and welling unstoppably.

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ Em’s voice was hard with fear and exhaustion. She was shaking with cold. ‘Anna, be reasonable. How are you going to get him to the boat?’

  ‘I’m not leaving him,’ I said, for the tenth time.

  Abe said nothing. He just sat, crouched against a rock, his head in his hands.

  ‘Christ!’ Em cried. She clenched her fists, as if biting back something she didn’t want to say, and turned to look across the cliffs again. I knew what she was looking for. Followers. Witches from the mine. We had to get out of here – and fast. But…

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. My voice cracked. ‘I can’t leave him. I can’t.’

  ‘He’s dead.’ Abe’s voice was hard. He rose to his feet, his face dark with sudden anger. ‘Don’t you get it? He’s dead. It’s hard – God, I know how hard it is. But he’s bloody dead!’

  ‘I know!’ I screamed at him. The words echoed back at me from the cliffs, mocking me. The tears spilled down my cheeks. I swiped furiously at my eyes. ‘But I can’t leave him. I can’t. Please, Abe – I have to do this. I can’t leave him to rot in this place. Help me get him to the boat. Please.’

  Abe put a hand over his face and rubbed his eyes wearily. He looked close to dropping. I didn’t know if he could get himself to the boat, let alone Seth’s body. But at last he nodded.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Abe …’ Em started and I knew what she was going to say. The impossibility of it – three knackered people, all wounded, with barely a spark of magic between us. How could we wrestle a cold, stiffening body through the icy waves and up the side of the boat? But then she stopped. ‘OK,’ was all she said. ‘OK.’

  I don’t know how long it took. A long time. It felt like hours of cold struggle in the buffeting waves, while our fingers slipped and the boat crashed against our shoulders and skulls and knuckles, and Seth’s heavy body slipped from our grip and slithered and refused to leave the water. But at last we were all shivering like drowned rats in the galley, dripping salt water on to the boards as we tried to work out what to do next.

  ‘Where … ?’ Em looked at Seth’s body and then at Abe.

  ‘On deck?’ Abe asked. ‘We could lash him down in case of storms.’

  ‘No,’ I said stubbornly. ‘In the bedroom.’

  ‘Anna …’ Emmaline bit her lip. She looked close to losing it. ‘I know you don’t want to believe this but he’s going to … to start to smell.’

  ‘Then Abe has to keep the room cold …’ My voice cracked.

  ‘I can’t,’ Abe said desperately. ‘For God’s sake, none of us know how to steer this boat – do you know how to sail?’

  I shook my head, feeling the stupid, welling tears spill down my cheeks again. Not really. Not without Seth telling me which rope to pull and when to go about.

  ‘So how are we going to get home,’ Abe spelled it out, ‘unless I force the wind to do it? I can’t do both, I’m barely keeping it together here.’

  ‘Then I’ll keep the window open. It’s cold.’

  ‘Where will we all sleep?’ Emmaline said despairingly.

  ‘There’s another berth under the cockpit. You can have that.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll stay with Seth.’ I wiped my cheeks with my arm. Stop crying, I begged my eyes. Please, stop crying.

  ‘With the window open?’ Em exclaimed incredulously. ‘Are you nuts? You’ll freeze!’

  ‘Will you help me get him into the bedroom?’ I asked fiercely.

  They said nothing. Then Abe moved to take Seth’s shoulders. As he lifted, Seth’s heavy lifeless body slipped from his fingers, his head thudding against the floor like a stone. Abe’s face twisted.

  ‘How could you?’ The words were wrung out of him, full of bitterness. ‘You could have been anything, done anything. How could you throw it away like that?’

  ‘She didn’t throw it away,’ Emmaline cut in angrily. ‘She gave it away. It was her choice, Abe. Hers.’

  But Abe just looked at me, his face stiff with grief. Then he shook his head and lifted Seth’s shoulders again. His eyes were full of tears.

  Together we manoeuvred the body along the narrow gangway between the bunks. As we passed the table I saw the big brass binnacle compass. Its needle was swinging wide – back to magnetic north, where it belonged.

  Somehow that small thing, a needle returning to its true home, undid me. It was proof – proof that Seth was gone and my magic was no more. I felt a great pain in my heart, as if Marcus’ knife had gone deep, as deep as he’d intended.

  In a way, Marcus really had cut out my heart, just as he’d promised. I almost wished he had. At least that pain would have stopped, in the end.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  It was quiet in the little bedroom, and cold. I could hear Emmaline and Abe pacing in the galley, talking in low whispers. I couldn’t hear what they were saying – I didn’t try. I knew what it would be. Worry about the boat. About whether Abe, in his shattered, exhausted state, could control the weather enough to get us home. About me – about whether I’d lost my reason along with everything else.

  The cool wind blew through the porthole and I shivered and moved as close to Seth as I possibly could, turning his stiff, cold body so that his arm flopped over my waist and his cheek rested on the pillow.

  Like that, you could almost believe he was just asleep. The gaping wound in his chest was pressed closed, the drench of gore hidden in the shadows between us. His eyes were closed and his lips still curved in that half-smile. If I wanted, I could almost pretend …

  I shut my eyes, pressed my forehead to his lips.

  ‘Oh Seth,’ I whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  I squeezed my eyes tighter shut, the hot tears cooling as they traced across my skin. I wanted so much to believe …

  ‘Anna, don’t cry.’

  His voice in my head was so real – so real. A whimper of pain came from my lips.

  I pressed my eyes shut, so hard that lights and darkness exploded inside my skull, a blaze of pain in the blackness.

  ‘I love you,’ I whispered. I felt the tears roll across my nose and down my cheek. But there was no answer. There never would be an answer, in spite of all I’d given up.

  Abe’s words in the galley came back to me, making me ache inside, thinking of everything that I’d poured into that hole in Seth’s chest. The soaring sensation of flying through the air, with nothing to hold me up but my own willpower. The intoxicating feeling that anything, anything was possible. The chance of being something more, something … remarkable.

  But I thought I knew what he’d really meant. Him. I’d given up Abe.

  And it was true. But more than that, I’d given up my mother. The chance of ever knowing the truth, of ever seeing her again. Ever since I’d grasped the meaning of the riddle I’d hoped. Hoped that even if my mother were dead, it might not be the end. Because with a power that co
uld conquer death …

  For a moment it had flared inside me: a tiny spark of possibility, even if I never had the courage to ignite it. And now it was gone. And for what? Seth’s body lay in my arms, still and cold. I’d given it all up – for nothing.

  I lay, with my eyes closed, listening to the sound of the waves, feeling the emptiness inside my heart, and Seth’s body, pressed against mine, becoming faintly warm with borrowed heat from my skin.

  I couldn’t stay like this for long. He’d have to stay cold, if I were going to get his body back to Winter. But I didn’t want to move.

  Up on deck I could hear Emmaline and Abe moving around, wrestling with the sails. I knew I should get up, go and help them.

  I opened my eyes.

  Seth’s cool, cloud-grey eyes gazed into mine.

  ‘Seth … ?’ I put up a hand to touch his face, cool beneath my fingers. ‘Seth?’

  God, how I wanted to believe. The emptiness roared and screamed inside me.

  And then he smiled.

  My heart gave a great thump – and seemed to stop.

  I scrambled to my knees, dragging him upright by his bloodstained shirt, my hands touching his face, running over the naked skin of his shoulders and chest; trying to look for the wound beneath the clotted blood; frantically searching his body for a sign, a sign that he was real.

  ‘Am I going mad?’ I found I was sobbing. ‘Seth?’

  ‘You’re not going mad!’ He took my hands in his, trapping my desperate movements. ‘I’m real – stop with the strip-search. Why all the panic?’

  ‘You died!’ I put my forehead against his, my tears running down his face, mingling with the blood and the sweat. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘What?’ His face was blank with shock. ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘You died,’ I wept. ‘Marcus stabbed you in the heart. You bled out all over the sand. Don’t you remember?’

  Seth sat, his face pale.