by L. J. Longo
Except … at the top of the stairs … that awful hallway of doors. Porter hadn’t liked it when the team of builders had finished constructing it. Too many doors, too similar, all closed. He’d suggested curtains or open arches, and everyone had laughed like it was a joke. He understood the guests wanted to be locked in alone, but there was no reason for a hallway of doors, not for a pack.
His room was technically the one on the left at the very back, but he never went in there. Right across from it was the empty room, which they’d painted a light purple for the witch. Jasprite had ordered a new bed, and all sorts of alchemist equipment and the three of them had set everything up. He could hear Emaula’s ebullient joy as she talked about the room and the color and the bedspread and everything brand new for her.
Porter knocked on the door, and since it was not totally shut, it creaked open.
For a moment, he stared at Emaula. She sat on the bed, and she’d taken off her scarf. She was laughing at something Jasprite had said, her head thrown back, her mouth smiling. Her hair was like sunlight braided into a crown around her brow. Strikingly beautiful.
Until she noticed him.
“Oh!” Her bright smile died, and she clasped her hands in her lap, shrinking. “Good evening, Mr. Wolf.”
“Me? Oh…” It took him a moment to get the words to clear his mouth. “I … um. Dinner? If you want it?”
Jasprite snorted at him. “Is that how you talk to the guests, Port?”
Before Porter could answer the accusation—before he could even sort out how brusque he’d sounded—the witch startled. “Oh, of course. I’ll get started on some … well, it’s most likely too late for those chicken pot pies I promised you, Jasprite. But steak and potatoes?”
Porter swallowed, embarrassed. “Actually, I … it’s made.”
“Oh no.” Jasprite exaggerated her distaste. “Not spicy gloop?”
Porter smiled. Jasprite loved his curry. “I made rice and tandoori chicken just how you like it, Lady Jasprite. The soup is … uh, super spicy though.”
“All right.” Jasprite burst past him. “I’ll allow it, but only because it’s the kind of chicken I like. Tomorrow, Emaula cooks.”
Porter nodded, hardly paying attention to Jasprite. He had Emaula to smile at. “There’s also white tea.”
The witch blushed, her pale skin tingling all over, like the sunrise.
Chapter Five
Emaula sat at the alchemist desk with her loose-leaf pages of spells. She needed to copy them into the new book Jasprite had given her and burn the paper. The paper technically belonged to Mother, so Mother could use it to find her and … best not to think about what Mother would do when she found her. Tonight, around ten, Emaula had started copying them, thinking she’d continue the work until sunrise and then sleep.
But even with the bright light of a magic orb floating over her head, less than an hour later Emaula found herself nodding off. Mother enforced a strict bedtime at ten, and Emaula had never tried to stay awake all night through copy work before.
So, at the witching hour, Emaula switched tactics and looked for an antidote to the dreaming spell again. She lacked the proper ingredients for a counter-potion. She didn’t need a book to know moonwort would be nullified by moons-bane or repressed by sun-leaf. But she also knew her new magic kit was small and basic. Emaula had been too embarrassed to ask Jasprite to buy a proper chest of ingredients, though her friend had offered.
“Stupid pride.” Emaula ran her hand through her hair and drank the rest of her foul-tasting coffee. It was bitter, awful stuff, and she wasn’t certain why her mother or Jasprite ever drank it willingly. Furthermore, it wasn’t doing enough to keep her awake. It only made her more jittery and anxious.
There had to be a spoken spell to counteract earthy magic. Emaula shuffled the pages to start again from the beginning, and a strong wind from the open window blew them out of her hands.
“Damnation!” Emaula leaped and grabbed for the papers. Then realizing how foolish it was to try to gather them by hand, put magic into her words, and raised her arched fingers. “As I speak … damn it. Spell-book! To me.”
Her magic overpowered the breeze, and the loose-leaf pages rattled into her hands. They swirled in a big show around her head to Emaula’s delight. This wasn’t the first time she’d bypassed the beginner’s evocation, but it always made her happy when she could command the magic through sheer will.
One page fluttered out the window. Emaula briefly saw it: a simple spell for boiling water. She’d copied it out when she was seven in preparation of her eventual flight from Mother. She’d learned the spell by heart since then. It wasn’t worth the effort to chase it. So, the spell flapped and fluttered away into the jungle. No great loss. The rain or the dirt, or some animal would shred the paper by morning.
The rest she clutched to her chest as she buttoned up the rice-paper window shutter. The breeze no longer seemed strong enough to rustle the pages. A fluke of mountain weather or some magic at work? Most likely, it was her own magic, sabotaging her efforts because…
Well, best not to wonder why her magic wanted Porter so badly.
Emaula sat on the floor with her loose-leaf pages and stared at the writing. Maybe if she alphabetized them, or sorted them by importance, she could both keep awake and remove the useless spells—like for boiling water. That would keep her awake, keep her focused on a counter-spell.
A spell for healing. A potion recipe. Oh, she ought to sort them by type as well. Have a properly organized spell-book. Since she wasn’t likely to learn more… Maybe she ought to write a table of contents. A whole section on counter-spells that she could turn to.
Emaula yawned and shook her head and rubbed her eyes. She glanced at the clockwork built into the wall over her door. Not even half-past the witching hour. How was she going to last until … did it have to be dawn?
Maybe past three in the morning was long enough. Three was when the heart slowed, when the mind was closest to death, when a person was most susceptible to spells. After the death hour, it was safe for her to sleep. He’d hardly sipped the potion.
Emaula rolled her shoulders while she yawned. Then shook her arms to try to invigorate herself. Counter-spell. She flipped through the pages reading the titles. Her scrawl as a child had gotten more and more legible over the years, and she’d standardized the practice of uppercasing and underlining the essential bits in her early teens. As a child, she’d been obsessed with survival spells. Spells to pull food from thin air by taking it from elsewhere. She had one for making the ground soft and another for making a fire for warmth. But none for making clothing or shoes or drinkable water. Once when she was older, she’d tried to find a spell for flight and copy it out, but of course, she couldn’t ask Mother for a spell like that, and it had been so frightening to steal into the library.
There was a corridor Emaula had discovered. Someone else created it, and it remained frightfully haunted by the residual magic of Mother’s last daughter. Someone who’d been smarter than Emaula, smart enough to create a magical corridor at any rate, but someone who had never made a friend to rescue her.
The pages fluttered. Emaula had stopped reading the titles as her mind wandered.
She growled with frustration and exhaustion and ran her hand through her hair again, pulling a little in hopes the pain would waken her. The fear of her oath ought to be enough to keep her awake. Death if she bespelled the man. No, death if she harmed him. Maybe she could enter into the dream and then … leave without—
Emaula laughed at herself. She didn’t have the mental fortitude to keep herself awake. She certainly didn’t have the strength to resist that man’s raw sex appeal in a dream-scape.
No. Counter-spell. There had to be one. She’d gathered more than healing spells in her life. Dozens of spells to counter curses and hexes. There had to be something that worked against potions.
Then Emaula jolted. The papers in her hand spilled across the floor. She looked at
the clock, and in the flicker of her magic orb, she could see she’d just dozed for … what twenty minutes? Or was it that she’d been reading spell titles for twenty minutes and she’d wakened herself when her head sagged?
Without starting over, Emaula kept flipping through the spells.
There was one for staving off hunger. Maybe she could alter it to stave off sleep. That would have been a good plan just after dinner when her mind was sharp enough to risk meddling with spells. Another healing spell, this one meant for controlling the symptoms of common colds, but she remembered when Mother would cast it how awake she would feel.
Emaula focused on the spell, reading out loud one word at a time with deliberate focus and slowness. Part of her magic obediently swirled to join the spell and cast it, but the rest befuddled her. The stronger part of it, triggered by her chanting, defied her will and wanted what was best for its vessel’s body. Which, of course, was a deep, dream-filled sleep.
Dream-filled.
Damn! She had a spell for banishing nightmares and forbidding dreams. She’d copied it in a purple pen when she was nine. Why hadn’t she thought of that sooner?
Emaula glanced at the pages scattered on the floor and saw it right there.
She stopped chanting the healing spell, except … her magic didn’t. The power swelled. Her magic worked against her. In a heartbeat, she was too sleepy to stand on her own. Her magic cradled her gentler than a mother and carried her to her bed.
Emaula rallied briefly and tried to rise. She must not sleep. Must not invade that man’s dreams. Must not tempt herself…
As she finally surrendered to the moonwort that had befuddled her since moonrise, the light orb floated over Emaula and dimmed and faded into darkness.
Chapter Six
Porter was dreaming. Had to be. He was naked, but still shaped like a man so definitely a dream but … not a proper dream. Not even a nightmare. Something worse.
He wasn’t in his room at the trading post.
The hole under the kitchen had a nice bamboo floor and the little chest half-filled with clothes and the shelf of little trinkets he’d gathered on shelves, right under the wine.
He was not there. He was … in his real room.
No fragrant jungle. No hollow cave howls. No Sock chatting. No Half-Ear laughing. No Nav shouting. No smells of travelers and cooking and rain.
In his real room, there were only doors and the bed. A hundred doors in an infinite circle around the round pit filled with pillows and luxurious cloth. An uncomfortable scent-less place. Somewhere between darkness and light. Silent except for the sound of his own heartbeat.
A terrible room, and when he heard knocking on a door—when a witch wanted him—Porter was always quick to obey just so he could escape this place and all its closed doors.
But they’d sent away from this room. The Munawn turned him out for distracting the girls’ studies. It didn’t matter. He’d always felt this place hovering outside of his awareness whenever he lay in the night and listened to his own breathing. This place dangled like a black vine in the darkness, ready to hang a man. He knew the witches were just beyond his reach as if speaking their names would call him back into their bed. If he wanted.
He didn’t want.
Porter thrashed, trying to sit upright. The same weight. The same unwater sensation of heaviness. The black silk curled around his thighs. A cage. The pillows over his wrists were rocks. The very air a net to pin him to this bed of black silk.
He could do nothing but stare at all those doors waiting to be opened…
It took ages.
But time was strange in the dreams. Minutes could be hours. Hours could pass in seconds.
And somewhere someone was trying to reach him. Someone wanted him and had taken measures to have him. Was is the little girl? The Munawn’s daughter. She’d be all grown-up now and remember him fondly. She must have extraordinary power to reach him.
A light came on under a door, hemming the edges with a low purple light and filling the room with that melancholic tint. The one who had shaved her hair and wore black gemstones that glowed purple. Porter knew her name, but he refused to think it. He wanted nothing to do with them. He had been turned out. He wasn’t allowed to think of them anymore. He didn’t have too.
The door creaked open, and Porter winced. Whether he wanted them or not, one of them was coming through. He didn’t have much choice. Or at least, he wouldn’t when he saw her.
The light poured into the room, flooded it with the scents of spring, vanilla, and lavender and bluebells. Intoxicating, lulling. The smell of a beautiful woman who wanted him. The fragrance of an herb sachet dropped into cold water on a hot day and stirred.
“Oh, Emaula.” Porter hadn’t smelled any magic in the tea he’d sipped as a sign of good faith. Just like him to misread a person and get bespelled. He wished Sock had come down with him. Sock wouldn’t make that mistake.
Porter struggled against the weight of her dream world and lifted himself slowly on one arm. She hadn’t fully opened the door, yet. Was just peering through, shyly.
Emaula was not a woman; she was the moon. The shadows of the world curled around and concealed half her face, leaving only the paleness around her starlight blue eyes and the soft darkness of the purple light.
Now was the time to stop her. To say something mean. To beg her to stop. To remind her of her oath. Or to … to—
Emaula divested the darkness. Unveiled her lovely face. Freed her hair, such a fine pale gold that it shone in this dream world, illuminated her thin pink lips. Porter had forgotten how beautiful the witches could be. How the sight of them stole breath, sanity, free will.
The woman could swear there was no harm in her. How could he be harmed by her? When now all he ever wanted in the world was her.
She met his gaze and smiled timidly. She stepped into the sea of sheets and pillows, delicately moving through the luxurious silks toward his body. The black silk wound around him shimmered under the radiance of her body. His stiff cock suffocated and strained under the sleek material.
The witch would get what she wanted. He had enough experience with witches to know they always did. These women could be cruel. They could be unbelievably kind, as well. And he honestly didn’t know which was worse.
He did know there was no point in defying her. No point in not taking what pleasure he could. No point in being mean to the mistress. Had that been one of The Munawn’s mantras? Or another wolf’s good advice?
Emaula knelt beside him in the bed, her hands modestly on her knees, her eyes big and earnest. “Porter, is this all right?”
He didn’t understand. “Hmm?”
“That I’m here this way?” She brushed her fingers over the black silk. White tendrils shot through the inky silk, little drops of poison from her hands to stain the sheets. “Because of the curse—Nav told you about the curse, I trust?”
What if Nav wasn’t supposed to tell them? Safer to pretend he had not. “Don’t remember.”
“Well, I … I’m sort of poisonous. I can’t touch you in real life, but when we were flirting in the café today…” She winced as if her own words cut her. “I just wanted to know if it is all right for me to be here and to … you know, touch you?”
Was she asking permission? No witch did that. Had to be a trick. He answered with his most charming smile. “You could touch me whenever you want, Emaula. I’d take the poison in real life.”
“Porter, you’re such a flirt.” Emaula blushed so prettily.
Shit. She didn’t believe him. He hadn’t been genuine enough. She’d be cruel now, and it wouldn’t count against her oath because it was only in his mind. Or maybe she was powerful enough to break her oath.
She sounded sad. “Can you not be so charming for a moment… Tell me, truthfully.”
He wasn’t sure what she was so embarrassed about, but she was damned cute when she was. She twisted her hands through the sheets as if she had to keep herself from touching hi
m. “Is … is this all right?”
Was it all right? What the hell kind of question was that for a witch to ask a wolf? He wasn’t going to upset her by saying no.
The witch stroked his thigh through the sheet. His cock, already damningly stiff, pulsed at the nearness of her hand. That ought to answer her question.
He didn’t even think he wanted to say no, but how could he know the truth here? When she controlled the world? When just watching her come into the room had reduced him to nothing but a hard cock and the inner monologue of a scared puppy?
“Porter.” Her face was drawn with misery. “Will you say something, please?”
“Something.” Obedience was instinctive here, and he cringed. “Shit. I mean … what should I say? You’re very beautiful, even more so than in—well, you told me not to say nice things, so…”
Emaula laughed and reached out to stroke his face. Her hands were soft and cool, free of her curse. He wanted to lean into her touch, but the world was too heavy, and he could not move his arms. “My poor friend, witches have not been kind to you, have they? Tell me yes or no. I promise I’ll leave you alone if you tell me no.”
Porter scoffed at the idea of telling a witch no.
She looked hurt. Then stood and streaked toward her door.
Shit! She was going to abandon him here. It could be years before someone came and woke him up.
“No!” He sat up with fantastic effort. “I mean, yes. Yes, it’s all right. Please come back, Emaula.”
She paused in the doorway, highlighted by the purple light of her room, clothed in shadow and night. “Do you mean it?”
He wasn’t sure.
She trembled like a frightened rabbit, and he wasn’t sure if he ought to chase her into her hole or try to soothe her. The thought made him smile. The Munawn once told him he didn’t have the heart to bark at a bunny.