by Sarah Hegger
She set off for his house, the Landy letting out a volley as they went.
“Thanks,” he said, and it was so inadequate but all he had.
“You’re important to us, Alexander.” Streetlights flashed orange across her fine bone structure. “Your part in this is only beginning.”
Mags was growing in her power, and he felt like a proud parent. He nodded that he’d heard her, and the rest of the drive passed in silence.
At his house, she helped him to the door and left him there with a kiss on the cheek. “Take care of yourself.” Her big eyes filled with worry. “Know that what’s about to happen is not the end. I promise you that.”
On that ominous note, she rushed back to the Landy and accelerated out of the driveway. If she hadn’t, Alexander would have shoved her out.
“Hello, Alexander.” Rhiannon was waiting for him in his kitchen. She had a goblet of ruby red liquid in front of her that he was not naive enough to believe was red wine. Her gaze swept him from top to toe. “You look like shit.”
“I feel like shit.” And if he guessed correctly, was about to feel a whole lot shitter.
Malice pulsed from Rhiannon, thick like an overfed tick as she was with magic. “Roderick do that to you?”
“Yes.” He leaned against his travertine countertop and met her gaze without flinching. She fed on fear, and he refused to give her that.
“Hmm.” She clicked her black lacquered nails against her goblet. She was channeling Morticia Adams in her long, black velvet gown. “We’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”
He didn’t make the mistake of thinking she was expressing latent maternal affection. If she lost him now, she’d only have to make herself another son of death, and with the daughter of life so close, she couldn’t risk it. All that remained a mystery was how much she knew.
“Why do you think he didn’t kill you, my son?” She drummed her nails against the countertop. “Would you like to hazard a guess?”
“I’d rather you told me.” He gripped the countertop hard enough to make the healing cuts over his knuckles open and ooze. “It would be so much more expedient.”
She laughed, and on any other woman, it would have been an attractive sound. “Always so defiant.” She shook her head. “I almost admire that about you.”
“Thanks, Mum.” He had nothing to lose now. “They should make a card with that on it.”
“You woke them up.” She rounded the island toward him. “It took me a day or two to work it out, but then I did. I must say, I never thought you had that much courage. Misplaced courage, but still almost admirable.”
Denial was pointless, and he’d rather not. It was odd, but since the day he’d set himself on this path to stop her, he’d known this day would come. For a brief shining moment after he’d met Bronwyn, he’d found himself wishing his betrayal of Rhiannon could have another outcome. Looking at Bronwyn, he’d wanted a different future for himself, but his reality promised a grim ending, and he’d done his part to shape it.
Rhiannon stopped in front of him. Magic swelled in her, red bleeding into the whites of her eyes. The stench made him retch.
She raised her hand and rested it over his heart. “You are my greatest disappointment, darling. I bred you for two reasons, fucking and fighting. You were supposed to vanquish Roderick, but you’ve failed me in this.”
By his tally, he and Roderick were level pegging.
“I need you for one more reason, Alexander.” She pressed her nails into his chest and drew her magic into a tight channel. “And I really must insist you perform your part.”
Pain, everywhere pain, stemming from her hand, breaking through his skin and penetrating the muscle and bone of his chest. Alexander screamed his throat raw, but he couldn’t move, could only feel the endless agony. Bronwyn’s face filled his mind, and he reached for his precious few memories of her. With Bronwyn, he’d experienced as close to happy as he was capable. As the pain engulfed him, he clung to his image of Bronwyn’s smile.
Rhiannon gripped his heart in her hand and squeezed. “But first, I feel a lesson in humility is in order.”
Chapter Twenty
Bronwyn woke with her chest on fire, the pain almost unimaginable. Outside her window, a pale early morning sky hung low over a wind-whipped sea. She tried to breath, but it hurt too much. Then the pain stopped.
The door flew open, and Roderick ran in looking like he’d gone twelve rounds with Mike Tyson and a velociraptor. Arms braced, poised for action, he searched her chamber. “What’s amiss?”
The state of him pushed her nightmare from her mind. “What happened to you?”
Roderick paced her room. “You screamed.”
“This pain woke me.” She placed her palm over her chest for the reassurance of her still beating heart.
He frowned and looked at her. “A pain in your chest?”
“It was intense, but it’s gone now.” She tried to reconstruct the dream she’d been having before the pain had ripped her out of sleep. “I was sleeping and then this pain.” She clenched her T-shirt over her breastbone. “It was like I was having a heart attack or something.”
“And now?” Roderick frowned down at her.
Bronwyn took a deep careful breath, but everything seemed fine. “It’s gone.”
“And you are well now?” He studied her.
The irony caught up with her of him standing there sporting a swollen jaw, a split lip, a bruise on his cheekbone, and that was the damage she could see. “Right back at you, big guy?”
“I had some difficulties.” He drew himself up.
The tough guy routine—surprise, surprise! Their medieval meathead didn’t want to acknowledge he was in pain. She threw back her covers and climbed out of bed. “Let’s have a look at you.”
“Blessed.” He drew his shoulders back and looked down his crooked, puffy nose at her. “I—”
“Save it.” She was wise to him now, and he wasn’t that scary.
The stone floor was warm beneath her feet, and she pointed at it. “Did you do this?”
“The floor?” He eyed her warily.
“It’s warm.” She had to peer up at him. “It was cold when I first got here. You arrive, Baile wakes up, and now we have warm floors.” Amongst other things that threatened to blow her mind. Rooms with enough light and no visible light source. Dust that never settled on anything. Your everyday sentient castle type stuff.
He shrugged. “It’s not like Baile and I have entire conversations.”
“Whatever.” He was so much taller than her that getting a good look at his injuries was never going to work. “Could you conjure up a chair or a stool and sit on it?”
He cocked his head. “There is a healer’s hall, you know?”
“No.” She hadn’t known that because there was more to learn and get comfortable with every day. “Would you be less of a pain in the ass about me checking you out if I took you there?”
“Blessed.” He growled and loomed over her like a street dog caught after a fight.
“Warrior.” She hadn’t even attempted to pronounce coimhdeacht yet. “I’m nearly hundreds sure this is not your first brawl, and as certain it won’t be your last. You know how this goes.”
His cold, cold blue eyes seared her, and then they warmed a moment before the most beautiful smile split his somber face. And, holy shitballs! That smile, though. It bore repeating, so she did—holy shit balls. With Roderick marching about being all toxic masculinity and arrogant male throwback, it was easy to forget what a good-looking son of a bitch he was. There was a reason he’d manwhored his way through the coven, and she was seeing it now.
“You have large opinions for such a small woman,” he said.
“And you’re a huge wuss for someone built like a brick shithouse.”
He shook his head. “Only half of that made sense, but come along, and I’ll show you the healer’s hall.”
“Then I check you out,” she said as she trotted along in his
wake. “Where’s Maeve?”
“Sleeping.” He glanced over his shoulder. “It’s still early and she does not sleep enough, so I did not wake her.”
He might do so in an outdated manner, but Roderick did care for his witch. “How old are you anyway?”
Not breaking stride, he laughed. “A gentleman never tells.”
“You know I can google this right?”
“No.” He strode across the great hall and down the stairs into the kitchen. “I am fairly certain I have never googled anything in my entire life, nor will I want to.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” Bronwyn had to run to keep up. “You’ll become a slave to the almighty goog like the rest of us.”
He stopped and shook his head at her. “You are a peculiar little thing.”
“Ah, no.” She made a grab for his arm, missed and had to run after him through the kitchen and into the bailey. “You did not just call me that.”
“Pretty sure I did,” he said. His attempt at an American accent was not bad, all things considered.
“Are you mocking me?”
“Come, Blessed.” He stopped at a large set of double wooden doors. Like most of the outer doors in Baile, they bristled with thick metal hardware. Roderick pushed them open and stepped aside. “Behold, the healer’s hall.”
Bronwyn stepped into a wide room with vaulted ceilings and stone floors. West facing windows occupied the wall opposite the door. “This is amazing.”
“It used to be a kitchen when Baile was first built.” Roderick stayed beside her. “Then we decided we liked hot dinners better and moved the kitchen into the main keep. This became the healer’s hall.”
“It’s amazing.” The air smelled like astringents and drying herbs. The source of the lovely smell was a bank of floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves filled with neatly labeled glass jars. Bronwyn moved closer. She wanted to touch but dared not, so she read the labels. “Valerian root. That would help Maeve sleep.” Beside the valerian was vanilla, then verbena (lemon), vervain, vetiver oil, and vinegar (apple cider)—everything neat, orderly, and in its place. “I know these.”
Roderick nodded. “You are a healer.”
“I am.” She kept reading. Self-heal for bruises, cuts and sprains, and wounds. The fresh leaves and flowers could be bruised and applied directly to a wound. Dried, it combined well with other herbs in a tea as an antibiotic, particularly good for eye infections and conjunctivitis.
She stood on her toes to read the higher labels. Comfrey, used in a salve or an ointment for the treatment of burns, skin ulcerations, abrasions and lacerations. It also worked a treat on flea and insect bites. Almost any skin irritation including eczema.
Perhaps it was only the herbs, but she felt like she belonged in that place.
A scrubbed wooden table dominated the center of the room. In its kitchen days, the table must’ve been used for pounding bread dough and chopping the heads off chickens, but now it was littered with jars, vials, mortars and pestles, and surgical instruments. All the tools of her trade, all spotlessly clean and looking like someone had left them not ten minutes ago. They also looked like they were waiting for her to pick them up and use them. “Do the others know this is here?”
“I’m uncertain.” Roderick shrugged. “Baile is often selective with her many secrets.”
Hanging above the table, were bushels of drying herbs. Near the windows, in soldierly rows, sat empty window boxes. Positioned as they were, they would catch maximum light. She could plant all kinds of medicinal plants in those boxes.
“There is more.” Roderick led her to an arched stone doorway to the left of the window boxes. A short flight of stairs opened into another large room—vaulted ceilings, stone floors, lots of wood, and even more light. The windows faced east, and the sun was forcing its way through the clouds.
“This was the infirmary.” Roderick looked grim. “That last time I was down here, it was full of gravely ill witches and villagers.”
The sadness in him drew her. “How did they get sick?”
“Rhiannon.” His jaw tightened. “She managed to spread contagion through the village. The healers, of course, had to go and heal it.”
Pieces dropped into place. “Ah! When Maeve went to the village with them.”
“She told you about that?” He raised an eyebrow.
“She told us she nearly got you killed.”
He snorted. “She exaggerates.”
“Maybe.” For two people who’d been bonded such a brief time, Maeve and Roderick had shared a lot. “But there is some truth to be found at the bottom of a bottle.”
Roderick laughed, and that smile…wow! “Along with a fair amount of bullshit.”
“True that.” She motioned him to a small wooden stool close to the windows. “Now, let’s get to why we’re here.”
“It is no longer necessary, Blessed.” Roderick’s grin was more than a touch smug. “I am healed.”
Bronwyn didn’t intend to take his word for it, so she carried the stool over to him and stood on it.
His eyes twinkled with amusement as she got eye to eye with him. “Son of a bitch!” The bruise around his eyes had faded to a shadow, and his lip was normal. His nose had lost the swelling and knit itself back straight. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you?” She glared down at him, because she could. “You distracted me by showing me this wonderful hall so I wouldn’t check on your injuries.”
“Blessed.” He did a passable attempt at looking innocent. “That would make me duplicitous.”
“Yes, it would.” She fixed him with a stare. She was wise to him now, and this wouldn’t happen again. “Where I come from, we’d even go so far as to call you a low down, sneaky varmint.”
“What, by all that’s holy, is a varmint?”
Bronwyn grim eyed him. “I’m looking at one.”
“I showed you this hall, Blessed, because this is where you belong,” he said, and his eyes grew serious. “You are a healer, and your place is in this hall. You are a cré-witch; your place is at Baile.” His gaze bored into her. “You are called, water witch. Your Goddess needs you.”
Maeve couldn’t believe she was awake this early after her night with Alanna and Bronwyn. She could sense Roderick in the healer’s hall and guessed he would be with Bronwyn. If there was any justice in the world, Bronwyn would also be feeling the effects of their night. Unable to sleep and needing the comforting presence of the sigils, she’d slipped out of bed and come to the caverns. Roderick thought she was still sleeping. She liked Bronwyn, but she was worried. Bronwyn had yet to accept who she was and where she fit into the future of the cré-witches.
Strange that, but it was a familiar confusion to what she felt.
Keeping a tight hold on Roderick’s bond, she wandered through the caverns. She stopped at the wall and laid a hand upon the nearest sigils. The sense of witches past was so faint. The place where her magic bloomed was like a tiny spark to the inferno that had once been hers to command. Her loss of magic was an empty void within her.
She refused to believe she would never walk with the spirits again. Pressing her forehead to the rock, she whispered, “I am here. I will walk with you again.”
“Sister.”
“Spirit walker.”
Voices that had once sounded so clearly in her mind where now muted to almost imperceptible.
“You’ll have to show me how to reach you.” She raised her voice. It echoed through the caverns. “I don’t know how.”
A particular sigil stopped her. Maeve brushed her fingertips over it. Here, she had scribed Rose on the cavern walls. Rose, so young and such a talented healer, and the first witch carried to the sacred isles by the village contagion. It was also the first time Roderick had witnessed her scribing magic. After, as she lay exhausted and devastated by the passing of a life, he had picked her up and cradled her. For the first time when Roderick had found her and comforted her, she had shared the burden of grief that passed over her once she h
ad scribed a life on the cavern walls.
Roderick must have perceived her emotions because he quested for her through the bond.
Maeve reassured him and walked into the central cavern. The pool was a milky opalescent this morning. She approached the rock outcrop at the far end of the cavern, behind Goddess Pool. Her mind veered from the last time she had taken the secret tunnel to the village. Thomas had rushed them all into the tunnel, thinking he was hurrying them to safety. He had given his life to ensure they got to the village.
In the end, it had all been for nothing, because Rhiannon had been waiting for them on the other side.
A cold draft stroked her nape, and Thomas wove into view. He looked so corporeal, as if she could reach out and touch him.
“Go ahead and try.” Hands held out to his sides, Thomas grinned roguishly, and it was heartbreakingly familiar.
Heart in her throat, Maeve tried to keep it light. “You can read my mind now?”
“A small perk.” He shrugged. “And not entirely how this works. I’m more connected to Roderick somehow, and he can read your mind, so I can catch echoes of that.”
“Ah.” One man plundering her thoughts was enough. She hardly needed another.
“I did it willingly.” Thomas sounded serious, and she looked at him. “My death,” he said. “I don’t regret it, even if matters didn’t transpire as any of us would have chosen.”
“We had no idea her poison ran so deep through the coven.” Maeve relived those last days of the coven more than she would have liked. Roderick chastised her that it was purposeless, but she couldn’t stop herself. Questions circled her mind constantly. Why had they not seen what Rhiannon was up to? Why had they waited to accuse Fiona?
Thomas folded his arms and shook his head. “It serves no purpose, Maeve, it really does not. Hindsight is always so exact. It was hard to believe so many of our own could turn against us.”
She nodded because he expected it, but the guilt lingered. If they’d acted faster, they might have prevented all those deaths.
“I need to show you something.” Thomas moved closer. His legs went through the walking motions, but his feet made no contact with the ground. It was disconcerting. “Roderick should come with us. We’re going to the village.”