Chapter Twenty-Seven
Aidan had every intention of kissing every single inch of her until the sun rose, but the moon rose first. It had climbed over the treetops as they lay by the river, and was inching to its zenith.
A full moon on the autumn equinox was a powerful time.
If May Day was popular with the flower witches and Samhain with those who spoke with the dead, the equinoxes were a sacred time for the Lycan.
They were a time when day and night were equal.
It held significance for the Lycan, who considered their two halves to be the sun and the moon.
With the addition of the full moon, any magic would be even more effective.
It called to his wolf, the ceremony he knew the others were gathering for even now.
Sorcha smoothed the lines between his brows. “What is it?”
“Equinox ceremony is about to begin.”
“Is it?” She sat up. “I’ve never been to one. Can I come?”
He smiled, kissing her. “After what you’ve done, I’m sure Freya will allow it.”
She leapt to her feet and hurriedly pulled on her dress. “Come on, then.”
“I think you just want to see more naked backsides,” he teased.
She grinned. “I have been assured that Tavish’s is the best.”
“What am I going to do with you?”
She slipped her arm through his as they picked their way through the woods. “I have some ideas.”
“Aye, so do I.” A hundred ideas, a thousand. He wanted to show her Inverness and the Orkney Islands and the museum. He wanted her naked. He wanted her to show him how exactly one played fetch with a bleeding Black Shuck. He just wanted her.
But first, dozens of wolves in a clearing in the woods.
A wolf shape had been created out of lines of trampled grass filled with white flour so that it glowed.
There was wine and baskets of bread and grapes and apples.
Freya sat in the center, moonstones in her hair.
The only candles that burned were in honor of the missing wolves.
Simon had refused to divulge their location. Yet.
A drumbeat sounded softly between the trees. Sorcha rose on her tiptoes.
“They’ll stand under the moon when it reaches its peak, and then they’ll run. All of the Packs together.”
Sorcha squeezed his arm. “Then you’ll run too.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“I am in the Wolf Wood. Simon is chained up. What could happen to me?”
“All the same.” He shook his head. “I am perfectly accustomed to controlling my wolf.” Though he scrabbled behind his ribcage, called by the moon and the gathered Packs. Alphas grew stronger under such a moon.
“You’ve controlled him long enough,” Sorcha insisted.
His wolf agreed. His wolf was starting to prefer her to him, and who could blame him? Not Aidan.
The drums changed and Freya began to sing a haunting melody, an ode to the moon, to teeth and fur and running as fast as your legs could take you. A wild hymn. A prayer.
The last of the Lycan shifted into their wolves. The song was underscored by bones re-forming, teeth snapping, and howling. The many howls joined into one that was so primal and so perfect, Aidan saw tears spring to Sorcha’s eyes.
And then something changed.
He frowned. “I smell roses.”
Sorcha was also frowning, in a way that made his hackles rise in alarm. His wolf pushed at him frantically, desperate to get out.
She squinted over his shoulder. “Aidan.” Sorcha pointed just as he heard the rustle of paper, just as the wolves lifted their noses to the wind with confused growls. “Look.”
Paper birds flocked toward her, dozens and dozens of them, made of folded drawing paper, old letters, pages torn from magical apothecary journals, recipes for black currant jelly.
They crowded out the light of the moon, circling like a crown.
“It’s not over,” Sorcha said softly.
Aidan caught Sorcha’s elbow when she turned to follow. “Aidan, I released those birds long before the ball. I thought they’d gotten lost or taken by the weather. But these are definitely the ones I spelled to find the pit, to find the missing wolves.” She sounded excited, determined.
But he only felt his wolf shoving and pushing to get out. It was like sharp teeth inside his ribcage. Like mists choking him.
It felt wrong.
Crows gathered above, cawing loudly. The moonlight fell between the leaves, flashing into his eyes. He felt them turn gold and stay that way. His bones were heavy as iron.
The drums went silent. Freya’s song died in her throat.
Sorcha froze. “Aidan?”
The wolves answered before he could. The combination of growls and choked, panicked whines turned his teeth to fangs in his mouth. He bit down, fighting the change. “Sorcha, get out of here.”
“No.”
He felt his muscles bunching and rippling under his skin, trying to shift.
“Aidan, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” he ground out. He softened his eyesight, pushing aside the wolf through sheer willpower and experience.
The others had not wrestled their wolves, not like him.
Was this why he was able to keep control?
He already knew it would not last, so he would make it count.
Alpha power sharpened his every sense: he could hear the frantic heartbeats, the bells, the fires crackling back at the camp.
A badger in its den. He smelled earth and pine trees and those damned roses.
He saw clearer: a moth hovering, moonlight on each individual grass blade at his feet, Sorcha’s hair glowing like fire, her scattering of freckles like a constellation of stars.
And the threads of a spell worked against the wolves.
As the full moon met the equinox, something else was awakened.
Silver and gold threads wrapped around each wolf, tangling, strangling, knotting around them. The more they struggled, the tighter the magic constricted.
“Binding spell,” he choked out, yanking at the threads that surrounded him. One cut into his arm, drawing blood. His wolf snarled, snapped.
Sorcha’s pulse rushed but her expression stayed calm. The woman who played with a Black Shuck and fed a unicorn by hand could handle anything. She reached into her pockets, pulling out breadcrumbs, thread for sutures, a hagstone. “I need salt.”
“Salt’s not enough.”
“Then I need to find the witch who’s doing this! Is it Simon?”
“It smells like the fighting pits.”
When she broke into a run, he actually struggled to keep up. The threads kept tripping him up, flaying him open as they searched for his wolf. A stone dug into the heel of his foot but he ignored it. He pushed on, running faster, chasing the glow of Sorcha, the soft call of her heartbeat.
She frowned at him over her shoulder. “You’re not even wearing boots,” she scolded him.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“We’re going to talk about your self-destructive tendencies again later.” She paused. “If we survive.”
“You’re surviving,” he growled.
“We’re surviving,” she corrected him with her own tiny growl, which, under any other circumstances, would have made him feral with the need to kiss her and claim her.
To feel those fingernails in his back again.
His every instinct screamed to keep her close, to hold on as tight as he could. To never let go.
The few wolves who had not been at the ceremony poked their heads out of their tents as Sorcha and Aidan passed. Wolves heard each other, felt the change when there was trouble. And Aidan’s wolf, frantic to protect Sorcha, was not being quiet.
Tavish had stayed behind to help guard Simon, and Brutus was sitting with Orla. Her ears were flattened as she panted. Aidan saw the threads cocooning her as well, keeping her still. Incapacitated.
Tavish held a knife in his hand. “What’s going on?”
“The Collector’s working his spell.”
“How can you be sure?” Tavish was still watching the paper birds. “These things?”
“Aye.”
“Also?” Sorcha added in a strange voice Aidan had never heard before, just as he caught the scent of blood. She held up her arm, sleeve pushed back to the elbow. “This cut is bleeding again.”
He had her in his arms before she could blink, glaring down at the wound. He wasn’t the only one growling. She belonged to the Packs. To him. She was more of a wolf than he was.
She belonged wherever the hell she wanted to belong. The Collector would not have her.
Not today. Not ever.
Not one more wolf.
Sorcha accepted the length of cloth Tavish handed her.
Aidan wrapped her cut, knotting it carefully.
A spot of red bled through the white, and he gnashed his back teeth together, vision crisscrossed with those damn threads of magic.
Whoever had cut her, marked her, hurt her, would die.
The earl, the curator, and the wolf all agreed.
Aidan turned to Simon, who was still chained, still human. He was sweating. But when he saw Aidan and Sorcha, he only smiled. “It’s happening.”
“What’s happening?” Aidan demanded. “What have you done?”
Simon did not answer. He might be feeling smug, but he was feeling the effects of the spell as well. Silver threads gagged his mouth, thin and cutting as wire.
Aidan would have punched him, but Sorcha beat him to it. “Undo it!”
When Simon finally answered, it was not helpful. “Can’t.”
Sorcha’s paper birds drifted down closer. Her crow landed on her shoulder, bright and sharp as moonlight on the sea, as the first shard of ice in the water bucket when the weather turned. “Aidan, I have to follow them.”
“Not alone.” And he could have sent a thousand wolves to protect her, but they would all walk blindly, unable to track the bloody Cauldron.
And he did not have a hundred wolves. He did not even have himself.
“If you don’t follow your birds, your cut will keep bleeding,” Simon said. “You’ll bleed out completely.”
“You’re working with someone, and they are the one working the spell,” Aidan realized. He bared his teeth and could not even blame it on the wolf. The blood of your enemy was potent in any spell of this nature. “And they need the Red Cloak.”
Sorcha lifted her chin. “Then he’ll bloody well get her.”
Fear he had never known before strangled him more than the threads. “You can’t go off on your own.”
“I have you.”
“Until the day I die,” he promised roughly. “But, much as I hate to admit it, you and I aren’t enough to take on the Collector. Not when he’s clearly been playing us. We need a plan.”
Frustration flashed across her face, but she nodded tersely. “Fine. And something very sharp and pointy.”
He didn’t like it any more than she did. He wasn’t sure how long he could fight the spell. And whoever had immobilized the wolves was unlikely to let them lie. “Someone’s coming.”
Following the paper birds was not safe. The Wolf Wood was not safe.
He was not safe.
“You know we can’t follow you. He’s shielded against the wolves. We could be on the doorstep of the pits and not know it. Sometimes we see the torchlight and we still can’t find it.”
“I know,” Sorcha said even as his fingers curled like claws.
Something in his spine snapped, preparing to change. The threads pressed down on him. He tasted blood, roses.
Sorcha stifled a gasp. Her mouth trembled and she bit down hard on her lower lip. “You’ve got Tavish and Brutus here. I won’t be nearly helpful enough in a fight. But maybe I can take down the spell.”
And if she stayed, her wound would continue to bleed. Already it was dripping onto the ground and staining her dress as it fell.
“Tavish, I need a travel spell.” Aidan showed her to a box filled with doorknobs of every kind, from carved wooden flowers, to enamel, to crystal.
They were a popular way to travel between doors in London, spelled to take a witch to the goblin market or Vauxhall Gardens or to your grandmother’s house.
There was only one proper portal on Lyonesse, the one in Haven, which could take you to London or Edinburgh.
But on the island proper, when horses were not fast enough or posh enough, witches also used doorknobs.
Fit one on a door and step through. And the Wolf Wood had such a door.
He had thought it a civilized convenience before. Now he was not so certain.
“Even if Simon here isn’t working alone, then the Collector still doesn’t have the wolf teeth and he’s not shielded against me. My birds found the missing wolves now, which means they found him. And he needs me to find him, doesn’t he? If he wants my blood.”
“Wait.” His voice wasn’t his voice anymore, more wolf growl than anything else.
She was so beautiful, with her tangled red hair, her freckled cheeks, her crown of paper birds ready to lead her into the heart of danger.
Alone.
Like hell.
Like fucking hell would he let that happen.
“You can’t track him, but you can track me,” she said, eyes shining with the kind of trust that raked across the inside of his ribcage.
The kind of trust he would do anything to deserve.
“Your wolf can find me.” She smiled briefly, and then fit the doorknob to the door that would no longer open to nothing. “Come and get me, Aidan.”
And then she was gone.
The howl that ripped from him could be heard across the water, all the way to Orkney.
Hunt.
Find.
Protect.
Mine.
The spell pulled Sorcha along as though she were a feather caught in a spring river.
To fight it was to drown. She could only let it take her where it willed and hope it was where she needed to go.
Colors bled together, burning fennel turning to lemon balm.
Her arm ached. Everything went topsy-turvy.
And then she finally landed.
In a courtyard lit with torches, the moon high overhead.
The tower was packed with a waiting audience—she could hear it in the wind.
The air was always sharp, the magic thrumming in your teeth the nearer you were to the Cauldron, but it was different this time.
There seemed to be a heartbeat thrumming, one she could not hear but could feel, going faster and faster.
The cut on her arm started to bleed through the bandage again, tingling with pain.
Her witch knot responded. The moon was covered, for a moment, by a murder of crows.
“Finally,” someone said, stepping out of the shadows. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
As it turned out, the Collector was not a man after all.
Not even a stranger.