Chapter Twenty-Eight
It took Sorcha a moment to recognize the woman.
Her wide eyes, her meek posture. The way she had seemed lost and her terrified trembling when Sorcha had stumbled over her after running from the ogre. Not stumbled accidentally, clearly, but led.
She had made herself as invisible as Sorcha’s red cloak made her.
Sorcha was reluctantly impressed, as well as infuriated at her own gullibility. She’d been fooled.
“So you’re the Collector,” she said.
“Just Amelia. The Collector is a bit clunky, don’t you think? I’d hoped for a better title, if I’m honest.” The woman wore a white gown and pearl ear bobs, and a circlet of dried white roses. She was dressed so much like a debutante that it was nearly disorienting.
If Sorcha hadn’t known many debutantes. Hadn’t been one herself.
“And you’re the Red Cloak,” Amelia added. She glanced down at Sorcha’s blood-soaked bandage. “Lovely. You received my message.”
Sorcha’s arm had stopped bleeding. “Why am I here?”
“Some spells require a sacrifice,” Amelia said.
“A sacrifice is something you give up, not something you take from someone else.”
“Semantics. I needed the blood of my enemy, and now I have it. I didn’t have enough, you see.”
“You scratched me that night.”
“Of course.”
“What are you doing to the wolves?”
“Getting them ready. I need fighters for my Cauldron. I’ve an empire to build.”
“You’ll never have magic strong enough to ward this place against them and the Order. You would need the wolf teeth. And we have those.” Thank the stars.
“Do you mean these teeth?” Amelia asked, all false innocence as she opened her palm.
In it, the Bisclavret tooth, the Ossory tooth, the Arcadia tooth.
“Thank you, by the way. You don’t know how long I’d been searching for the Ossory tooth.
I did not even know there was such a thing as a Museum of Teeth. ”
Sorcha gaped, her stomach turning sour. “How did you get those?”
“Well, you were all so busy with Simon, weren’t you?”
Simon had been misdirection in so many ways. “You used him to pull us off the scent.”
“Of course,” Amelia replied. “I’ve known who you were for some time now. I went in after your betrothal ball ended so abruptly. The iced cakes were delicious, by the way.”
“He didn’t kill me as you sent him to.”
“No, but he kept track of you, which was also useful. He made sure you never got too close. And now that I need your blood, I can kill you myself. It will be better this way.”
“You haven’t managed it so far.” Sorcha, why, why do you always taunt people when you should just stay silent?
“Lady Sorcha, I am far more clever than you are. Must we do this?”
“I think I deserve to know why you’re threatening to murder me, so yes.”
“Very well.” Amelia sighed as though greatly inconvenienced. “But we have a fight to present. People are waiting. Let’s make this quick.”
Amelia was perplexing. She spoke lightly, looked like a young lady ready to embroider a pillow. But there was a bleak hardness to her gaze. Sorcha shook her head. “You can’t be doing this for the power or the profit from wagers.”
“Why not? A girl has to eat.”
“All this for money?”
“Certainly. People will pay very good money to watch wolves fight. And there are only so many ogres and Minotaurs to be had.” She sighed again at Sorcha’s expression. “You’ve never been hungry, have you, Lady Sorcha? Or overlooked? I have, and I do not care for it.”
A howl announced the arrival of a wolf. Birds filled the sky, startled. Sorcha’s palms felt less damp. They had found her. Aidan had found her.
Until she realized that Amelia did not look nearly concerned enough.
Or even at all.
“Lovely. And just in time,” she said. “I do so hate to be tardy.”
Dread was an iron ball in Sorcha’s throat, choking her. “What do you mean?”
“That was the real spell, to bring them here, to have them ready for the moon—but on my schedule. On my leash.”
It was a trap. Another trap among traps. Like a huntsman waiting in the woods.
Sorcha opened her mouth to scream a warning. One of Amelia’s guards shot out of the shadows and clamped a sweaty hand over her mouth.
“That wasn’t very polite.” Amelia sniffed. “I might need you for my spell, but I don’t need you with your limbs intact. Or your tongue.”
The guard moved his hand. The dagger remained at Sorcha’s side, poking into her rib. “Please don’t do this.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. The moon is nearly at its zenith, and it’s the equinox. I’ve spent far too long preparing for this. Do you know how hard it was to lace their bread? To build that link?”
“The roses,” Sorcha realized. “You poisoned them with it?”
“Simon was very accommodating. Fancied himself in love with me, didn’t he?
I gathered the roses after that sleep curse on the summer solstice and had him put them in the bread, but it did take some time.
All of this has taken far too much time.
And I wasn’t poisoning them—where’s the finesse to that?
I do admit it’s rather difficult to poison a wolf.
But a charm, here or there? One they can’t smell or taste?
I deserve some recognition for my hard work, I should think.
” Amelia nodded to the guard. “Now bring her.”
Sorcha was hauled unceremoniously into the tower.
The fighting pit fires were burning again, the spectators gathered, tickets in their pockets, bottles of ale in their hands. They seethed with impatience. For a show. For blood. The ogre sat in one corner, drinking black ale. There was a satyr and three imps.
And the missing wolves. They were chained and collared. And as meek as the wolves in the woods.
A new tremor of uneasiness went through Sorcha. It was as though the fog had been cleared from a window, but she still wasn’t quite able to see what was on the other side.
Amelia wound her way toward a tall platform. “You’ve been quite the nuisance,” she said. “But now you can be useful.”
The guard shoved Sorcha inside the ring of green fire and it burned at her dress, licked at her hands as she passed through. Pain lanced through her. She stumbled but kept her footing. Barely.
“Is that Lady Sorcha Beauregard?” someone asked.
“This is exciting.”
“I don’t know about this.”
One of the guards shoved the last speaker and then tossed him through the archway.
No help from that quarter, then.
Amelia took her seat on an ornate chair, piled with cushions. The audience stared at her, rapt.
“The Collector is a woman?” someone asked.
“As is the Red Cloak,” Amelia added, her voice carrying easily. “And here she is to pay for her crimes.”
“And what crimes are those, pray tell?” Sorcha shot back. “Common decency? Empathy?”
“If you like. You interfered with our amusements, Lady Sorcha. You cost us all coin in lost wagers. You stole my fighters.”
“I released your prisoners.”
The crowd shifted uncomfortably, murmuring. The thrill of a night chasing illicit amusements was somewhat dampened when reality set in. Good.
“But no more,” Amelia said. “Now we claim our ground, and our entertainment.” What was left of the rotting roof had been pulled away entirely. The moon, full and bright on the equinox night, poured into the tower. She smiled. “It’s time.”
There was a howl from beyond the courtyard, but it sounded wrong. Pained.
A wolf whine pierced the din. And another. A snarl, a growl.
Something was happening outside the tower.
And it was not good.
Sorcha reached out with her magic, searching for a sparrow, a crow, an owl. Someone to show her the courtyard and the hills beyond. She could not risk sending Elderberry. She whistled once, twice.
Finally, a crow answered.
The glint of eyes and teeth, moonlight on fur, men writhing in the grass as they fought the transformation.
More men in the darkness. Not men, Amelia’s guards, on horseback with bewitched silver chains, herding them closer.
She saw Agnes fall, then Gretel. She searched for Aidan in the flashes but could not see him.
Because he was right there with her.
Aidan strode through the crowd, imposing, furious.
“Welcome, Lord Coventry.”
“All right, songbird?” His voice was hoarse, dark. A comfort. She could see the wolf still rippling under his skin. The blood he had wiped from his nose.
“I’m fine,” Sorcha assured him. “It’s a trap.”
“Aye.” He didn’t turn away from Sorcha. “Let her go,” he growled.
“So soon? I think not. No, no. It’s not nearly time for that yet.”
“The wolves are at your door, Collector.”
“I do hope so, after all the effort I put into bringing them here. Now step into the ring, Lord Coventry.”
“No.” Aidan’s voice lashed out.
“You’ll fight her, dog. And show the world who you really are.”
“Never.”
Amelia went white with rage even if she still spoke as though this were a dinner party. “I think you’ll find I always get my way. And I did tell you, Lady Sorcha, that I am the more clever of us.”
She pointed to one of the guards. Two pistols and a crossbow were aimed at Sorcha.
“If he does not get inside the ring, shoot her.”