37. The Price of Darkness
The Price of Darkness
Rumor Malefic
Turns out, even if you regularly flirted with evil, dark magic was a bitch.
“This is hard,” I complained as moonlight poured into the study. “Maybe we should try the easier defense spell.”
Spade twirled the shadows around his wrist again, flicking them towards me. “Again.”
Bracing my stance as I was taught, I rasied my palms and chanted “Requiem” in my mind.
The catch was, since it wasn’t a full-length spell, as most magic seemed to be, I didn’t have the luxury of relying on a string of words to click the magic into place.
No, darkness wanted its pound of flesh before it saved you. Much like the boys who watched me now.
The shadows paused at my chest, and for a moment, I believed I’d successfully stopped them—until they plummeted to my feet. Each shadow roped around my ankle and yanked me forward. I fell on my ass—again.
Riot sighed. “I’m ordering food from the kitchen. I think the bones made fudge, too.”
Twenty tossed a ball in the air and caught it as he leaned against the sofa where Riot reclined. “Ask if they have any fish. I’m dying for a nice fried trout.”
“Sorry, is my anguish boring to you two?” I snapped. “This is impossible. I can’t fight Spade of all people.”
“Definitely not,” Spade agreed. “But if you can pause me well enough with a Requiem, you can maybe escape a wither.”
With a deep, discontented sigh, I asked, dripping with sarcasm, “What am I doing wrong, oh wise one?”
“The same thing all witches do wrong. You think you know everything. You’re so stunted by your pretty little rocks and trees and moon water and whatever the fuck else your crone has distracted you with. The light will prop you up, but the dark… the dark will sustain you.”
“Translation, please? Does anyone speak Spade?” I implored the men lounging by the leather sofa.
Riot shrugged. “Dark magic is a fearcat you must befriend. If you’re willing to get your hand bitten off—you just might get what you’re after.”
After a feline yawn and stretch of his arms, Twenty rested his elbows on his knees. “Your coven taught you to focus on goodness, hope, joy, all that bullshit when working with complicated spells, right?”
My bones feeling heavy, I nodded.
“Darkness asks for the opposite. Offer it your most desolate suffering. Lay your fury onto its altar naked and screaming. Only then, will you stand a chance at coaxing out its prowess.” Twenty eyed me with his two-toned, animalistic slitted stare.
“You have plenty of rage and anguish, don’t you, Rumor? ”
My throat tightened, and a familiar light lit within my chest. The fire I worked so hard to contain. If dark magic required my flames… I’d give it a goddess damned bonfire. “Hit me again,” I commanded Spade. “Harder this time. No more little whispy whisps. Give me something big.”
Spade smirked in that devilishly handsome way of his that made my insides melt. I shook those thoughts away, ignoring the flex of his forearms beneath his rolled up sleeves. “As you wish, witch.”
The thin ribbons of smoke from before morphed into two tendrils twice the length of Spade. They spun and coiled like a viper ready to attack. Though fear invaded my senses, I sucked in a deep breath. This time when I spoke Requiem within my mind, I conjured the roiling sorrow within me.
My matri, as a sea witch, had always described the ocean to me.
Vast, deep, all-knowing and all-powerful.
I imagined my sorrow as a mournful, storming sea.
The loss of my mothers, my inability to keep my sister safe, losing them all because I wasn’t strong enough to protect them…
My chest hollowed, and it was as if something snapped within my soul, as the Requiem curse rose within my body to swallow my hollow heart.
Spade’s shadows struck, and I winced, bracing for impact, when suddenly—a plume of dark, glimmering purple erupted in a barrier around me.
Shock gasped through me as Spade’s shadows slammed into my fortress and recoiled.
That would have been enough, but as if something stranger could even occur, the purple magic didn’t stop there.
Reaching out like phantom limbs, the glimmering magic wrapped around the dark shadows, squeezing and squeezing until poof—they all disappeared.
Hazy air remained, as if a campfire were extinguished with a bucket of water. Once the haze faded, the awed faces of the Blackthorne Boys remained. Riot’s mouth hung agape while Twenty sat at his feet, slitted eyes wide.
Spade crossed his arms and rubbed his chin, assessing me. “That’ll do.”
It was as close to a good job I’d ever get from the grumpy Blackthorne—and I’d take it. Unable to contain my pride, I bounced on my heels. “Did you see that? I did it!”
Twenty beamed. “I had no doubts.”
Riot smacked his brother on the back of his head. “You had some doubts, kiss ass.”
“I don’t feel tired,” I marveled, holding out my palms that were steady and untrembling. “And my head doesn’t hurt.”
Spade walked over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. The contact surprised me and sent a flurry of bats flying through the cave of my heart. “The protection charms did their jobs.”
Riot bounded over, putting an arm over Spade and my shoulder, effectively pulling us apart from each other.
“ I’m proud, you’re proud, and I know we’re all hungry—and what do you know, the bones are here with food.
” Riot jerked his chin towards the door where four skeletons filtered in, carrying silver domed trays.
After they set the meals on the low coffee table by the fire, we all retired to sit on the floor and pick through the offerings.
“This is better than the stuffy banquet room.” I took a big bite of a chicken wing, tearing the succulent meat off the bone with my teeth. “I don’t know why you all pretend to be so fancy.”
Twenty forked his fried fish filet. “We have fancy origins, but fanciful we aren’t. Not all the time, at least.”
“Says the guy who’s used a litter box for six years,” Riot quipped, and we all laughed.
As we ate, my thoughts drifted back to the treaty the Blackthornes had made with the withers. “If you all cared enough about Willowspire to strike a deal with the monsters—why not come to our aid when we needed you? Why disappear for fifty years? I don’t understand. It seems you all want to help.”
“Not everyone in Willowspire wants our help…” Spade said carefully. “They made that clear fifty years ago.”
Riot continued Spade’s thought. “Our duty would be to… report that fact to Asunder… instead we have been enduring here, doing what we can within our confines.”
“It’s why I fought to find a loophole as a cat,” Twenty added. “It worked… but to no avail. There wasn’t much I could do when…” He glanced at his brothers and stopped talking.
“You’re telling me that everything I’ve come to know and believe of you all as lords… has been a lie? How can that be?”
Spade leaned back against the sofa, sipping his wine. “There is much you’ve been kept from knowing.”
All this time I’d believed the Blackthorne Boys had abandoned their duty to protect Willowspire…
meanwhile… they’d been forced to their castle, and instead of reporting the crime to Asunder—who would undoubtedly level Willowspire with his vengeful wrath—they kept quiet for fifty years.
Brokering treaties and suffering in silence. Who would ever curse them so?
My horrible suspicion was that my coven was involved. Who else had even a semblance of power to do such a thing? But if that were true, why would my coven so willingly send me to the Blackthornes?
Something still wasn’t adding up.
The foreboding dinging of bells sounded through the study. Tension hung in the room like a heavy storm cloud as Riot stood, dusting off his pants. “Our time is nigh.”
“That it is, brother,” Spade agreed, standing.
Twenty, lying on the floor in front of the fire, crooned. “Feels like we’ve all bonded tonight. Want to just tell her where you guys go at midnight?”
“No,” Riot and Spade both said in unison.
It was midnight already? Somehow, I’d spent the whole day practicing one dark spell. A spell I was grateful to have learned. Spade’s watch and Riot’s dagger were heavy in my pockets, reminding me of both of them. The two said their goodbyes, leaving Twenty and me alone in the big room.
“You won’t tell me?” I probed my familiar. “Not even if I give you a treat? What if I catch you a mouse—I mean, risible—from the library?”
“Very funny.” Twenty glared. “It is not my secret to share.”
I crossed my arms and huffed. “Well, it’s too late to go wander the grounds and find Never, so I guess I’ll go to bed.”
“You should go to bed,” Twenty replied, sitting up and picking at his claw-like nails. “You certainly shouldn’t take a left and take the third door on the right down the stairs.”
My attention piqued. “Oh? What else shouldn’t I do?”
“Certainly shouldn’t use that dagger key and watch in your pockets to unlock the cursed door.”
Now my attention was really piqued.
Naughty inquisitiveness pushed me out the door. “Thanks, got to go, lots to not do,” I called over my shoulder.
My pulse beat loudly in my ears as I followed Twenty’s instructions.
Finally, I descended a winding, black stone staircase and traversed down a stone hallway lit but one singular torch at the very end, above the only door.
Pressed into the iron door was a protruding, sleeping face, much like the door to the library.
Beneath the face’s lips were indentations for a dagger and a circle, which I assumed was for the watch.
Is that why they’d given me these items? In all their cryptic conversing… had they been trying to lead me here all along? Is that why Riot showed me the library and how to operate these doors? Is it why Spade gave me his watch and then presented me with both the dagger and pocket watch tonight?