Chapter 28
The water wasn’t cold, but it didn’t matter. We were in the Undine’s world, and that put us at their mercy.
Veyyr’s hand was still in mine and I swam, eyes open as I dragged him across to the far edge of where the path arched upward, I swung him around in front of me, shoving him along.
Which turned me around to face the Undine.
I could say I registered her blue hair, or her blue eyes, but I didn’t. I slammed the falcata up and through her middle—I wasn’t waiting to talk, to discuss what she wanted, or try to play nice.
Not anymore.
Her mouth opened into a wide ‘O’ and then Veyyr was jerking me out of the water. I blinked away the salt water, kicking with my feet as if that would help me get free of the ocean.
My clothes were plastered to me, making it that much harder to move, the material tight and inflexible—hard to breathe even. I stared at the pathway we’d crossed, the water filling with blood where I’d stabbed the Undine.
“Run.” Veyyr gasped, with him in the lead and me stumbling behind as the ocean exploded behind us. I got my feet under me and we ran hard, hit the edge of the next island and kept running. Behind us the ocean raged if the sound of the surf against the island edge was any indication.
“Center of the island,” Veyyr said when I tried to slow.
I didn’t understand why I was slowing. My lungs felt like they were on fire, as if I had been running for hours, not minutes. “Veyyr.”
“We have to keep…”
I stumbled and went to my knees. “My lungs.” I managed to get my blade set into its sheath, then went to my hands and knees. Coughing, I tried to take in a deep breath. “Can’t. Breathe.”
“Hold still, this might hurt.”
It didn’t occur to me how directly opposed Veyyr’s magic was to the Undine’s. I was on my back and didn’t know how I’d gotten there.
His mouth closed over mine and he forced air down into my lungs only it wasn’t just air it was air from a Sylph and it forced the water out of my lungs.
I breathed with him, drawing his magic into my body, feeling it push the Undine’s water clear.
When I breathed out, Veyyr took my breath in, and then gave me another of his own, back and forth we went three times until my lungs were clear. He pulled back just enough that our lips were no longer sealed together.
“You killed an Undine.”
“Yeah.”
“Pissed off an entire culture just to see me naked?” His lips curved upward and then we were both laughing until the tears streamed from my eyes. Or maybe that was the last of the ocean pouring from me, I didn’t know and I didn’t care.
“I mean…at this point, why not?”
Veyyr sat beside me, laughing, his face open in a way I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen. In the weeks that we’d travelled together, in the things we’d faced, even down in the mines when he’d been more open than before, I’d never seen him relax like this.
He tugged my hand, pulling me to a sitting position across from him, our legs tangling, his hands searching mine out, tangling our fingers too. “Everything you are, everything you do is unexpected.”
The laughter slowed. “Is that a bad thing to you?”
His fingers slid over mine, smoothing over old scars, running across my palms as if he could not stop. “No, but it is…unexpected.”
The trees seemed to bend around us, shadowing us from the world.
Check that, not shadowing us…the limbs shot out, grabbing hold of our limbs, yanking us from the ground.
Out of the frying pan, into the fucking inferno.
“We come for wisdom!” Veyyr yelled and I wondered if he was trying to convince the witch or himself.
I rolled in mid-air yanked up by my ankles, but when I reached for my weapons, they were gone. The smaller vines had taken every piece of steel from my body.
“Veyyr.”
“Do not fight.”
A crackle of leaves underfoot, the whoosh of material and the catch of said material on a branch told me that our newest witch friend was behind me. I arched my back, twisting around so I could get a good look at her and almost threw up.
The long blue cloak studded with silver stars was exactly as I remembered it. “This is not good.”
“It isn’t her. The cloak is a mark of power gained,” Veyyr said and the calm in his voice and through the bond slowed my racing, panic driven heartbeat. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d been on the verge of coming unglued, thinking that Thorn had found us.
Found me.
For whatever she wanted from me (most likely my death), I knew that she was one witch whose path I did not want to cross.
This eleventh witch slowly peeled back the hood of her cloak, a stunning amount of brilliant red curls cascading around a heart shaped face, and huge green eyes.
Long dark lashes framed the deep emerald, green, but when the shadow moved through her eyes I decided she wasn’t as beautiful as I first thought.
I looked away, staring instead at her boots which looked a bit on the worn side.
Better her boots than eyes with things crawling around in them.
Things like a demon? Fuck that would be bad.
As I’d done before, I let Veyyr lead.
“Lady Witch, we seek passage across your island. What cost would you ask?”
I glanced in time to see her freakish eyes swing toward where Veyyr was trussed up to the left of me, only he dangled by his wrists, his feet just skimming the ground.
“Well, well,” she purred as she circled around him. “Interesting that you would dare come here.”
Her fingers flicked out one at a time. “But you have so carefully asked for passage and have obviously brought along the help you needed to pass by…” her eyes swung to me and I carefully avoided locking with that gaze. Not out of fear.
Survival.
I was a fighter, and with my weapons could be as deadly as any witch.
But she was loaded with enough magic that it hummed around her, and I was hanging upside down in a tree.
If the cloak marked her as a certain level of witch, and that level was anywhere near Thorn…
yeah, I kept my eyes down until she pushed me to do something else.
The witch laughed. “Your little friend is afraid of me.”
“Then she has some sense in her head, Ammi,” Veyyr said. “What cost to cross?”
The witch, Ammi apparently on a first name basis with Veyyr which was indeed interesting, snapped her fingers.
As fast as they’d coiled around, the trees released us both. Veyyr landed solidly on his feet, I on the other hand face planted as the vines didn’t just let go. They dropped me but kept my legs bound and up just enough that I couldn’t get my body under me, letting go only once I’d eaten dirt.
Anger snapped through the bond between Veyyr and I. It was my turn to send him a calm. I was fine, she was being a bitch to try and humiliate me, but it didn’t hurt me.
I spit and blinked, rubbed a hand over my face. Soil fell from off my lashes, dusting my vision.
And the witch decided to push.
Ammi’s boot tips were at my face. “You should stay in the dirt where you belong—”
I grabbed her boots at the ankles and yanked her to the ground, the thoughts of being careful gone as the pain in my face, and the obvious attempt to make me look weak a lethal combination.
She hit the ground on her back hard enough to wind her. The air left her in a solid whoosh that turned into a wheeze. Before she could catch her breath, I was on top of her, straddling her waist, one hand around her neck and the other holding her right hand—the one she’d snapped her fingers with.
“Can you do magic with broken fingers?” I said, deliberately keeping my voice soft, low.
Her eyes bugged and that creature crawled through them, darkening the green to a black that I truly did not like. I tightened my hand around her neck. “Maybe we can just kill this one, Veyyr?”
He stepped up beside me, his presence and the bond not doing one thing to soothe me. If anything, I felt his agreement.
“Not yet. She isn’t the witch who owns this island.”
If I thought the trees reacting to us before was driven with speed and violence it was nothing compared to the second time.
Trees lurched toward us, swinging their massive branches with a deadly precision.
I rolled so that the witch was on top of me, but I still held her throat tight, our faces close.
Her magic tried to wrap around me, and my immunity held. I smiled, feeling my own darkness rise to match hers.
“You should have learned to fight for your life. Because magic…doesn’t always hold sway.” I flipped her around so her back was to my chest, and I locked an arm around her neck, cutting off her air. She scrambled and fought, her limbs slowly going limp.
But her mid-day nap didn’t slow the trees.
“Here,” Veyyr grabbed my hand and pulled me upright so that I was caught in one arm as he sent out a gale force wind. The miniature tornado ripped around, throwing the trees out until he’d created a big circle around us.
A slow clap broke through the wailing wind—I shouldn’t have but I heard it. I turned my head to look over my shoulder. Veyyr hadn’t heard the other witch approach or heard her clap.
Older than the first, but the same deep red curls, and heart-shaped faced said they were either sisters or mother and daughter. It was hard to say. She wore no cloak, but as she approached the limp form of Ammi, she bent and took the cloak from her.
“Bratty child,” her voice seemed to cut through the wind and Veyyr finally turned, still holding me around the waist. Her smile was not unkind as she took us in, flinging the cloak around her shoulders.
“She was so sure that she could handle anyone, and I pointed out to her that we knew you were coming, Veyyr. You can imagine how that went over.”
Dark green eyes like Ammi’s, but again different. No darkness crept behind them. Veyyr didn’t let go of me as we faced this new witch.
“Then you know, Lianne, we wish to pass to the twelfth island? That we are prepared for the cost you will ask?” He was careful with his words.
“I do understand that is why you are here. And the cost, if you wish to call it that, is simple on the outside. But understand that to take the item you have come for, you must prove yourself…worthy.” Lianne adjusted the cloak and it did seem to fit her better.
Her gaze stayed on me, not sharp exactly, but wary.
I didn’t pull away from Veyyr. Together we were stronger, enough to face whatever would come.
The witch held out both of her hands, as if she were one of those old-time magicians, showing us that there was nothing within her palms as she rolled first one hand, then the other.
At this point, Ammi began to groan.
“Quiet, novice,” Lianne said with about as much force as a butterfly’s wing and yet Ammi’s mouth snapped shut and her body was shoved across the newly open glen that Veyyr had made, until she was a solid fifty feet away and pinned up against a large tree. “I will deal with you later.”
Lianne’s hands kept turning, over and over and if I squinted, I could see the magic filaments as if she were spinning wool. Though I did not recognize the spell, as it was no longer words I could read.
She wove the filaments between her fingers, pinched them off and set them in one palm and then did it again. Ingredients emerged from under her cloak, and then with a burst of light a single clay shot glass sat in her hand. She pinched her fingers around it and held it out to us.
“One of you must drink this if you wish to pass.”
Veyyr did not move. “Is it deadly?”
Her smile did not soothe me, not for one second.
For all the crinkles around her eyes and her dual dimples you’d think that she’d look maternal.
Sweet. “Not to your essence. It is deadly though, you must drink it all down to gain access to Water from the Heart of the Veil. It will cost you, Veyyr. Surely your mother taught you this?”
He flinched as if she’d hit him with a rod and I moved on instinct, putting my body between him and her.
Her smile widened, and if I had any doubt about which of the two witches was dangerous, that doubt was gone. “What does it do?”
“This drink will bring truth bubbling to the surface. Truths that perhaps you do not even understand or recognize.” She swirled the cup left and right, the mixture sizzling. “But you will not remember them. He will. That is the burden of the one who does not drink.”
Veyyr put a hand on my shoulder but before he could say anything I stepped forward and took the cup.
“Done.” I snapped it back like a shot as Veyyr bellowed. The liquid bubbled, danced along my tongue and slid down my throat tasting of dark molding things, forest dirt, and pungent liniment.
And then the heat settled in my body, a fever rising with each beat of my heart but no sweat broke out to cool my brow and the fever continued to rise.
Lianne laughed and said something, but the words were fuzzy and indistinct and then they were rocking back into focus.
“Look at me, girl.”
“Woman,” I said, only then realizing that I was on my knees and staring up at her as she cupped my face.
“Secrets are what I specialize in, girl.” Her fingers weren’t pinching, weren’t tight, they didn’t need to be, I was stuck without her holding me there.
“I have none.” Which had been part of my thinking, I didn’t have a memory, so what the hell would she dig out of me? For all intents and purposes, I’d been ‘alive’ for only a few short weeks. I could tell her anything she wanted.
“Speak the truth that terrifies you.”
Oh, now that was easy. “That I’ll run out of time to save her.”
“Her?”
“Sister.” My head lolled as the fever raged, burning through me. A tremor started somewhere deep in me.
“Lianne, enough! That wasn’t meant for her!”
“Oh, I know, which is why this will kill her.”