Chapter 35
lowri watches as mira disappears with the sirens into the sea.
Then she whispers a witch word, eyes on the horizon, on the armada that’s come to devour her home.
She lands in the entrance hall of Ennor Castle and the ground shudders beneath her.
Lowri gasps, throwing out a hand to grip a side table as the walls seem to strain inwards.
She blinks quickly, feeling the strange tang of another coven’s magic invading the castle.
‘We’re out of time,’ she murmurs to herself, sensing the press against the wards, against the very bindings of Elena’s protection.
She hurries through the castle, corridors pinching and shuddering, checking rooms and halls, the kitchens and infirmary, as she searches with increasing urgency.
Then she whisks up the back stairs, knowing where to find her.
Lowri heads straight for the library and finds Tanith kneeling before Amma, who is sitting in an armchair, flitting in and out of focus as she groans, reeling with each whip and crack of magic against the wards binding her together.
Tanith glances at Lowri, relief on her face. ‘Come, Lowri. The wards are buckling. You must sense it. Amma is weakening too fast. She can’t last much longer against this assault of spellwork. She won’t be able to stop them.’
Lowri hides her panic, rushing to Amma’s side. ‘If she dies …’
‘Then the wards will have fallen, yes,’ Tanith confirms. She straightens, drawing a vial from a dress pocket. ‘This is my blood, witch. Imbibe it. You need a strong catalyst to delve deep into your magic. You and your fledglings and Brielle, should they make it back to us in time, need it now.’
Amma stutters in and out again and Lowri pushes back her fear over Brielle’s long silence, over what has transpired on her assignment to find aid in the Spines. ‘You would share your blood with me … with us?’
Tanith nods. ‘I would. The blood of a drake. The richest, most powerful creature blood in this world.’
Lowri’s fingers tremble, but she takes the vial, determined to show Tanith the respect she deserves.
This gift is fabled, rare. For a moment, she is overcome by the gesture, for a drake to trust a witch, a natural enemy in many parts of the continent, including here. For her to be the one who is trusted.
‘Why?’
She smiles sadly. ‘Because I believe in a better world. And because now I entrust this castle to your protection. My battle is elsewhere. Within myself, and without, in the skies,’ Tanith says softly.
Then she turns for the window, the sunlight catching on iridescent scales where her skin is exposed.
She walks forward, stepping up to the cushioned seat and thrusts back one of the windows.
A stream of air, laced with brine and granite, rushes in.
Knowing what she is about to do, Lowri takes a half step towards her. ‘How do you know you won’t turn on your friends, your family?’
Tanith sighs as more scales glisten along her cheekbones.
‘I must trust that my head is stronger than my panic. I must believe in my mind, in myself. Tell him …’ She swallows.
‘Tell Joby I wish we’d had more time. Tell him I’m sorry I failed to find a way, that if I remember him, if somehow my soul remembers my human existence, I will find him again.
We will begin as we should have done before, with hope. ’
Then she faces the wind and sky, the wyvern in the distance … and leaps.
Lowri gasps, rushing for the window, gripping the ledge as she leans out. She searches for Tanith, scanning the sky, fearing her broken on the rocks below.
But then she hears an almighty rumble. And a bronze drake, fierce and beautiful, soars up and away into the clouds.
Tanith roars with the force of a tempest and Lowri covers her ears, the depth of the drake’s bellow rattling through her entire being.
Tears smart in Lowri’s eyes as she realises the sacrifice Tanith has just made for Ennor.
For them all. Her human life sacrificed to transform back into her drake form, to battle their enemies and save them all.
As she watches, the wyvern streak straight for Tanith, changing course as they dash towards her bronze flanks.
She whistles low over the waves, striking the masts of three ships with her tail, before darting upwards, leading the batlike wyvern towards the eye of the sun.
And in that moment Lowri’s heart thuds with renewed hope. For there, far away, are more shapes moving closer. Drakes, flying towards Tanith. Drakes with riders on their backs.
‘Brielle,’ she breathes, tears spilling on to her cheeks. She grins, her heart filling with hope in her chest. ‘It has to be you. You found a coven in the Spines to help us. You’ve – you’ve returned.’
Another crack rocks the castle, throwing her back on to the window seat, the vial of Tanith’s blood dropping to the floor and rolling towards Amma.
She rights herself quickly, sensing the wards fraying dangerously.
Holes forming, the threads of Tresillian magic, Elena’s old magic, straining.
She reaches for the vial, uncorks it and readies herself to imbibe the most potent catalyst she has ever taken.
She allows it to splash down her throat before stoppering it, in the hope that she can hand it to Dreska, Inesh and Brielle as well. ‘A small swallow, yes,’ she whispers to herself. ‘Not too much, the effects will be—’ She chokes suddenly, dropping to her knees, palms slamming the floor.
Lowri feels everything.
The wooden floorboards creaking beneath her fingertips, the trees they once were, the bite of the axe that shaped them.
The movement of people two floors below, the strain of an ankle of one of them – an old injury that twists each footfall.
Then the whispered prayer to an old god on a woman’s tongue, the waves far below as they froth against the rocks, the sun in the sky as it warms the granite walls, the clang of a bell, the flat cadence of it as a rope is pulled, hitting always in the same place, it clatters and clatters …
Lowri feels the blood pumping in her veins, rich and full and powerful. She can barely contain it. Doesn’t want to contain it. She wants to pull apart the world, weave it as she wills it, pull down the sky, flood the land, rake the earth with her desires, burn it all down …
‘Steady there, witch,’ Amma murmurs. ‘Remember who you are.’
Lowri looks down at her fists, finding the lines of her veins inky and bulging, viscous and brimming with glorious magic.
She looks at her reflection in the windows, onyx eyes peering back at her, a vicious smile pulling apart her lips.
‘I must control it,’ she rasps, forcing her lips into a thinner line, suppressing the wicked fickleness freckling her mind with pure possibility.
She goes to Amma and stands over her, taking her hands in hers.
Amma places her translucent, barely-there fingers in Lowri’s, and all Lowri senses is the gentle burn of magic, of Elena Tresillian’s last protection of Elijah, and Ennor, the physical embodiment of the wards.
She closes her eyes and allows her senses to guide her, to find the wards round the castle that are Amma, that are witch.
She must reweave the tears … and then push the wards out, to encircle the town below as well.
Rebuild them bigger than before, even as the other coven out there in the armada pushes and pulls them apart as she works.
Another shudder rocks the castle and Lowri feels her true self uncoiling, her magic awakening, the power of a Tresillian witch flowing through her like a river of ink.
She’s aware now of the coven on those ships, the enemy witches, trying to smash the wards.
Amma is dying before her, the wards stitched to her slowly unravelling.
Lowri feeds them, coaxing the magic, reshaping and reforming the wards, allowing Amma to relinquish control to her through their joined hands.
Then, as the tears are mended, she binds the wards to herself, as they were once bound to Elena.
And she begins to push them out, inch by inch, desperate to save as many people in the town below as she can.
As Lowri feeds the wards, she senses more beings beyond them. The monsters Mira faces below the waves, and the ones Brielle and Tanith engage in the sky. With grim determination, she hopes that it will be enough.
That, combined, they can save Ennor.