Chapter Twenty-Nine The Witch #2
“Witch,” said her knight, had still outstretched. “Please?”
The Witch, numbly, placed her hand in the knight’s own. They moved like the tide was carrying them.
They were drifting swiftly across the ballroom floor, twirling in dizzying circles. This dance was far preferable to her than the pavane, which she had also danced in the past. It was a glittering, dizzying business to the sound of violins and cellos, the crescendo of her own heart.
Her tale was her death, surely; but it was also her freedom from the archives. She felt as if she were soaring.
The knight was looking at her. The knight’s hands were on her—points of heat at her waist, her arm.
“Simran,” she said. “I see you.”
A heartbeat, stumbling; a breath that didn’t quite fill her lungs.
Simran.
“I don’t know who you think I am,” said the Witch frostily. “But that isn’t me. Why are you here?”
“Why do you think I am?”
“I don’t like guessing games.”
“We’re at a party,” the strange woman said, voice full of unspent laughter. “Games are traditional, aren’t they? And incarnates are traditional too. I hear the Queen loves to gather all the evidence of her power around her. Are you so sure I wasn’t invited?”
“I would have known if they found you,” whispered the Witch. “They would have told me. They would have held this ball for you, not another incarnate. You’re an interloper. An incarnate on the run.”
“I am,” the knight said easily. “You’ve caught me. I came here uninvited.”
“If I cried out now, you’d be captured by the Queen’s knights and brought to heel. You’d be taught your place.”
“Is my place really here? Is yours?” They whirled. The knight’s eyes were on her. “Why didn’t you run?” she asked. “Why didn’t you come to find me?”
“Why have you come to find me now?” the Witch asked.
“I’ve come to save you,” said the knight. Under the diamond of her mask, her eyes were deep brown, sparkling with charm. She fair oozed it. Her smile was easy, liquid—it made the Witch’s own limbs tremble.
It wasn’t the woman’s charm that made the Witch wary.
She had met charming people before; the Queen’s court was heaving with them, and even some archivists had social graces.
What disturbed her, and made her hackles rise, was that the charm was working on her.
She had to resist the mortifying urge to smile in return.
“I am not a maiden in distress,” replied the Witch.
“I hear you live in a tower,” the woman said in a low voice. “That sounds pretty ‘maiden in distress’ to me.”
“This isn’t how we should meet, knight,” hissed the Witch. “By… by dancing at a ball and you—you offering to run away with me.”
“Is it not?”
“No.”
“Then how do we meet?” the knight asked, gaze searching. “How do we begin our cursed tale? Tell me, lady witch.”
“On a mountain,” said the Witch. “The Copper Mountains. And I—I make you love me, I bewitch you with mirrors—”
“Ah,” the knight breathed. Real sorrow flickered in those mask-shadowed eyes. “You don’t remember that either.” Her hand clasped the Witch’s own as the music died, and the dancers stopped with fluttering laughter. “Come with me,” said the knight. “I’ll explain everything.”
She was being manipulated, she knew. And yet it did nothing to stop the curiosity rising through her. She nodded. The knight beamed, and tugged her along, their fingers still intertwined.
Sir Edmund stood in the corner of the ballroom. She saw his eyes fix on her—saw those eyes widen, as he saw her leaving the ballroom with a masked woman guiding her away. But he didn’t move.
In a matter of seconds, she and the knight were beyond the hall, and she could no longer see Edmund at all.
“There used to be a maze here,” said the knight, turning in a slow circle.
“The Queen had it destroyed years ago,” said the Witch. “It angered her, or some such. But she’s a monarch. She’s allowed to have strange foibles.” She paused, then said, “Look at me.”
The knight looked—and the Witch shoved her roughly to the ground.
She clutched her knife, previously tucked into her girdle, and held it to the knight’s throat.
Her knight, her stranger, began to laugh.
“You did change our tale,” said the knight. “This is new.”
“I’m taking you,” said the Witch. She held the knife closer to the knight’s neck.
It was her fist she pressed against that throat, not the blade.
She didn’t really want to hurt her. The Witch was shaking, hot with adrenaline, intensely aware of the knight’s body bracketed by her thighs; the heat of her, and the unafraid curve of her mouth.
“Taking you to the Queen—where you belong.”
“Why a weapon, when you have magic? You’re not as good with knives as I am.”
“Are you boasting?”
“It’s only the truth,” said the knight. “But I can’t fight your magic.”
“Here’s the truth,” the Witch said, leaning in closer. “It’s not a weapon made for slitting throats. It’s a bookbinding knife. But all I needed was to distract you so I could bespell you, and that’s what I’ve done.”
Clouds cleared overhead, unveiling the moon.
“We’re not where the tale requires us to be,” the knight said breathlessly. “You can’t magic me under your heel quite yet.”
“Can’t I?” She leaned down, touched her free hand to the bodice of her gown. Her fingers caught the chain of the necklace around her own throat, looped over the fine lace of her gown.
“I’ve lived a lifetime in these archives,” said the Witch. “I have boiled glue and cut paper and sewn spines. I’ve been a surgeon of tales. And I’ve read every single one that passed under my hands. I know what binds tales of witches like me and lovelorn knights like you into shape. Enchantment.”
The pendant of her necklace was a miniature mirror, just one circle of silver.
That was what she drew up, tilting its surface until it caught the moonlight.
Wicked, wicked witch that she was, she’d snare the knight and take her to Aunt Meera, or to the Queen herself.
She’d prove herself worthy of her tale. She’d help save the Isle.
The moonlight caught, and she whispered a spell. The light touched the knight’s face like an arrow. Her eyes glowed, briefly, silver.
The knight’s mouth parted.
“So you have me,” she said, lax now under the Witch’s grip, her knife. “What are you planning to do with me now that I’m under your thrall?”
“Make you serve our tale, of course.”
“Is that what you truly want?”
The Witch’s voice froze in her throat, her hand loosening on the bookbinding knife, as the knight’s arms encircled her. It was one thing to be held while dancing—another entirely to be embraced on the cold grass under moonlight.
There was so much affection, so much trust, in the way the knight held the Witch—and none of it was earned. All of it was false. Those hands drew her in closer and she went, mesmerized—as if she were the one under thrall.
No one had ever touched her like this. She was like parched soil for the rain of tenderness.
“I told you,” the knight breathed against her lips. “I’m not so easily placed under anyone’s power.”
She moved so swiftly the Witch had no chance to react. The knife was gone from her hands, flung across the grass. The knight had her pinned.
“Come with me,” said the knight. “Don’t stay here with them.”
“Let me go,” the Witch snarled. She moved to punch the knight, and the knight rolled away from her. In the scuffle, the knight’s mask had come undone, baring brown eyes, a gold-brown face, those askew curls. The charm was gone from her eyes—they were suddenly fierce, full of entreaty.
“You set this all into motion,” said the knight.
“You released the Eternal Prince. You want all the tales of the Isle to be free to change, including our own! Please, I know it’s hard to trust me, but you must try.
” She held out a hand. “Trust yourself,” said the knight.
“Trust what you sacrificed, trust the plans you made.”
A strange memory washed over her, so visceral it felt like it lived in her skin: the knight with a thousand different faces, trusting her, always trusting her. The knight, dying in sparks of ink alongside her. A promise, the feeling of love threatening to soar in her chest.
The Witch hesitated.
“Lady Witch,” a musical voice said. “What strange company you keep!”
Three fae had appeared, as if from nowhere. The tallest of them was a woman, her face angular, her eyes the color of burning coals. She strode toward them, examining the bared face of the knight closely.
Lady Wren, of the House of Fae Lords.
“Ah, not so strange after all,” said the fae.
“She is your other half. I understand now.” The lady ran her fingertip slowly through the air by the knight’s cheek, almost a benediction.
“Are you here when you shouldn’t be, little knight?
Drawn here like a moth to a pretty flame?
” Her gaze suddenly fixed on the Witch. “We can deal with this one,” the fae said cordially.
“Be on your way, Witch. We’ll take care of your knight. ”
One of the other fae, with skin the color of stone, grasped the knight by the shoulder.
The knight did not move. Her eyes had turned suddenly flinty.
“I must take her to the archivists and the Queen,” said the Witch. “It’s my duty.”
“The fae court will deal with this one,” said Lady Wren. “Go on your way, Witch.”
“No,” the Witch said flatly.
“You don’t trust us?” the third fae asked. A smile played on his mouth.
“You cannot harm her,” said the Witch. “She’s mine.”
“Would we harm an incarnate?” Lady Wren said, touching a hand to her chest in shock. “The lifeblood of the Isle? You insult our honor, Witch.”
The Witch stared at them sullenly. She didn’t want to leave the knight here. Her fingers itched with magic. The mirror at her neck was burning with intent.
“Go,” the knight said softly. “I’ll be fine.”
“Go back to your archivists,” Lady Wren cajoled. “Tell Apollonius I send my regards.”
It was a reminder of how power sat in her life. The archivists had it, and the fae, and the Queen’s court. The Witch had none of it.
“I will,” the Witch said. “I’ll see you soon, Knight.”
“I promise you will,” the knight said steadily.
The Witch hesitated one last time, then turned to go.
The knight did not call out for her as she walked off. For some reason that gave her a terrible pang. It was not something the Witch should have wanted. She was the one who’d walked away, after all. She was the one who didn’t look back.