Chapter III.28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Day of the Wedding
Miria brushed her thumb over one of the bloodied pieces of parchment she’d stolen from Rosmilda. She could see the traces of magic in it, but that meant nothing.
“You’re sure you were able to protect these children?” she asked Sarel before placing the eight pieces of parchment into the purse tied around her body.
She would have preferred to take her satchel, stuffed with supplies for every contingency, but a satchel was easy to steal off her if a guard came too close.
A purse could be tucked into her clothes.
Today could go badly, and if it did, she intended to make herself as hard a target to catch as possible.
Even her dress felt wrong for that purpose, but Miria needed to make people listen to her.
As much as it bothered her, that meant she must try to blend in among them, look like one of them instead of the feral wood witch that she was.
She mollified herself by wearing the petal-and-thorn armor Yali had made beneath it.
“Our spells should hold,” Sarel said. “And it’s certain Rosmilda knows about them if she’s tried casting since.”
“She might not have.” Miria suppressed a yawn. Who knew what Rosmilda had been up to yesterday since she hadn’t led a contingent of guards into the forest with another of her abominations?
“It might have been better if she had,” Dinia said, giving voice to a worrisome thought that had occurred to Miria over breakfast. “She’d be tired today. Easier to control.”
“Too late to worry about that now.” The red-haired witch who’d joined them yesterday (her name was Hani) reminded Miria a bit of Adaline. Miria suspected she was itching for a fight, and she was entirely too cheerful this morning for Miria’s mood.
While the other four witches debated the pros and cons of their situation, Miria strode on ahead.
The wedding was to take place at noon, which was not so far away, and in the distance, the manor bustled.
Few people were going in and out of the main gate, but between Lord Sigmun’s and Sir Alberik’s guards on duty, there wasn’t an inch of wall uncovered.
It was hardly a surprise given the scene she and Adaline had created only days ago, and it wasn’t a problem that would be hard to overcome, but it also wasn’t exactly welcoming.
As if anyone on the other side of that wall besides Adaline would welcome her. Miria had to quietly laugh at herself for having such an absurd thought in the first place.
The ominous sight of so many guards aside, colorful flags flew from the parapets, and someone had decorated the area around the main gate with garlands of flowers as though today was a joyful occasion.
Miria longed to send a gust of wind to rip them down, but the time for a reckoning was coming in other ways.
She would conserve her power for when it would be most effective.
Without thinking, she wrapped her fingers around the red charm dangling against her chest. Its heat was comforting. The rage she’d stored there familiar.
Today, she whispered to it in her mind. Today we save Adaline and get our revenge.
The charm grew hotter, but not unpleasantly so, and Miria tucked it back beneath her bodice.
The breeze picked up, blowing stray strands of hair into Miria’s face, itching her nose and carrying with it the scent of smoke and horses from the manor.
It would have been a beautiful day for a wedding, and Miria was certain the lord’s kitchens had been conjuring a feast for all the guests.
She hoped some of the staff got to enjoy the fruits of their labor later.
As for those for whom the food had been intended, if she had her way, all they would be consuming for the rest of the day was chaos.
Nerves and determination had sped up her feet, and Miria paused to wait for the others to catch up. The guards along the wall and at the gates gave no indication they saw her or the women with her. Nalki had cast a variation on Miria’s close-to-but-not-quite-invisibility spell on them all.
“Everyone know what they must do?” Hani asked for the third time that morning as they approached the gate.
“Hush,” said Sarel. They were as close to invisible as they could get, but speaking might be enough to draw the guards’ attention.
They didn’t notice the women, though. Miria was about to breathe a sigh of relief as she passed by the unseeing guards, but her triumph was cut short by her walking into an invisible wall.
She stumbled backward, barely able to suppress her cry of surprise, and landed against Nalki.
Hani had been next to Miria, and she, too, slammed into the same barrier.
She wasn’t as fast at catching herself from swearing, and between her voice and the commotion of bodies colliding, the guards stirred.
Miria swore as well, but only in her head, and she pushed the other women to the side and out of the guards’ line of sight.
“What happened?” Dinia asked softly.
“It must be a ward.” Miria’s mind raced. How long had it been there? Had Rosmilda erected it yesterday, after Adaline’s return, in which case she might have tired herself out? Or had it been there since Miria’s original escape from the manor?
“It felt like a stone wall,” Hani muttered, rubbing her forehead. “You did a good job training this woman, Nal.”
Nalki whined slightly. “I did warn you that she was clever.”
Sarel had stayed behind at the gate, and Miria watched her run a finger down the seemingly empty space where the ward was. Her face strained, and she shivered before she ceased touching it.
The guards had wandered in the opposite direction of where Miria and the others huddled, and she assumed Sarel had done something to distract them. They were meandering back to their posts as Sarel rejoined the group.
“The ward will keep out anyone with magic in their blood, if I’m correct,” she said.
“Well, that’s a problem.” Hani crossed her arms. “Not that we can’t take it down eventually.”
Miria gritted her teeth. She didn’t have until eventually. The wedding would start soon, and she was going to stop it.
She glanced up to where the wall rose high above her head and into the clear sky. “How high do you think the ward extends?”
“You mean to fly over it?” Sarel asked. “If she’s smart, she’ll have added to it around the top of the wall. I would have.”
Right, Miria would have, too. Yali had taught her how to create such a ward, but they took a lot of power to cast and maintain.
The benefit was that they could be quite large if they were created at the correct anchor points and left to hang in the air, unencumbered by obstacles.
In contrast, the wards around the cottage were simpler, even the ones Miria had strengthened of late.
They relied on the forest’s natural protections—the trees and their roots, the underbrush, even the wildlife.
Maintaining them cost Miria little magic.
“If I can’t go over it, I need to go through it somehow,” Miria said.
“We could break through the wall,” Hani suggested, and it was such an Adaline sort of suggestion—loud and violent—that Miria feared the trouble they would cause if the two of them ever met.
“I think that might give us away,” Dinia said dryly.
If only she could travel through the distance magically, like witches did when they used their portals.
But to do that required having set up a place on the other side to receive her, her spell already present.
Miria was only able to travel through Yali’s portals because her first time, Yali had taken her through.
Once through, she’d cast her own spell on the other end so she would be able to travel without Yali in the future.
Miria clenched her hands together in agitation, and the charm she wore around her wrist—the one she’d made like Adaline’s—peeked beneath her sleeve.
Wards were not where she excelled, but magic acted in patterns, and she turned to Sarel (who did appear to excel at them). “Could we confuse the ward? What if my magic brushes up against the ward from both sides?”
Sarel frowned. “If the ward is singularly directional, only meant to keep you out for example, then you appearing to be on both sides of it at once could make it falter. But the spell would need to be very similar, if not identical. Something cast before the ward was erected.”
Miria held up her wrist. “Adaline wears a similar charm. Mine carries her emotions, and hers carries mine.”
Sarel tilted her head, considering. “It might work, but it wouldn’t allow the rest of us through. And how will you get her to bring it? They must be preparing her for the wedding.”
“A bird.” The same way she used to write back and forth with Adaline. Befriending creatures of the forest was the magic where Miria excelled.
Half an hour later, plus some borrowed ink and stolen parchment from town, Miria tied her instructions to a friendly sparrow who was only too happy to help.
She raced back to the manor where the others had continued to work on alternate methods for breaking down Rosmilda’s ward.
“Anything?” she asked, slightly winded. The sparrow could fly much faster than a witch could run.
“Nothing from your beloved yet,” Nalki said. She cast a glance to where Sarel and Dinia were working on breaking the ward. “Nor any success here.”
“Yet,” Sarel said, without glancing over.