Lover's Knot

by Karen Chance

  Radu shrugged. "What happens to one, happens to both. It's why the spell was never used—by our side, at least."

  I frowned, and munched salmon. "Weren't they planning to use it to put down some rebellion or other?"

  He nodded. "A group of rogue mages came up with the idea five hundred years ago, distorting an old torture spell created sometime in the Middle Ages. They used it in battle with the consulate forces with great effect—and the consul fully intended to do the same. But Hieronimo's mages took it off the witches, and refused to recreate it. And since the only men who knew it were dead by then . . ." he shrugged.

  I frowned harder. Because I knew the consul. "And she didn’t . . . press the issue?"

  "Not after they explained that you can’t divorce the ability to share magic from the requirement to share fates. If a vampire is linked to a mage—or another, higher level vamp in our case, and one of them dies . . . ."

  "They both do." I felt my lips suddenly go numb.

  In all the chaos, I hadn’t stopped to think about what would happen to Louis-Cesare if even one of those babies was killed. Not that I saw an alternative to what we'd done: we'd been outnumbered and outgunned by something like five hundred to one. And nobody's that good.

  But still . . . .

  I swallowed and ran my hand through the thick, soft hair some more.

  I was really glad I hadn’t thought about it.

  "Yes, they both do," Radu said. "Or however many you have in a grouping, because as you saw, it is possible to link multiple people into the spell. But then you greatly increase the chances that the entire group will die. The visions you saw were of a shipment of witches going to the rebellion, which had stopped in Venice for provisioning before heading to the war. They were needed because the previous ones had died when their vampire counterparts did."

  "But I thought the consul was losing—"

  "She was, for a time. But losing doesn’t mean you inflict no casualties on the other side, and every time one of the linked vampires went down, they lost a witch. So they constantly needed new ones, and the continued raids allowed some of their people to track them to Venice."

  "Where they got help from Hieronimo's people, and Mircea."

  Radu nodded. "He didn’t understand the risk he was taking at the time. If even one of the witches he had linked himself to had died, so would he. Fortunately, the rebels had chosen them well, and the women were all fairly . . . capable . . . from what he tells me."

  I flashed on a moonlit sea, angry clouds above, and snapping spell fire below. And a bunch of dark mages who had looked like they wished they'd chosen differently. I grinned. You go, girls.

  "But it still feels like the spell could be used in battle," I said, because it was a hell of a thing, seeing vampires and witches swap power.

  "It can be, as Jonathan just demonstrated. But at a heavy price."

  Jonathan, I thought, and saw my hand clench in Louis-Cesare's hair before I ordered it to let go. I’d been looking for the slimy son of a bitch when I ran into Jacqueline. And by the time I handed her her ass, he had disappeared. Once again.

  But I didn’t think we'd heard the last of him.

  He definitely hadn’t heard the last of me.

  "The consul has Kit looking for places the other side could find witches," Radu said. "The Silver Circle protects much of the magical community, of course. But some of the far-flung covens could be a problem."

  "That's what happened last time," I said, remembering. "The rebels' dark mage friends could have volunteered themselves for the spell, but they weren't going to put their lives in the hands of a bunch of vamps. So they kidnapped witches they didn’t care about instead."

  Radu nodded. "Typical. Of course, all this was before my time, so I only know what Mircea told me this morning, when we spoke. You probably know more about it than I do. Dorina's mental gifts are . . . impressive."

  "He did it all for her," I said, thinking back.

  "For you," Radu corrected, a hand on my knee. "He did it for both of you."

  He patted me gently, and then got up to go watch the movie with Elise. "Oh, yes," he said, after a moment. "There's nothing quite like a stiletto heel, is there?"

  "Dory said not to wear them in combat."

  Radu sighed. "My dear. When it comes to fashion don’t listen to anything Dory says."

  I smiled, and drifted off.

  This time, I didn't dream.

  The End

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  Karen Chance

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