Wedding Bells and Midnight Spells

by Sarina Dorie

I pointed to the railing. “He jumped.”

  “Nah. He wouldn’t do that. You must be mistaken.” Her smile was guarded, suspicious.

  “I saw him with my own eyes. He jumped overboard.” I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand.

  “Did he?” Her eyes turned cold and merciless. “Or did you push him?”

  I was so startled by the accusation I stared openmouthed, unable to speak.

  Her face flushed red, and she shouted in my face. “Answer me. Did you push him?”

  “No. Why would I do that?”

  “We all heard what you said in there. He ruined your wedding to some monster you’ve taken a fancy to. Derrick—Commander Winslow—he told us all about that fiend.” She looked me up and down with disdain. “He didn’t tell us you deserved that scum. But maybe he didn’t know you were the same kind of cold, heartless witch as your mother.”

  “I did not kill Derrick!”

  Another crew member came up beside the officer, a man without a coat. His loose shirt billowed in the breeze. “Where’s Commander Winslow?”

  She rounded on him, jabbing a finger in my direction. “Take her to the brig for questioning.”

  He leapt back as though I were contagious. “I’m not touching her. I’d sooner sit in the brig myself than get drained by this one.”

  “I’m not going to drain anyone,” I said.

  The woman grabbed me roughly by the arm. “I’m not afraid of her.”

  Pain made my affinity want to react. My grief and heartache, combined with the way she manhandled me, jolted the Red affinity awake inside me. It yearned to protect me. It yearned to hurt someone else.

  She should have been afraid.

  I stuffed it back down inside me. I wasn’t going to let pain magic corrupt me. I stumbled along with her, using the anesthesia spell to numb where she touched. She escorted me down the stairs, the force of her shoves into the bowels of the ship making me trip on the stairs. I banged up my knees and rolled down the last two steps. Prisoners sat in the other cells.

  One was a man with a long beak for a nose. Others resembled harpies, their bodies like birds but with human heads. The six of them stared at me with hungry eyes. I suspected the only thing that kept them from breaking out was the iron collars and manacles. Even with the iron bars between us, I didn’t feel safe. I scooted to the far side of my cell.

  My heart weighed me down as I leaned against the far wall, thinking about the senselessness of Derrick’s death. I worried about what had happened to Thatch and my friends at my wedding. Yesterday seemed so far away.

  The officer locked me in the brig, a cell so small I wasn’t sure most grown men would have been able to lie down it in. The floor was wet and grimy. It smelled of urine and dank water. I tried to use my sleeve to blot out some of the stench. By the time the captain came down, I was almost used to the funk.

  He stomped across the wooden boards, his boots splashing through a puddle. Two men flanked him, watching me with more wariness than they did the prisoners from the Raven Court.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked. “Where’s Commander Winslow?”

  “Derrick—” My eyes burned, and my breath caught in my throat. “He jumped overboard.”

  “The lieutenant commander seems to think you had reason to push him.” He cocked a silver eyebrow upward. “What’s the real story?”

  “He jumped overboard to sacrifice himself for me.” I thought back to Baba Nata’s fortune. Had she actually meant Derrick would sacrifice himself for me? Even without cryptic meanings or mysterious clues like Galswintha the Wise had used with the school prophecy, Baba Nata’s divination wasn’t any clearer.

  The captain didn’t look impressed with my explanation. He glanced over his shoulder at his men. “Wait at the stairs.”

  The two men’s footsteps trampled away, still close enough to see if those bird-brained captives from the Raven Court did anything. They also remained within earshot.

  “The truth now, if you please, Miss Lawrence. From the beginning.”

  I whispered as much of our conversation as was appropriate. I left out all the reasons he despised Thatch and found him an unsuitable match, in part because it was too personal, and in part because it would give away too much of Thatch’s affinity and my own.

  The captain listened, careful to stand back from the bars as he did so. I suspected more because of the effect iron might have on him than because he thought I was a murderer. When I came to the part about how hard it was for Derrick and me to stay away from each other and why he’d jumped overboard, he groaned.

  “Good grief.” He shook his head. “That is such a Derrick Winslow thing to do.”

  Relief flooded through me. “Then you believe me?”

  “How can I not? I knew the lad. Had such a good heart, that one did.”

  “Will you let me out, then?” I asked.

  He hesitated. “It might be safer to keep you here away from the crew until we get you back to your school.”

  I glanced at the harpies and half-raven creatures in the cells nearby. “Why?”

  “They’re just as likely to jump to the same conclusion as Anderson did. She had a bit of a soft spot for Derrick. Like all of us.” He sighed, weariness making his eyes look haggard. He appeared older than he had at dinner. “By this point, no one is likely to believe you didn’t push him.”

  I nodded toward the Raven Court’s emissaries, seated in their cells. “I don’t want to stay here with them.” Plus, it smelled bad down here.

  “Can’t blame you on that account.” He grunted. “I could put you up in my room again, but I would just as soon get a good night’s rest after being denied my own bed last night.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know I was robbing you of your bed.” I should have apologized earlier—over dinner. Instead I’d been too focused on Derrick and angry with his good intentions.

  “Tell you what, I’ll put you in Winslow’s bed,” the captain said. “He won’t be using it.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a jab, but it stung just as sharply.

  Captain Ermington wagged a finger at me. “You need to promise me not to leave his cabin until tomorrow when we return to your school. I don’t want my crew fighting each other or attacking you, with magic or otherwise. The less you’re seen, the better.”

  I nodded.

  He escorted me there with his two men. He gave them strict orders not to tell anyone where I was. The captain would bring me breakfast himself.

  Captain Ermington coughed. “And Miss Lawrence, lock the door.”

  I did as he instructed.

  Derrick’s room wasn’t as luxurious as the captain’s, but there was a familiarity to the room’s style that made it comforting. Even if the captain hadn’t told me it was Derrick’s, I would have instantly known from the art he’d painted across the walls. He’d used one-point perspective to create an illusion that the walls receded back, and the space was larger than it appeared. He’d illustrated his own wallpaper with a repeating pattern of robots, spaceships, and Cthulhu. The progression of the pattern slowly shifted, like the cells of an animation, each one just different enough to see the change was intentional.

  Derrick had so masterfully rendered the portraits on the wall that I momentarily believed the frames were real and not painted. In one he’d painted me, pink-haired and doe-eyed. I wore a witch hat and striped sleeves. For someone who had been trying hard to forget me, it was no wonder he hadn’t succeeded.

  Clouds shifted past the porthole. That was real.

  The cabin wasn’t much bigger than my walk-in closet for art supplies, but the orthogonal lines receding back from the corners to create the false perspective fooled me. Derrick managed to fit a bed, a dresser, a trunk, and art supplies within. Off to the side was the tiniest bathroom I’d ever used. There was no shower. The space was so cramped, I could have washed my hands while seated on the toilet.


  I lay on his bed after cleaning as much of the funk of the brig off myself as I could. The bed was long and narrow just like him. I inhaled his scent from his pillow. That started up the waterworks again.

  When I was done with that, I used one of his candles to study his sketchbook. Most of the sketches were of me, especially at the front of his book.

  His drawings were like a diary of his daily life. He’d drawn people working on the airship. In a few, he’d rendered them with more detail using his Copic markers. There was a funny caricature of the captain as he yelled at a group of men who stood at attention. He’d made a few sketches of the female lieutenant commander, making her look more like a fifties pinup girl in a sailor costume than the stern officer who had escorted me to the brig. Even so, I could see it was her.

  She had come up several times in his book, usually looking more cute than sexy. I wondered if he had liked her. If he had loved her? The captain had said she’d had a soft spot for him. Perhaps the feeling was mutual.

  Sporadically dispersed through the pages were what I could only describe as nightmares. Jagged lines radiated from ravens birthed from his wounds. Screaming self-portraits and pages of haunted eyes stared out at me. He’d drawn clockwork hearts inside the abdomen of raven bodies. He’d drawn her.

  The Raven Queen.

  She sat atop a throne made of bones, her smile sweet and kind, but in her hand dripped a human heart. At first, I thought he’d drawn the background with a mesh of cross-hatched lines. Upon closer inspection I saw it was the wings of ravens, so many birds piled on top of each other there was no background left.

  He had survived the Raven Queen and her curse, but she still haunted him.

  “Oh, Derrick,” I said. “I would do anything to have you back. Even not touch you and never see you again.”

  Why had I tried to push him into seeing me again? I had known we couldn’t be friends. In my heart I had known friendship would prolong the hurt and make my heart unable to heal. Just because I had been willing to ache for him, didn’t mean he needed to be tortured for me.

  I buried my face in his pillow again, inhaling his scent of paint and wind magic. I cried myself to sleep in the palace of could-haves and unrequited wishes.

  I dreamed of his face, of his drawings coming alive, and of the airship. These were sad but nice dreams. I could have left it alone, but instead I found the door to exit my dream and escaped my fantasies, wanting to find reality.

  Beyond my dream lay a desolate landscape dotted with lights. I flew from my door and out across a horizon of rocks and dust. Sparkles caught my eye as I swept over the terrain. One twinkle in the nearest constellation felt silver and weary, the pattern of flickers reminding me of the captain’s laugh. Another reminded me of the lieutenant commander, heavy with sorrow.

  I examined the vast sea of glittering souls asleep and dreaming. From the past, I had always recognized Derrick’s soul among these constellations of sleeping Witchkin. I wanted one of them to be blue.

  None of them were.

  I slipped back into my dream, trying to return to the happy fantasy of him being young and juggling, but my mood kept creeping in. The moon shed tears, and around every bush I found a unicorn. Using my lucid-dreaming techniques, I commanded the reality of my dreams. I made the unicorns snore, to prove they were just asleep.

  I was so exhausted, even in my dream I was tired. Derrick stroked my cheek. He kissed my face and told me he loved me, just like he once had.

  He smelled like paint and Old Spice and Cheetos. I tasted his wind magic dancing in the air around me. It was so real. But I also had my face buried his pillows. Even if I hadn’t been dreaming, I would have smelled him.

  He turned my face away from the pillows.

  His lips were so warm and perfect. The hairs on his beard tickled my face, making it feel more real. I wanted it to be real.

  “I changed my mind,” he said. “I decided to fly instead of fall.”

  Even in my sleep I could feel the tears flowing down my cheeks. My breath hitched in my chest.

  “I wish you were here with me,” I said.

  “I’ll always be with you. Here.” He touched my heart. “That’s where I’ll be.”

  That made it so much worse.

  “And here.” He kissed my temple.

  “No.” I shook my head.

  He kissed my hand. “And here.”

  He took my hand in his and placed it on his chest. The rhythm within ticked like a clock more than it beat like a heart, a calm cla-clunk, cla-clunk, cla-clunk.

  He looked the way I’d seen him last with his short hair and beard. Only he didn’t wear his insulated gloves. They lay on the bed beside me. It was such a strange detail for a dream. Perhaps it was my subconscious reminding me we shouldn’t indulge in temptations. Or perhaps it was telling me we should.

  I didn’t want to look at his gloves. They reminded me too much of reality. I wanted to indulge in the fantasy of my dreams. I wished them away as I often did, now that I knew how to do so with Thatch’s lucid-dreaming techniques in my arsenal of skills. The gloves resisted my mind pushing at them. The fabric of this dream wasn’t right.

  I swatted them onto the floor.

  He laughed. “I didn’t like them much anyway either. They were itchy. They were hand condoms.”

  I smiled at that. He kissed me again, this time pulling me into his arms. His touch was so healing. It was everything I needed.

  He covered my face in kisses. “Before, in the crypt under the school, I said I couldn’t think of another way to save you other than killing you. I lied.” He held me so close I felt his ticking heart against my chest. “I should have said it. I should have offered it to you. Instead, I didn’t give you a choice. I can only hope you’ll forgive me for hurting you.”

  I wasn’t sure if he meant his death or mine. I didn’t want to think about either.

  I ran my fingers through his beard, the sensation a novelty. “You’re going to say we could see each other in our dreams?” Only, this felt less and less like a dream. At first, I had wanted it to be real. Now a tremor of fear passed through me that it was.

  He unzipped the back of my dress partway. His hand was feverish on my flesh. “No, the solution would be for you to go to the Raven Queen and for you to bargain to keep your soul so you could be in her service but remain free. You would negotiate so that I would be forever at your side. You would be mine, and I would be yours . . . with her blessing.”

  “You’re talking about joining her?” I asked incredulously. This was a little too unbelievable, even for a dream. “You want me to join the dark side?”

  “The dark side has cookies. And other benefits.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “The dark side has me.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Palace of Should Haves

  Derrick kissed me with the passion of a man crawling through the desert for that mirage on the horizon. I was what he needed to satiate his thirst.

  I was so . . . confused. He was alive. I wanted to feel relieved, but his turn to the dark side worried me. I wanted to ask him how this was possible, but my lips were too busy to form questions. I tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let me.

  I knew I wasn’t dreaming any longer. In no fantasy that I would have conjured up, would Derrick be fine with wanting to be a stormtrooper or a death eater. Even in nightmares, he wasn’t evil and manipulative.

  My will to resist was weakening. If only he had started kissing me when I’d been awake, I would have been alert enough to stop him. But he knew enough about my affinity to use it against me.

  In some moment between when he’d first arrived at the wedding on Womby’s property and now, Derrick’s curse had been reactivated. It might have been when he’d touched me to suffocate me with chloroform. Or it could have been when he’d touched me while he’d worn his gloves. Maybe it had been when my fingers had brushed across the naked flesh of his chest as he’d fallen
.

  It didn’t matter. He was evil. It had already happened.

  His lips brushed against my neck. The night air was cold against my back except where the warmth of his hands touched me. I considered pulling away, trying to reason with him, or flat-out telling him no, but if I did, I didn’t know how he would react. He was bigger, stronger, and more skilled at magic. The kind of person who wanted to join the Raven Queen as a solution would not take no for an answer.

  As he kissed me, I felt more of my concentration slipping away. I tried to ignore the way he made my affinity dance.

  Another option crossed my mind. I could kill him with lightning.

  I was capable of killing him, though he was just as capable of killing me. If I did it, I would have to be quick. I would have to take him down without him suspecting what I was doing. That, I doubted I was capable of.

  He was now a Red affinity like me. From the way he seemed to enjoy caressing me and holding me close, I suspected his affinity was fueled by pleasure like mine. Though Felix Thatch took satisfaction in intimacy, even if it was his weakness.

  The thought of Thatch’s melancholy eyes brought with it enough guilt to cover me like a shroud. I could already imagine the hurt painted across Thatch’s face when he learned what I’d done.

  That guilt was short-lived. Derrick plunged his tongue inside my mouth, stealing my attention. Stealing my willpower. Everywhere he touched me tingled with magic. The Red affinity swelled inside him, too powerful to ignore. He added his fuel to my own, making me complacent in his embrace.

  The longer he smoothed his hands up and down my arms, tugging away my dress, the less reason I had. A small part of my mind continued to fight the magic overwhelming my senses, not wanting to relive the past. He would be like Julian, only successful. If I refused him, he might drain me and kill me again.

  I didn’t want this moment to turn ugly. I didn’t want pain or pain magic. All I could focus on was the way he threaded his fingers through my hair. His hand pressed against the small of my back, rocking me against his erection. My brain was in a fog. I smelled classical music played on reed instruments. Magic that tasted of sunsets caressed me.