Sword of Elements Series Boxed Set 2: Bound In Blue, Caught In Crimson & To Make A Witch

by Heather Hamilton-Senter

  Cernunnos was becoming transparent and I could sense the power of the Wall as it drew him back to the grey lands of Avalon.

  And I recognized the familiar handiwork.

  I smiled. “You didn’t make the Wall Between Worlds to protect yourself from Arthur. Viviane made it to protect us from you. Don’t bother denying it. I’ve seen her walls up close. And now that she’s back, yours is as strong as ever.”

  I felt a rush of satisfaction as his eyes widened—he hadn’t known Viviane had returned—but my father would not be bested so easily. “Then you had better find Guinevere quickly. She’s the only one who can undo Viviane’s spell and bring down the Wall. Without my help, you can never hope to defeat Arthur.” He made a motion with his hand and a raging tidal wave of color obliterated the barrier in my mind. Screaming in pain, I could feel Peter catch me as I fell, but I was blinded by the color searing my retinas and the feeling of knives plunging into my skull.

  There was a terrible pounding noise. Cernunnos turned in surprise as Seolan broke Viviane’s door off its hinges and burst into the room. The hound looked at me with eyes that loved and forgave me and then leapt at Cernunnos.

  Cernunnos caught him by the throat mid-air and the hound made a pitiful, strangled sound. Making sure I was watching, he smiled as he crushed Seolan’s neck.

  “NO!” I screamed as he tossed the lifeless body at my feet.

  As quickly as it began, the pain was gone. Gasping for air, I searched through the new colors that filled me for that red I’d once seen that would sear the flesh off bones. Fire tipped with acid appeared in my hands, but Cernunnos made another small motion and the color was forced back inside me. For a moment I thought I might burst into flames myself, but then I contained it.

  Cernunnos grimaced as he delicately wiped hair and blood from his fingers onto my couch. “Don’t make a spectacle of yourself. I created you. Fulfill the purpose of that creation and I may let you live. Deny me and I will make your every moment a living agony until color eats through your brain and leaks out of your skull.” A shock went through me as I realized that my father saw power as color too. “Good. I can see you understand me. You’re going to be an obedient little girl and do what I say. You’re first task is to find Arthur’s abandoned queen.” He took something out of his pocket and threw it on top of Seolan’s broken body. “Use this to contact me when you’re successful.”

  “I don’t belong to you, Cernunnos,” I hissed.

  He ignored my bravado. “One last thing: I’ve decided I no longer wish to be known as Cernunnos. The Celts who gave me that name are all rotting in their graves. You may call me father, but tell the others I want to be known by a name as famous as Arthur’s.” He faded from view, but his voice rang through the room, rattling the cupboards and shaking the windows.

  “Tell them my name is Merlin!”

  Trembling, I pushed away from Peter and fell to my knees beside Seolan. Throwing my arms around him, I buried my face in his silky hair, but my tears had been burned away in flame.

  I sat up. “Get me Excalibur.” Peter retrieved the sword from behind the chest of drawers and handed it to me. I pulled just enough out of the scabbard to expose the sharp edge and make a long cut in my palm. Passing my hand over Seolan’s face, I closed his dark, trusting eyes and stained the white fur with my blood.

  “I will avenge you. I swear it.” The scars on my wrists and the burn on my chest flared hot and I knew Excalibur witnessed my blood vow to the creature whose life I had taken twice. I would be held to that vow by the earth magic.

  A small object rolled off Seloan’s broad chest and I picked it up.

  It was a pink apple from the orchards of Avalon.

  CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

  I stared at the little pink sphere sitting on my coffee table. Was I supposed to eat it when I found Guinevere? Would I fall asleep like Snow White and wake up in Avalon? It didn’t matter. I doubted Guinevere would be easy to find. I still had time to figure out how to free myself from Merlin’s clutches.

  I jumped at the knock on my door and when I opened it, I was surprised to find Miko standing outside. Taliesin’s Jag was parked on the road.

  We stared at each other for a moment. No one could see them when they were retracted, but the dark wings she’d schemed to get still hovered between us. “What are you doing here?” My encounter with my father had stripped me of politeness. “If you’re looking for Peter, he’s not here.”

  Peter was burying Seolan under the trees near the back paddock. I couldn’t bear to do it.

  She shifted uneasily and I saw she had her leather bag on one shoulder. “He called me earlier to tell me you re-made Excalibur somehow. That’s amazing.” She didn’t sound amazed. She didn’t sound like she cared at all.

  Confused, I opened the door wider. “Do you want to come in?”

  She shook her head. “It’s OK. I need to ask you something, but maybe now’s not the best time.”

  She was right—it wasn’t—but I forced myself to care a little. “What’s wrong?”

  Miko took the bag off her shoulder and shoved it into my hands as if she couldn’t bear to touch it anymore. I knew from the weight of it what was inside.

  The fairy’s eyes filled with tears and I saw that her irises were now large and black. “Binnorie doesn’t belong to me anymore. She rejected me.”

  I could guess how much that hurt her, but she wasn’t dumping the harp on me. I held out the bag. “Well I certainly don’t want it.”

  She backed away. “I know, but I don’t know who else to give her to. She won’t go to any of the guys. I don’t know who else to trust her with until she picks another keeper. You’ll keep her safe until she does. I owe her that much.”

  I thought of Seolan and how I’d failed to keep him safe. “Binnorie hates me.”

  “Binnorie fears you. She’ll obey you.”

  I shuddered. “I don’t want anything to do with her. I’m only keeping her until she chooses someone else.” I hated that I was now calling the harp ‘she’, but not as much as I hated being the guardian of a magical object made from the hair, bone, and spirit of a drowned girl.

  “Thank you,” Miko said as she turned and walked back to the Jag. I put the bag down on the porch and followed her. As she opened the door, she paused but didn’t look at me. “I know I was stupid. I know Peter will never forgive me. I’ve never belonged anywhere—not with my father’s people, not with my mother’s. Taliesin tolerates me out of pity.”

  “That’s not true . . .”

  “I knew if I had wings, things would be different. I would be different.” Her lips trembled and obsidian tears ran down her cheeks. “And now I am. Just not the way I hoped I’d be.”

  I didn’t want to, but I felt sorry for her. “Maybe they’re not the wings you wanted, but they’re still good, right? And you don’t give Peter enough credit. He’ll forgive you. Things could go back to the way they used to be.”

  Miko shook her head. “More things have changed than my wings. I’m something new, and new isn’t always good.” I had to step away quickly as she pulled the car door closed and sped down the laneway.

  CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

  The thing about growing up is you start to realize that nothing about life is simple and clear.

  Arthur was my enemy, but he loved the world in his own blind way. I needed Merlin to stop Arthur, but he was a devil I’d been forced into a bargain with. Taliesin had vowed to stop them both, but he loved the woman who had killed the son of his heart.

  I couldn’t trust any of them.

  There were no good sides. No wrong and right. No black and white.

  Only all the colors of the world in between.

  CHAPTER FORTY NINE

  It was only a few days before Christmas, and Peter and I were sitting on a plane heading for Las Vegas. He pretended to read while I stared out the window, thinking about the events of the past two months.

  The others had arranged for Robin Goo
dfellow to take them home to the ranch in Nevada and Peter and I had promised to join them once the semester was over. The goodbyes were awkward. Daley was distant. Miko was sad and listless. Peter hugged her but stepped back quickly when she tried to return it.

  Taliesin was still in mourning for Rowan and Morgan. When I presented Excalibur to him in its renewed glory, the bard turned away, overcome. Once he collected himself and began to ask questions, I was purposefully vague about how I’d quickened the sword and also how I’d discovered my birth mother was Guinevere. He was deeply shocked at that revelation. When he assumed Viviane told me, I didn’t correct him. I didn’t mention my visit from Merlin either, though I informed him of my father’s name change. I could tell Taliesin’s sharp eyes had noted the faint scars on my wrists, but if he guessed what had happened, he didn’t say. It was a good thing he couldn’t see Excalibur’s outline branded into the skin between my breasts. He did let me know that the scabbard could make itself and the sword invisible if I commanded it to.

  I didn’t want to talk about Seolan and was glad when no one asked.

  When Tynan pulled me aside and asked if he could speak with me, the others wandered away to give us some privacy. “So, about you and Daley . . .” I tensed and Tynan smiled sadly. “I just wanted to clear the air. I think you know how much I care about you. I realize we’re half cousins through Cernunnos, I mean Merlin, but that doesn’t mean the same thing to Greylanders as it does to humans. And though I don’t really understand it, Dad told me that you saved my life. I wish I could repay you somehow. I wish . . .” He didn’t finish saying what he wished. “But I know you have feelings for Daley.”

  There was no point denying it. “Yes.”

  He bowed his head and his dark hair covered his face. “He still loves Melusine, you know.”

  There was no point denying that either. “Yes,” I said again.

  Tynan stiffened and looked up, eyes blazing. “I get it, but it’s a mistake, Rhiannon. And what about the redcap? What’s your relationship with him?”

  I was caught off guard. “Nothing. We’re friends. That’s it,” I stammered.

  “The redcap is dangerous and more powerful than he knows.” Tynan’s voice was darker and more mature. A shiver ran through me. It was Mordred’s voice—the voice of a boy who at twelve, in that time period, was a man.

  The voice of a man who had tried to kill his own father.

  “I felt it, you know.” He clutched his chest. “You did something and I felt my own heart stop.”

  Tynan was illuminated by the white of my own horror. I hadn’t stopped to think that I was risking his life as well as my own when I cut my wrists. For the first time, the true enormity of what I’d taken on when I saved his life threatened to crush me.

  He hunched his shoulders and seemed to deflate. “Anyway, you should be careful around both of them. I don’t want to see you get hurt.” His voice was hesitant and soft, the way it normally was.

  “I’ll be careful,” I promised, but I didn’t mean about Tynan and Redcap. I made a silent vow that I would be more careful about the life I held in the palm of my hand.

  Tynan smiled shyly and the echo of Mordred was completely gone. “C’mon, you’ve got to see this. Goodfellow must feel really bad about everything because he’s gone all out.”

  When I followed him through the patio doors, I wondered if I’d finally snapped. A massive wooden ship rested on the back lawn.

  All it needs is the animals filing in it two by two.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said under my breath but Tynan heard me and chuckled. The sound was so normal that my heart lifted in hope. Maybe his darker half would eventually disappear.

  Goodfellow emerged from a door onto the deck, his red hair blowing in the wind. “I told you, Miss Lynne,” he called down to me, “I can make a Path look like anything I want.” His laughter echoed across the sky and I couldn’t help smiling back. I guessed that Taliesin had forgiven him for his deception and there was something about him that made me want to as well. It would be easier to stay mad at a forest than it would be to stay mad at the Green Man.

  He gestured and fabric on the deck that I’d thought was a sail now filled with air and became a giant hot air balloon. When Peter joined me, I could feel my best friend’s delight at the steampunk marvel in front of us.

  Geek, I thought affectionately. When he laughed and stuck his tongue out at me, I knew he’d somehow heard me through our bond.

  His joy faded as Miko brushed past him and then turned and gave him one last sad look. Despite the closeness I’d developed with the fairy, I hated her for dimming Peter’s light.

  The strange individuals who had entered our lives walked up the plank and into the hatch on the side of the airship. Daley was the last. He hesitated at my side as if he wanted to say something, but then walked away without a word. It amazed me that he couldn’t feel the magenta bond that stretched between us and threatened to pull my heart out of my chest. He stopped again at the top of the plank, silhouetted against the opening into the airship, and I remembered the first day I met him. I thought of how I’d compared the two brothers as they stood side by side and found something missing in Tynan. I thought of Morgan and what she’d said about wishing she’d met and loved Taliesin before Arthur. Maybe I would have loved Tynan if Daley hadn’t been there to outshine him. I thought of how that might have changed everything.

  Daley looked back at me before he disappeared, and even at that distance, I could see the flash of lightning in his eyes.

  I abandoned any regret. I’d chosen the storm. I wouldn’t complain about the weather.

  The hatch closed and the airship vanished.

  Peter and I returned to our lives. He threw himself into sports, but I knew he thought about Miko all the time. He stopped going to church and that worried me almost as much as I knew it worried his parents. Sometimes I felt flashes of rage through our bond that frightened me.

  We’re all changing so much.

  Without Viviane’s hiding spell, I experienced normal school life fully. It wasn’t all pleasant. I tried to repair my grades, but it was a hopeless cause. I even went on a couple of dates that left me longing for eyes pierced with lightning and the touch of sparks on my skin.

  On the last day of November, Lacey returned to school and reclaimed her title as Queen of the Bumblebees. A bad case of mono was the explanation for her strange behavior and she was treated with all the sympathy due a tragic heroine. Given that he had used the same illness as an excuse, Peter got the blame for getting her sick. The Bumblebees gave him angry looks he was completely oblivious to. Lacey didn’t acknowledge him or me as she walked into Mr. Porter’s class on her first day back.

  As I sat behind her and watched her pop back up the social ladder, I seethed with anger. She’d betrayed us so Cailleach could deliver a dragon to Merlin. I didn’t know if Cailleach had forced her or if she’d gone along willingly and I didn’t want to know. I didn’t trust myself to not do something stupid if I didn’t like the answer. Using my senses to search for any traces of power, I found her colorless.

  But one swirling tattoo remained on her wrist.

  It made what I had to do that much harder. Binnorie had been whispering to me for days until I wanted to smash the thing to bits. Now the harp lay quiet in the leather bag at my feet. When the bell rang, I picked it up and rushed after Lacey as she was leaving. I grabbed her by the arm. Hard.

  I might have also used a little magic to make sure she really felt it.

  As I guided—some might say forced—Lacey down the hall, through the stage door and onto the stage, I could feel her shaking. I released her and she stumbled away from me. Smiling, I channeled enough of the red of my anger into the air to surround the stage with a ring of flame.

  When I gestured and Excalibur appeared in my hand, the would-be witch gasped and fell to her knees. I made sure she got a good look at it before I put it back in the scabbard belted at my waist. I g
estured again and it disappeared. I just had to think of it disappearing for the thing to obey, but I was putting on a good show. We were on the stage after all.

  “What do you want?” I could see Lacey’s hands trembling, but her voice was calm and I had to admire her acting skills.

  “What I want is for you to know that despite everything you did, Melusine is contained, the Lady of the Lake has returned, and Excalibur is mine.” At least I hoped Melusine was still contained in her ghostly form.

  Lacey got to her feet and straightened her shoulders. “I know. I also know who your birth mother is. Between her and Cernunnos, it’s no surprise you were able to claim Excalibur.”

  I glanced at the tattoo on her wrist. I might not be able to sense any power in her, but the mark was proof that Lacey still had a few tricks up her sleeve. I remembered the fith-fath Rowan had made for her and wondered if she’d taken it from him after all and was using it now.

  “I was bound to the crone,” she said defiantly. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  I didn’t believe her, but it didn’t matter. I slid the bag across the stage and she jumped back from it as if it might be filled with snakes.

  “Pick it up.” She approached it cautiously and obeyed. “Look inside.”

  Lacey opened the bag and gasped in shock. When she looked at me, her eyes were round and full of tears. “Why?”

  I shrugged. “How should I know? She’s claimed you and now you’re her keeper. Binnorie’s crazy, so that probably explains it.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Don’t thank me yet. I have three conditions.”

  “Anything.”

  “First, if the harp ever wants to go back to Miko, you won’t stop it.” Lacey hesitated and then nodded. “Second, if Taliesin asks you to find Potentials for him, you will.” She nodded again, quicker this time. “And third, I don’t want to see you in this school until after the semester ends.” She started to protest but I stopped her. “I mean it, Lacey. I don’t care if you call it a relapse, or exchange school, or a death in the family. Over the holidays, Peter and I are joining the others in Las Vegas, but until then, if I even think I can sense you anywhere near us, I’ll take Binnorie and grind her to dust. Are we clear?”