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

by Heather Hamilton-Senter

  Rolling her eyes, Chloe pushed the Seer’s hands away and hauled her to her feet. “C’mon, let’s get you dressed in something decent.” The girl smirked at me as she led Morgause away.

  I didn’t have time to worry about riddles; a glance outside showed me that the others were already on the dragon’s back. “Daley, we need to go.” He had picked the Grail up off the floor and I put my hand out for it. When he didn’t move, I knew with absolute certainty that he wasn’t coming.

  Electricity arced between him and my outstretched hand. Tingling with the sting of it, I let it travel down my arm and through my body, joining us together with power. When the charm form of the Wheel of Taranis sparked against his chest, I could feel it too. I could even sense his thoughts, and what I sensed filled me with dismay. The ghost-dragon had only been a twisted version of Melusine’s spirit. With the Grail, he could bring the girl he once loved back to her perfect, pre-death state. I could feel the torment of his longing for her.

  How does he bear it?

  But I could also feel that he knew what I was offering him. My ability to take power also gave me the ability to share his—to help carry the burden of it. I could feel what a burden it truly was. It was so much more than the ability to control thunder, storm, and lightning. His ancestor Thor/Einridi was called the Champion of the Gods, but the truth was closer to Taskmaster and Judge of the Gods. Dormant in Daley was the right to command those of Greylander blood and impose his will and judgement on them. His power was a dark mirror of the Earth King’s. Earth magic served its people, but Daley’s power had no pity or remorse. I realized that he fought its rise every single day.

  As we shared a communion deeper than mere love, Daley began to let go of his feelings for Melusine. They slipped off him like a tattered robe, colors faded and muddied.

  Then I ruined it.

  While I wanted Daley with every ounce of my human self—while my Greylander half made me his truest match—I couldn’t control my hunger for power. Without meaning to, I yanked some of it out of him and into myself. There was a moment of wild ecstasy as Daley’s storm flooded my body, then I was cold, so cold when I saw the look on his face.

  Clutching the Grail to his chest, Daley stared at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  He turned and marched over to Loki. The shade made a sweeping bow towards the door; Bel was far enough away that the security protocols had turned off. When Daley opened the door and walked through without looking back, Loki disappeared.

  Peter was yelling at me to come. I could feel the exhilaration of his joy at the chance to ride a dragon, but he wouldn’t leave without me. I didn’t know what to do.

  Do I chase the Grail’s fire or its water?

  There was no real choice. Chasing Daley after what I’d done was a useless exercise. Running back out onto the terrace, I chose fire.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  FLAME

  Riding on a dragon’s back was even more uncomfortable than I would have imagined, but not for the imagined reasons. Instead of being rough, the Red Dragon’s scales were too smooth to grip easily, and the creature’s body felt light and insubstantial; it was like riding on a blowup pool toy. More than once, Peter had to grab me before I slipped off, and Tynan behind him returned the favor. Only Arthur seemed able to find the proper balance between holding on for dear life and moving with the creature’s muscles, though he jumped off just as fast as we did once we landed.

  The Red Dragon had only needed to be told he was chasing the Grail’s fire to leap off Morgause’s building and take flight in a definite direction. One57 was only a few blocks from Central Park and that was our destination. The park was famous—endlessly depicted on film and TV—but I was amazed at the size of it as we flew over. On the ground in a densely forested section in the north end, I felt as lost as I was on the Path we chased Melusine down.

  The dragon had carefully picked its way through trees to land in a ravine, at the bottom of which was a stream and waterfall. With a huff of its breath, it cleared the snow from the stone path and rested comfortably.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Dewi says that the grailfire is near.” He said the dragon’s name with a lilt, making it sound like deh-wee. I hadn’t got any sense of the dragon having any name other than Red Dragon, but I had to admit that Arthur’s association with it was longer than mine.

  The forest was dark; there was no artificial lighting in this section of the park. People were likely continuing their New Year’s celebrations not too far away, but I couldn’t hear them. Luckily the dragon’s body was slightly translucent. The fire within it emitted a faint glow that illuminated the surrounding area.

  “What about Titania and Miko? Do you think they found him? They must have seen us coming. Half of New York probably did.”

  But Arthur was already shaking his head. “Dewi can only be seen by those with at least a fair portion of magic in their blood. On his back, we were as invisible as he was. Titania would have seen him though, and her mastery of the forest is exceeded only by Goodfellow. It worries me that they haven’t come to meet us. I told them not to engage with the fire demon.”

  Peter pointed up. “There’s still a few leaves on the trees and the ravine is deep. They could be at the top and not able to see us now that we’ve landed.” I could feel that he was still high from his ride on a dragon, but the feeling slipped away as worry for Miko replaced it.

  Tynan touched his father’s arm to get his attention. “We should split up. We can’t risk losing Bel. He has to pay for what he did to my mother.”

  Arthur clasped his son’s hand in agreement. “We will follow the demon. Dewi senses he is north of us along the river, but the path is too narrow and wet for the dragon. We’ll go on foot.” He nodded at me. “You two find the fairies. Meet us north of here as fast as you can.”

  “Yes, sir,” I muttered, but Arthur and Tynan were already striding away. From behind, they looked like mirror images of one another.

  Peter and I took the pathway that headed up, and by the time we reached the road at the top of the ravine, I was thinking of the dragon’s warm back with nostalgia. We could see the lights of the city beyond the park now.

  “Miko!” I called, but there was no answer.

  I felt a tug on our bond. “Spit it out, then. What is it?” Worry made me sharp.

  Shoving his fists in his pocket, Peter looked miserable. “I know you have this sense of me because we’re best friends.”

  “And because Viviane made sure we were thrown together so you’d become my bonded Protector,” I reminded him.

  “That too. Anyway, I know you can feel a lot of what I feel. Maybe it’s stronger for you because of what you are, but I’ve always known what you were feeling too.”

  I pushed away my irritation. “Yeah.”

  “The thing is, I can feel that ever since we got the Grail, something’s different.”

  I sighed. “I’ve been stealing magic like a magpie all my life. I was filled with it. Somehow I was able to weave it all into a spell to force the Grail’s fire out of me. Now I’m empty except for our bond.” The remnants of electricity on my skin called me a liar, but I didn’t mention Daley.

  “But you can still sense magic, right?”

  “I can, but I don’t want to.”

  His eyebrows disappeared into the fringe of his hair. “Why not?”

  “Because . . .” I took a deep breath. “Because the temptation keeps getting stronger. When I sense magic, a part of me wants to take it, no matter who I hurt. I’m afraid that eventually I won’t be able to stop myself.”

  Peter ruffled my hair and pulled me into a hug. Pressed against his chest, I could sense the magic that made him a Protector. I was usually blinded to it by the bright green of our bond, but I could feel the rich earth tones, the warm bronzes, and the grey steel mottled with dark rust. The first colors were his powers, but also his traits of dependability, humility, and straightforwardness
. The steel was the ruthlessness of a warrior and the rust was the berserker rage that sometimes came over him, though I didn’t know if it was a corruption particular to him, or something that was part of every Protector. I was momentarily reassured to realize his colors didn’t arouse in me a desire to take them.

  Maybe because I have access to them through our bond any time I want.

  Before some of what I was thinking leaked over into him, I pushed the thought away. “So you want me to find Miko by opening my senses up to her magic.”

  “I’m worried about her. I know I’m not like you, but I just have this feeling that something’s wrong. And I know we need to find Bel too, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Haven’t you noticed how weirdly intense Miko is about Titania?”

  I sighed. “Look, I know things are awful between you two right now, and I don’t blame you for being jealous . . .”

  “It’s not that!” He took a steadying breath and his swift anger receded. “I’m not blind. Miko’s Ex, Titania—they both understand things about her that I never can. But what I understand is that she’s not the same person she was before. It’s not just new wings and pale skin. Miko is someone completely different now.”

  I stared at him for a moment. “So why do you still love her?”

  “Because I do. I can’t help it.”

  Peter jumped when I put my hand flat against his chest. It was hidden deep, but a fine thread of ebony bound him to someone out there in the darkness. Perhaps it was just a byproduct of his ability to bond as a Protector—and I could have easily broken it now that I’d found it—but it was real.

  I took the sides of his jacket and gave them a tug. “OK then. Follow me.”

  The bond allowed me to track Miko without opening myself to her power, but the trail surprised me by heading away from the direction Bel had gone. Whatever had distracted the two fairies, it wasn’t him. As we jogged along the road to where my sense of Miko ended, we encountered more people coming home from parties or using the cover of the park for late night illicit encounters. When I turned around in frustration, one couple caught my eye. Half hidden in the darkness just off the road, they were pressed against a tree, writhing against one another.

  Embarrassed and a little shocked, I was just about to look away when one of the figures lifted its head. The light of the streetlamp illuminated the sharp edge of a white cheekbone, a gleam of teeth, and a swath of dark hair. I grabbed Peter’s arm, trying to pull him away before he could take in the scene, but it was too late.

  “Miko?” His voice was a whisper, but it filled the air like a shout. The fairy let go of her companion and stepped back from the tree in surprise.

  And Titania’s body slid to the ground.

  It was obvious she was dead. She was so drained of life that the wounds on her neck were almost white, and her skin was as papery and dry as a thousand year old mummy.

  I had no memory of reaching for it, but Excalibur was in my hand. The sword had been created to combat darkness and this was about as dark as it got. It pulled at me, urging me to strike, but Miko wasn’t looking at me or the threat I held in my hand. She was looking back and forth between Peter and Titania’s corpse as if she couldn’t believe she was seeing either of them.

  “I didn’t! I didn’t mean . . . I was just so hungry!” Her face went dreamy as if the thought reminded her of what had sated that hunger. “I’m the first of my kind. Human blood wouldn’t help. Titania figured that out. She let me feed. She was my friend . . .”

  “You murdered her!” Peter screamed. The berserker rage was building again.

  Miko shook her head wildly. “No! You don’t understand! It helped at first, but then it wasn’t enough. In humans, blood is everything; it’s the essence life. But in fairies, there’s more. There’s glamour. I had to have it. It was the only way to make the hunger go away. It was the only way to survive. When we came here, she kissed me, and she let me feed.” She stared at Titania as if she didn’t understand what the crumbling thing at her feet was. “And I couldn’t stop.”

  The Peter I knew would never hurt the girl he loved, no matter what she’d done, but the Protector beside me pulled a gun out from under his jacket and fired.

  With a sweep of her wings, the dark fairy launched herself into the air and the shot missed. As she looked down at him, there was nothing human and very little fairy left in her face, yet I could still sense her deep feeling of betrayal that Peter would try to kill her. Before he could shoot again, she flew away into the cover of the trees. I could see an ebony and rose cord between them; it frayed and broke, disintegrating into dust along with the body of the fairy queen. They mingled and were lifted by the wind and blown away.

  A shiver of light in my peripheral vision made me turn, but my breath caught in my chest when something emerged from the trees, grimy with dirt and dead leaves. It was wearing a cap at an almost jaunty angle, stiff and dark with dried blood. When the creature turned its head to look at me, its eyes were red.

  “No, Thomas,” I moaned, but I wasn’t sure what I was begging it not to do. I must have taken an involuntary step forward because Peter’s hand was on my arm, pulling me back.

  Circling where Titania had died, the redcap seemed dismayed not to find any remains, but then it straightened and grinned, showing sharp teeth with shreds of flesh still caught in them. “I told you once you reminded me of someone. A girl I knew. A girl I loved.” The calmness of his voice only made the madness in his eyes more terrible. “She was one of my kind, but something else too. Her mother would never speak of who the father was, even when a strange power began to grow in the girl. Fool that I am, I refused to see it. I called her a ghaoil, my darling, and made a promise to marry her. All the while she smiled at me and kissed me, she was testing the limits of her new power. I couldn’t deny it any longer when a young man of our acquaintance, another suitor, was found dead with her hovering over his body. Feeding it seemed. My people cast her out, but I heard years later that she’d entered Arthur’s court. She escaped the destruction of our people and whether she lives today I cannot say, but the last I heard of her, a man had written a poem of her exploits. La Belle Dame sans Merci he called her.” I couldn’t find the man I cared about in the glowing red of its eyes, but its smile was a kind of evil promise.

  Was the girl he loved a leanan sidhe? Could she still be alive?

  Does he think of me as a woman without mercy?

  I opened my mouth to ask, but denied the meal of a Great One, the last of the redcaps denied me any answers by slipping away into the darkness.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CINNABAR

  The pull of our bond dragged my Protector along behind me. Somewhere underneath that mantle, a young man was grieving the loss of his innocence, but I needed my warrior now.

  Because the Grail’s fire had begun to scream.

  Travelling on the road, we’d come close to Bel’s location, but were up too high. As we descended back down the ravine, a stone bridge with an arched tunnel underneath it loomed ahead. Arthur and Tynan were standing at the mouth of it, staring at a bright light inside. As I approached, Arthur turned. “Titania?”

  “I’m sorry. She’s dead.” When he swung back with a growl, I didn’t tell him that it wasn’t by Bel’s hand, even though Excalibur still pulled at me to go after Miko.

  Arthur and Tynan were blocking my view of the tunnel and I stepped around them to see what they were looking at. It was as unexpected as it was horrific. Bel was rolling on the ground trying to put out the fire consuming him. His mouth was open wide in the rictus of a scream, but there was no sound. Bile rose in my throat as I realized the man’s vocal cords had been burned away.

  Tynan’s expression was cold. “When we found him, he was struggling to keep control, but then something seemed to snap and the fire was all over him. He’s a Greylander. He should never have messed with earth magic.”

  Even though the difference between the two m
agics seemed tenuous to me, I knew he was essentially right. The fire belonged to the Grail alone.

  I gestured helplessly. “Isn’t there anything we can do to help him?”

  Arthur stared at me as if I’d gone mad. “And why should we help the fiend?”

  “No one should have to die like that,” I said before I remembered that Bel hadn’t extended Morgan any mercy. “I’m sorry.”

  Arthur’s sigh was dark and heavy. “Don’t be. You’re right. A king should dispense justice, not cruelty.” He held out his hand. “May I use Excalibur? Just for a moment. My hand is steadier on a sword than it is on a gun.”

  Tynan reached under his jacket. “I’ll do it, father.”

  “No, this is my duty. I am the Earth King.”

  Not able to think of a good excuse to refuse, I gave Arthur the sword and he smiled in satisfaction at holding it again. It seemed larger and gleamed brighter in his hand. I walked with him towards Bel, telling myself it wasn’t because I didn’t want him to get too far away from me with Excalibur.

  As we stared down at the burning man, he stared back at us. Bel was a fire demon. Though his power of speech was now gone, his skin was only burned and blackened in a few places. The grailfire may have rejected him, but it would take its time finishing him off. I had the horrible thought that he might go years before death released him from the pain.

  I told myself that Bel’s eyes were begging for us to end his suffering, but the truth was that I could sense his continued struggle to master the Grail’s power. He would never give up, no matter what it did to him. Given enough time, he might even succeed.

  Then I told myself that wasn’t the real reason I motioned for Arthur to proceed.

  It was only as he raised Excalibur that the answering twitch in my hand re-awakened a twinge of pain from the cut on my palm. As the sword descended, I realized my terrible mistake.