No sound echoed through the park. The voice was in my mind, but by the way Arthur flinched, I knew he could hear it too.
While two heirs walked the earth, I could not intervene. I am only one aspect of the earth magic. It was not in me to choose.
“I am the Earth King and I will choose my own heir!” Arthur thundered. “She killed my son!”
The Red Dragon’s head darted forward until he and Arthur were almost nose to nose, Steam curled from the creature’s nostrils, but the king didn’t move. The gun was still aimed at my heart.
The girl’s right comes through her mother. Guinevere’s line is older and deeper than yours, Earth King.
Arthur turned his head to stare at me as he comprehended the dragon’s meaning. He’d never realized the true value of the girl he’d married, thinking her only a child, a necessary evil of a political alliance. If only he’d loved her and they’d had a baby together, none of the terrible things that followed would ever have happened. Tynan would never have died because he would never have been born. Arthur would never have been cast into centuries of sleep. The earth would have continued to anoint kings or queens in a long line of succession up till the present.
How different the world might be now.
But the world had been fractured and the connection to the earth magic had been lost.
Arthur looked back at the dragon as he lowered the gun. “So you would prevent me from avenging my son’s death?”
The dragon lifted its head proudly.
I am not a mere construct of metal meant to capture and contain the earth’s power. Excalibur may command all the other talismans, but I am an element personified. I am the fire of the earth! I care nothing for the death of one child. It is the earth I serve and all the many beings that live and die on it as they should. Your son was a hollow vessel ever willing to be filled by the purposes of others. It was not his fault. He was formed from incomplete materials.
The Red Dragon swung its massive head around to look at me with eyes swirling with magma.
Child of Blood, the earth is out of balance! Where you fall, it falls with you. Mend what was broken and make all that was divided into one.
Arthur holstered his gun, but his bark of laughter was grim. “Because the earth demands it, I will spare your life, girl. Dewi has named you as my heir, but mark my words well, the moment you betray the earth by releasing its enemy, the magic will reject you. You’ll no longer be my heir and my hand against you won’t be stayed. The choice is yours.” Instead of being dimmed by sorrow, his amethyst majesty blazed. Dismissing me, Arthur returned to his son. He pulled Tynan into his arms and buried his face in Tynan’s dark hair.
If Redcap was lurking somewhere in the darkness, ready to capture what was left of the boy for eternity, I couldn’t see him.
Ride, little Earth Queen.
The Red Dragon leaned down for me to mount but I hesitated and looked back. “I would have followed you, Arthur. I would have followed you if things had been different. I would have been honored to, but neither of you gave me a choice.”
The only answer was Tynan’s dead eyes staring at me accusingly.
Still gripping Excalibur, I climbed onto the Red Dragon’s back. We were in the air when Arthur finally responded.
“Beware the day we meet again, daughter of Merlin.”
EPILOGUE
ASH
I wasn’t surprised when I heard a sound behind me like laundry flapping on a clothesline. Closing my eyes, I let it take me back to a warm Saturday morning, only half-remembered from when I was a child. Peter’s mom was hanging sheets on the line behind her house and Viviane was planting geraniums in the garden. I was safe and happy.
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” Miko had landed close. Her voice was soft, but there was a hint of defiance in it.
With a sigh of regret, I released the memory of warmth and sunshine and returned to the cold winter of the present. I glanced at Chloe, but she either didn’t realize what Miko was now or wasn’t overly concerned about it. Probably the latter. She was right to be calm; neither of us was Miko’s prey.
“I know you didn’t,” I answered finally without turning. I continued to stare at the place Morgause’s message had brought us to.
The Red Dragon had landed on a street just outside Central Park. After I’d clambered off, it flew away without another word. As I walked back to the Waldorf Astoria, the lights came on; New York City’s New Year’s Day blackout had ended, probably because Arthur had taken his son’s body away with him through a Path. Chloe was waiting for me in the lobby. After supplying me with fresh clothing from the hotel’s boutique, the concierge had led us down to Track 61 where the Path Guide with the southern accent was waiting for us.
Given that Chloe couldn’t tell him where we were going without divulging the message, we then spent a frustrating half-day crisscrossing the country while the Guide tried to guess through a process of deduction. Chloe had finally nodded yes when he put us on a Path that exited at Montpelier, Vermont. Once there, we were apparently close enough for her to finally divulge the message:
Green Mount Cemetery. John E. Hubbard.
At the rental car office in town, the attendant had known the cemetery well. He’d even known where John Hubbard was buried and had proceeded to direct us to several other graves of interest to tourists. I’d started to wonder if Morgause’s message was some sort of sick joke.
As I stared at the impressive monument, I understood. Three steps led to a stone slab with John E. Hubbard carved in raised letters at the bottom. At the other end sat a magnificent bronze statue of a young man swathed in billowing cloth. His head was thrown back and to the side as if sleeping, or reposed in death. Curved walls flanking the statue had the lines of a poem cut into them:
THOU GO NOT LIKE THE
QUARRY SLAVE AT NIGHT
SCOURGED TO HIS DUNGEON
BUT SUSTAINED AND SOOTHED
BY AN UNFALTERING TRUST
APPROACH THY GRAVE
LIKE ONE WHO WRAPS
THE DRAPERY OF HIS COUCH
ABOUT HIM AND LIES DOWN
TO PLEASANT DREAM.
Miko drifted to my side on translucent wings, a dark mist seen out of the corner of the eye. I pointed at the tomb. “Can you tell me what it really says?” I could sense the sparkling colors of a glamour spell, but didn’t dare touch them and risk taking any more magic into myself.
Reaching out with her black-tipped hands towards the tomb, the dark fairy pulled them back in a graceful motion, as if slipping off a veil. The words in the stone wavered and rearranged. Now they simply said:
HERE LIES MY GWEN. SHE DIED TOO SOON.
MAY 1ST, 1902.
I’d found my mother.
According to the historically knowledgeable rental guy, Hubbard was a controversial businessman who’d died a bachelor in 1899. Thumbing his nose at a town that had rejected him, he’d left explicit instructions for an extravagant memorial that was finally installed in 1902, the same date as the inscription. I wondered if he was the one who’d called her his Gwen, or if someone else had used the monument to conceal her body. I wondered how she’d died. I wondered if she’d found peace after Arthur and Merlin.
I wonder if she’ll hate me for disturbing that peace.
We’d all assumed that Guinevere had travelled on the Path of Time to a point at least somewhat comparable to mine and Viviane’s. Instead, she’d hidden herself in my history so that even if Merlin did find her, he would never find me. She hadn’t accounted for my own power calling to him, like to like.
I knew Miko was staring at me, but the black-haired, white-skinned figure in my peripheral vision was too alien for me to look at directly yet. Still, she seemed to read my intentions on my face. “You’re going to bring her back.”
I stroked the pink apple in the pocket of my jacket from the Waldorf, no longer repelled by its unnatural smoothness. “I didn’t think I’d have to. Now I don’t have a choice. Merlin
will kill me otherwise.” Guinevere had lost herself in Time to give me the chance to escape my father and now I was going to throw her sacrifice away. Grey despair was swallowed up in flame, reminding me there was a limit to how long I could contain the grailfire.
I don’t have a choice.
“You’re going to need the Grail.”
“I don’t have it. Daley does.”
“What are you going to do then? There’s only enough water left to bring one person back from death. Maybe he’s used it on Melusine already.”
I shook my head. “I talked to Taliesin. Goodfellow has forbidden any Guide to take Daley on a Path. It will give me some time to catch up.”
“Ah.” The exhalation of Miko’s breath was like dead leaves rustling through an alleyway. “He needs Melusine’s ashes. After she died, a woman came to take them away. I believe it was her grandmother. Taliesin must know where.”
“Scotland. She took them to Scotland.”
A gust of air blew my hair across my face. Miko hovered over the bronze statue before lowering herself to sit on its lap, back to its chest, mimicking its posture. She was forcing me to look at what she’d become—beautiful and cold, otherworldly and deadly.
“And what will you do when you find him? He won’t give the Grail up. Not if there’s a chance of bringing Melusine back.”
When I didn’t answer, the silence was broken by a delicate cough—Chloe. “Um, Rhi, if you can’t say it, you probably can’t do it.” The girl’s hair had been blown into blonde tangles around her smooth cheeks. My only ally left was hardly more than a child.
“I’ll take it. If I have to, I’ll take it.”
The Messenger nodded as if she believed me. “Morgause gave me another message the first day I was brought into her service. She didn’t tell me who it was for, or when I was supposed to give it, but that I’d know what to do when the time came.”
“And you think the message is for me?”
She hesitated. “I think so. The Seer told you her plea would come to you through one that was hers. I was hers, but it’s time for me to stop being the Messenger.”
Miko had drifted into the air, moving restlessly around us, but I kept my attention on Chloe. “Go on then.”
“Morgause told me that when the time was right, I was to say, ‘Mend what was broken and make all that was divided into one.’”
The Red Dragon’s words. A sense of sadness the soft blue of moth wings rose in me only to also be burned away. “I’m sorry, I really am, but you’ve made a mistake.”
The girl blinked. “How do you know?”
I thought of Tynan’s face, white in death. I thought of how I’d betrayed my best friend. I thought of my father’s taunt to prove him wrong that I wasn’t exactly like him.
I thought of the bones Chloe and Bel had brought back from New Orleans—the bones of three powerful witches. Chloe had taken them from Morgause’s condo, but she’d given them to me when I told her about Bel. The girl was dry-eyed, but she’d shoved the box into my hands as if it contained a nest of snakes and told me the story of how Bel had obtained them. Thanks to Lacey McInnis, one was missing, but I would find a way to use them. Excalibur and the Grail were my birthright through the woman buried under the stone in front of me. I would take the Grail back by force if I had to, even if Daley tried to stop me.
The silver of hope was a lie. After what I’d done to Tynan, I knew Daley and I were over. I just hoped he wouldn’t get in my way.
Because I want to live.
I forced myself to look straight up into Miko’s eyes and to not look away, even when I saw that they were black from edge to edge. Ebony veins spread out from them like a lace mask, pulsing with her latest feed. The truth of what she was had become visible for all to see. It was time for me to embrace the same honesty.
Unclasping the charm bracelet, Daley’s gift, I tossed it at the feet of the bronze statue of Death like an offering and gave Chloe her answer. “I know because I’m a monster.”
And for the first time, the thought didn’t bother me.
READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM
SEALED IN SILVER
Coming June 2016
Go to the next book in this special boxed set to find out how Bel came to have the bones of three witches in TO MAKE A WITCH
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AN EXCERPT FROM SEALED IN SILVER
ASH AND FLAME
Outside the cemetery, a car was waiting across the road.
“That’s my ride,” Chloe said.
I stared at her. “What?”
“I called my dad to come get me while you were talking to the car rental guy. We actually don’t live too far from here. Coincidences, huh?”
“You’re going?” I was hollowed out by pale blue and dove grey, surprised at how bereft I felt that she was leaving me.
“It’s nothing personal. I just want to go home.” Looking down, long hair falling over her cheeks, Chloe scuffed at the dirt with her toe. A sharp pang filled with darker colors went through me as the movement reminded me of Tynan.
She should get as far away from me as she can.
I pulled the former Messenger into a hug, but she held herself stiff; we barely knew one another and my display of emotion was awkward. Pulling away, she tucked her hair behind her ears. “OK, bye then.”
“Bye. Take care of yourself.”
Rolling her eyes like any ordinary, normal preteen, Chloe walked over to the car and said a few words to her father through the open window. Even from across the road, I could tell he was anxious to get her away from my kind; the kind that had taken her from him in the first place.
She started to walk around the vehicle to the passenger side but then hesitated. Turning, she looked at me and shrugged. “You know, he was a pain in the ass, but I kinda miss Bel.”
And then she smiled and I knew Chloe would never be just an ordinary girl.
As the car drove away, Miko drifted out through the archway that marked the entrance to the cemetery. “You’re sad. Do you want me to make her come back?”
When I didn’t answer, she wafted around to hover in front of me. As I searched the dark fairy’s face for any remnant of the girl who was once my friend, I saw that mixed through the lace-like pattern of ebony veins were silver marks—the scars from the knife an ex-boyfriend had cut her with. Miko had always hidden them with glamour. Seeing them now only reinforced how truly alien she had become.
“Go away, Miko.”
The dark fairy obeyed, spreading her wings and ascending until she disappeared into the clouds. I had no idea where she would go. Maybe she would just drift around all day, feeding on fairies and slowly thinning the population of supermodels in the world.
I looked back up the hill at Guinevere’s resting place. The weak sunlight sparkled on something bright and I imagined it was the silver bracelet that Daley had given me, and that I’d left on my mother’s tomb. It was the symbol of another tie I’d severed between myself and the world.
“I’ll be back, Mother,” I whispered. “I’ll free you from Death and you’ll hate me for it.”
I almost expected one, but there was no answer. The cemetery was empty. I was alone with flame and ash.
There was no use lingering among the dead. I had to get the Grail back and return its fire before I was burned out, and I needed the last of its life-giving water to resurrect Guinevere. Daley had taken the Grail to Scotland to find Melusine’s ashes and bring her back to life, but I couldn’t let that happen. Go
odfellow had promised that none of his Guides would transport Daley on a Path. Daley would need to travel by plane and that would give me time to catch up.
Getting into the rental car, I checked on my phone for directions to the nearest mall and then texted Goodfellow the address. I would pick up some clothes more appropriate for winter in Britain and the Green Man would meet me there and put me on a Path.
A pretty little town nestled at the base of rolling hills, Montpelier was the state capitol, but the only mall was quite small. Still, I managed to find a pair of sturdy boots, a winter coat, a leather jacket, and an assortment of tops and jeans plus all the other necessaries. A large sports bag held everything. I’d also bought a smaller one with some interior padding to hold the bones of the three witches.
I hadn’t told Taliesin about the bones. I hadn’t told him a lot of things. There wasn’t much else to say after letting him know that one son had stolen the Grail and that I’d killed the other. The phone had gone dead and I’d thought he’d hung up, but then Goodfellow was on the line. When I gave him the whole story of everything that had happened since we left Las Vegas, there was no condemnation in the Green Man’s voice. There was something worse.
Fear.
Now Goodfellow was late. He’d muttered something about there being some problem with the Path at Taliesin’s, but I hadn’t really paid attention. Uneasy at the delay, I sat down on a bench beside a young woman feeding crackers to a toddler in a stroller. As the minutes wore on, irritation became hot anger. I tried to distract myself with a newspaper someone had discarded, but my skin was crawling with impatience. Taking deep breaths to slow my racing heart only reminded me there was no longer an answering echo to its beating. Crimson rage and grey despair flared high in equal measure.
Why did you make me have to do it? Why did you make me kill you?
Unable to bear my own thoughts, I jumped to my feet, searching frantically for any sign of Goodfellow. The young mother looked up in curiosity while her son batted at her hand for more crackers.
Sword of Elements Series Boxed Set 2: Bound In Blue, Caught In Crimson & To Make A Witch Page 47
