The Castle of Water and Woe

by Steffanie Holmes

  “Consider yourself lucky. I come from a long line of lazy buggers. It’s amazing I’m even here at all,” Flynn grinned, his fingers sliding under the hem of my sweatshirt, untucking my shirt from the hem of my dress so he could drag his fingers over my bare skin. “I admit, this isn’t purely altruistic.”

  “Oh, yes?” My mind went straight back to what was going on in the Great Hall – just before we started the spell to take us through the portal. To Flynn and Corbin and I, our bodies mashed together on the giant sofa, Flynn’s hands wrapped around my breasts and Corbin’s fingers dancing over—

  Flynn’s fingers moved up my side, grazing the underside of my bra. His urgent lips tore me back to the present, to the fact that I was standing only ten feet away from the other guys, tasting this delicious Irish man, my body pulsing with exquisite heat and how did I have any energy left for this? Wasn’t I exhausted? Didn’t I just want to collapse?

  Only if Flynn collapsed with me, and only if he inched his fingers higher … lifting up the edge of my bra and stroking … oh … I moaned against his lips as Flynn rolled my stiff nipple between his fingers, sending a shudder of delight right through my body.

  “Hey, where did you guys go …” Blake’s voice snaked around the corner of the sidhe.

  I yanked my head away from Flynn, turning in the direction of Blake’s voice. This only slid Flynn’s hand deeper under my bra. He cupped my whole breast, squeezing a little as I shuddered.

  “Don’t mind him,” Flynn’s fingers cupped my chin, directing my head back to him. “He’s had his kiss today.”

  “Ah, but now I’ve got a taste for her.” Blake’s head popped up beside us, closer than I expected. Blake nodded at Flynn. “Can you blame me?”

  I waited for Flynn to protest, especially because it was Blake – the two of them seemed to be in a pissing content when we were in the fae realm. But my Irish man winked.

  “Not in the slightest.” Flynn’s lips found mine again, and I was lost in the glorious heat sweeping through my body, and the ache between my legs that demanded attention.

  Another set of hands grazed my sides. Blake moved around behind me, pressing his chest into my back, molding his body around mine. Flynn’s kisses grew more intense.

  Blake’s fingers brushed my other nipple through the fabric of my shirt, sending jolts of delight through me. Flynn cupped my cheeks, his tongue probing deep in my mouth while his other hand cupped my breast, stroking one finger across my nipple.

  “I can feel your power rising, Einstein,” he murmured against my lips. “Let’s make it crash and burn.”

  He was right. I could feel it too – a second pillar of pressure bubbling up within me, connected to my desire but also apart from it. Blake rolled my nipple between his fingers, while his other hand dipped lower, reaching for the hem of my skirt. He scrunched the fabric up my leg, then slid his fingers into my panties. I knew he’d feel how wet I was, how much my body craved this.

  “Oh Princess,” Blake whispered in my ear, his breath hot on my flushed cheek. “And I thought you didn’t care.”

  I moaned against Flynn’s lips as Blake slid a finger inside me. He soaked his finger in my juices, then removed it, pressing it against my throbbing clit.

  I was so fired up – my body thrumming with the power building inside me – that Blake barely had to move his finger for me to get off. The ache inside me rose like a tidal wave through my body, reaching down my arms, pounding inside my head like waves against the beach.

  “That’s it, Princess,” Blake whispered, his teeth scraping my earlobe. ”Let go. Unleash that power for us.”

  Two guys touching me, pleasuring me… it’s so messed up, but omigooooood...

  Flynn’s fingers clamped on my nipple, and the sharpness of his touch sent me over the edge. The orgasm tore through me. My knees buckled. Flynn and Blake braced me against their hard bodies, holding me upright while I lost control, my limbs slackening.

  “Come now, you harlot,” Flynn lifted me back on my feet, his blue eyes becoming black holes – darker and deeper than the sky above. “We’d better get this ritual done before Daigh’s forces rally for a second attack.”

  I walked between the two boys, my mind whirring. Usually, after an orgasm, the heat in my body cooled, the aching energy dissipating. But this time, the heat remained in my veins, not cooling but warming up, the fire licking against the inside of my skin. The ache in my stomach had risen to my chest, and my feet itched to move faster, my hands tightening around the guys. Nervous shivers shot through me, my body desperate to be doing something.

  Magic. For the first time since the guys told me what I was, I felt witchcraft in my bones. It existed inside me in a raw, unpredictable state. It clamoured to be released, to find a conduit. Luckily, I could put it to use tonight.

  Corbin and Rowan met us at the entrance of the sidhe. Arthur stood at the bottom of the steps, facing into the dark chamber, his sword poised at his side in one of the defensive wards he taught me. From way back where I stood I could see the tension in his shoulders; his muscles coiled, ready to strike.

  Corbin pointed down at the crystals and candles Blake had arranged on the top step of the Sidhe in a kind of bird’s-foot pattern, the middle talon pointing down the stairs to the gateway. “Is this right? I don’t understand what you’re trying to do with this arrangement.”

  “Of course you don’t. Your books don’t say anything useful about how magic actually works.” Blake kicked one of the crystals back into line with the edge of his soft boot. “The actual objects don’t much matter. It’s all about the directing the force of the magic – pushing it in whatever direction you want it to go and making it take the form you desire.”

  Blake’s description made magic sound a little like chemistry. For the first time, I stared at the objects he’d arranged, and I understood. The magic hummed in my veins as it imagined leaping out of me and powering through that conduit. I understood how Blake intended to direct our magic, how the lines would create a barrier around the gateway. I got the point of all the new age trinkets I thought was silly – the crystals and the chanting and the candles and the ritual. Magic-working was a craft. The craft of witching. The magic was inside us – an invisible, undescribed physical force. In order to use it, we had to first create the experiment.

  Blake stood back, dusting off his black linen trousers. “There. It should all be ready.”

  “How do you know about this stuff?” I asked him.

  “There’s not a lot to do in the fae realm if you hate dancing and you’re too young to fuck. Daigh wanted me to learn as much about my spirit magic as possible, so I’ve been studying for years. I make a more effective weapon against humans that way.”

  “Daigh said you were supposed to be my …” I couldn’t quite bring myself to say the word.

  “Lover? Shag buddy?” Blake lifted his hand to his face, and sucked one of his fingers between his full, pouty lips. The finger that was inside me, I realised with a shudder. ”The taste of your sweetness on my fingers would suggest my dear adoptive father was right.”

  I swatted his shoulder, ignoring the flare of heat that surged between my legs. “You’re worse than Flynn.”

  “Hey, I resent that,” Flynn piped up, coming up behind me and placing his hand on my hip in a protective kind of way that made my whole body ache with need. “No one is worse than me.”

  Corbin sighed. “I’m beyond tired. Let’s just get this done.”

  Reluctantly, Arthur backed up the staircase, sheathing his sword. The six of us took our places around the edge of the mound. I stood between Blake and Arthur, on the side furthest from the castle. I could just make out the tops of Briarwood’s ramparts and turrets over the top of the mound – a looming presence, reminding me of the legacy of witches who’d fought – and won – this same battle before me. Briarwood stood strong while the coven still fought.

  Blake passed me the red salt shaker from the kitchen, and a red candle. “Cas
t the circle,” he said. “And do it quickly. No excessive chanting.”

  “I couldn’t chant even if I wanted to,” I said, taking the objects. As soon as the candle rested in my hand, the flame flared to life. I glanced up at Arthur, and he nodded to me.

  I’d seen Corbin cast the circle before we took the sleeping draught, so I knew vaguely what to do. I walked anticlockwise around the sidhe, sprinkling the salt in a circle, and keeping the candle held aloft. When I’d seen Corbin do this, he’d chanted something, but I didn’t know the words and I’d feel too self-conscious mumbling ‘abracadabra’ – the only vaguely magical word I knew. I felt daft enough sprinkling salt on the grass, and that was with the pulse of the magic clawing at my body, desperate to be free.

  Instead, I focused on imagining magic pouring up from the earth, drawn to the line of salt I’d laid and the light of my candle. I pictured tendrils of energy seeping through the soil, rising and curling around each other to create a net of protection, sealing off the sidhe and trapping the fae inside. Imagining stuff wasn’t really my forte – I was all about what could be observed and measured – but the image in my mind felt real. My veins hummed, and my body flushed with uncomfortable heat. Either it’s working, or I’m in super-early menopause.

  When I returned to my spot, I set the candle down in the dry grass in front of me, hoping I wouldn’t accidentally kick it over. Too much of the grass had already burned tonight. Corbin started to speak, but Blake interrupted him, starting a chant that was really just a string of guttural noises. The others took up the weird noises, and I tried my best to follow the pattern of sounds. I noticed Corbin’s voice didn’t join our grunting chorus until many beats later.

  I watched Blake while we chanted, waiting for a cue to do something. He raised his arms, throwing his head back. I copied him, feeling even more self-conscious, as if the mean girls at my old high school were lurking in the woods at the edge of the field, ready with their camera phones to plaster pictures of Maeve Crawford getting her witch on all over social media.

  Which was ridiculous, because there was no one for miles around except for my guys. But I was the one waving my arms in the air of my own volition, so it was by far not the most ridiculous thought that had occurred to me tonight.

  The heat in my body pulsed as the magic threaded its way through my veins, starting in my toes and swimming upwards through my body, like a sickening wave rolling through me. That makes sense, I guess. Heat rises and follows the path of least resistance, so—

  I cried out as the heat burst from the end of my fingers, flaring up into the sky. Thunder cracked overhead, and the earth beneath me shuddered. The candle toppled over, and the flame flickered out, plunging me briefly into total darkness.

  My heart thudded in my ears. My breath came out in ragged gasps. What the hell just happened?

  “You can’t do this to us,” a dark voice rasped in my ear, so close its breath tickled my earlobe. I froze.

  A cold shiver ran down my back. I knew that voice.

  Daigh. My father.

  He was here. He’d come through the portal.

  EIGHT: CORBIN

  Everything about this was wrong, wrong, wrong.

  Ever since I’d woken up to see that Unseelie in the Great Hall, things had been mixed up. The air around his body was all fucked up – air responded to emotions, creating a thin aura around a person that I could pick up on. While Arthur’s burned with dry, choking heat, and Rowan’s tremoured with pre-storm tension, Blake’s fluctuated in heat and density and wind speed, as though it didn’t know it was supposed to be obeying the laws of this universe.

  The fact that the others said this Blake was human and that he’d saved our asses shouldn’t matter – he was raised fae, and he was a traitor. History taught us that we couldn’t trust either of those.

  But Maeve trusted him, and so I’d tried to ignore my better judgement and let it slide, at least while he seemed to be giving us helpful information about Dora being compelled, and about the fae king. But now he was standing inside our circle, leading the ritual as though he’d been the one doing it all these years. I could barely concentrate because the urge to punch him in the face was so strong.

  I darted a glance at Rowan on my other side, and found his big eyes locked on me. His lips moved to repeat Blake’s chant, but his eyes said, are you okay?

  I nodded. Bloody hell, is it that obvious I hate this? I had to keep my emotions in check. I wasn’t going to have the others seeing this weakness. Especially not Rowan. He’d already seen too much of that from me.

  I sucked a breath through my teeth, and tried to grunt out Blake’s ridiculous chant. The others wouldn’t recognise the language, but I did – Common Brythonic, an ancient Celtic language, one of the oldest languages spoken in Britain, from which derived all our other native dialects – Welsh, Cornish, Cumbric, Breton, Pictish. The language survived now only in archaic linguistics departments at certain universities, and among the Unseelie, where it was the tongue of choice.

  It was a language of blood and chaos and brutality, and hearing it on the tongues of my closest friends – of Maeve – made my blood boil.

  But the Brythonic did serve its purpose. The magic welled up inside me much quicker than usual, and as Blake raised his hand to the heavens, I followed him, pushing the energy out through my fingers, feeling it leave my body and arc across the sidhe, meeting the others with a BANG that clattered my teeth.

  The ground shook, rolling under my feet. I glanced at Rowan, but he was holding a long tuft of grass on the sidhe for support. He wasn’t doing it.

  I lost my balance, falling to one knee on top of the pile of crystals and candles on the top step, scattering crystals and candles across the stones. The flames flickered and went out, plunging the circle into darkness.

  The ground bucked, and I grabbed the edge of the step to stop myself slipping. From the other side of the sidhe, Maeve cried out. The fear in her voice made every hair on my body stand on end.

  I forgot myself. I broke from my position in the circle, scrambling across the heaving earth toward her. I only got a few steps before my body slammed into an invisible wall, sending me flying backwards. My foot slid off the edge of the step, and I toppled down into the barrow.

  My head bounced against the earth floor. Red welts danced in front of my eyes, and a dull, faraway pain throbbed behind my temples. The thought occurred to me that it was probably a bad idea to be down here while we were trying to block the gateway. I tried to crawl toward the stone steps, but between the pitch blackness and the red welts I couldn’t see where they were.

  I have to get back to Maeve.

  I chose a direction and crawled, dragging my body behind me. Exhaustion grappled with my mind, and from the way my limbs dragged and my muscles contracted in slow motion, it was close to winning. The urge to curl up into a ball and close my eyes tugged at my body, but no way in hell was I going to leave any of them alone up there when they needed me. Especially not Maeve.

  “You have lost them all,” A voice rasped in my ear. Cool breath whispered against my neck. I whipped my head around, but I could see nothing but deep, penetrating darkness.

  I raised a hand and flailed at the air, trying to grab the figure who belonged to the voice, but it only laughed – low and deep and menacing, its voice echoing around the vaulted barrow.

  “Show yourself!” I demanded, my voice swallowed by the darkness.

  The voice laughed again, this time from my left. I rolled over and grabbed for it, but my fingers gripped only darkness. The voice spoke again from the other side of the barrow.

  “Who are you without them?” it demanded.

  “Fight me like a man,” I screamed back.

  “Foolish little boy. You’ve spent your whole life as a guardian, watching over them, watching over the human race. You’ve held my plans back by many years, and kept me from knowing my only daughter. For that, you will know my anger. I’m about to take them all from you. So
I ask you again, who are you without them?”

  The Unseelie King. I didn’t need to have heard his voice before to understand I was speaking to Daigh, Maeve’s father. He’s talking about the coven, about Maeve and the guys. He’ll kill them all and burn the earth to dust and leave me behind so I’ll have nothing left but guilt and regret.

  Daigh’s words shuddered through my body, riding on a wave of horror. In the darkness I saw my enemy for what he truly was. I felt his presence beside me and around me and inside me, his fingers crawling over my mind, digging out every little secret and insecurity and fear I had and bringing them to life. He showed himself in my head – only a sliver, but enough so I glimpsed his malice, his determination, his righteousness. I understood my enemy, and that understanding brought with it only terror.

  Pull yourself together, Corbin. This is bigger than you, bigger than the darkness.

  “I’ll kill you!” I found my rage and found my voice. I leapt toward his voice, pulling my magic inside of me to suck the air out of his laugh. My body slammed into the earth, and the fae king’s laugh – now behind me – boomed louder, pounding inside my head like a jackhammer.