Warrior Witch: Malediction Trilogy Book Three (17 page)

T
he tear folded back
on itself like the pages of book, stretching from the ground to the upper reaches of the sky to reveal desolate fields of snow and ice, wind howling across the great expanse like some tortured beast.

“Highness.” The Winter Queen inclined her head, black hair falling over her shoulder like a silken curtain of mist, the tear closing behind her. “We meet again.” Her eyes went to the unmoving Sabine. “This pleases me. She was a wicked creature.”

Which is why she’d been happy to let me chase Sabine down and kill her.

“I have no patience for thieves,” I snapped, readying my magic.

“Let’s not be so hasty,” she said. A small tear appeared, and through it, I could see Cécile underwater, trying desperately to make her way to the surface. But a sheet of ice blocked her path. My blood ran cold. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Winter had told Josette that she’d only scare her sister, that she wouldn’t put her in real danger.

She
wouldn’t put… I swore silently, desperately, and the tear closed.

She clucked softly. “Your situation has grown dire indeed. I can help with that.”

I spat at her feet, trying to keep my thoughts straight with Cécile fading by the second. I had not planned for this, but I could not stop now. Could not give up now. I squeezed the seeds tightly, keeping them at the ready.

Winter sighed, the misty folds of her gown drifting and flowing. “Cécile went into Trollus in search of information on the whereabouts of your enemy, he who calls himself the Duke d’Angoulême. I’m afraid she ran afoul of your father.” Her eyes met mine. “I can help her. I can help you.”

“In exchange for what?” She’d known when she’d spoken to Joss that Cécile was walking into trouble.

“An alliance. I will save Cécile and do all I can to help you see your enemies dead. In exchange, you will give your word to protect my court from yours.”

Given we were bound to this world, and given she had no intention of allowing her kind to linger here for fear of losing them to the iron, I failed to see how we were a threat to the Winter fey. But that wasn’t important in this precise moment. All that mattered was that she believed we were.

I hesitated, then said, “No. On my word, I’ll never ally with you or your court. Nor will I harm a living soul for your benefit.”

The air shivered as my promise bound me, and her pupils elongated as fury fractured her glamour. She could use my debt to order me to do it anyway, but the combination would drive me mad in moments. I was gambling that her plan didn’t include me losing my mind.

“You will regret that choice, mortal.”

I stared her down, praying that Cécile wouldn’t pay the price of me forcing the fairy queen’s hand.

“I call your debt due, mortal prince. Bequeath me your power,” she said. “I would possess the greatest weapon in this world and the next.”

I lowered my head, keeping my eyes on the snow so she would not see my expression. Not that it mattered: she had cemented her half of the bargain, and she would have her due. I closed the distance between us, the icy scent of winter tickling my nostrils as I leaned down.

“Done,” I said, and the moment the words crossed my lips, my magic was gone. Her form turned as solid as my own, lips parting with a silent shriek of pain as my iron-corrupted power burned into her. I slammed my palm against her mouth, forcing one of the seeds between her teeth, driving her backwards, knowing it would only take a second for the spell to work even as we fell into Bouchard’s property and Sabine leapt to her feet and slammed the iron gates behind us.

Before Winter could react, I rolled backward, vaulting over the fence and into a pile of snow.

Crouched next to Sabine, I watched as the creature who was as old as time came to the realization she’d been tricked. No emotion came with the understanding, but I suspected she’d shake the spell quickly, and that her wrath would be formidable.

Boots pounded up behind us as Marc raced onto the scene. “Are you all right?” he asked, helping Sabine to her feet, while I watched Winter circle the property, testing out her new set of powers, which, as I’d suspected, were as bound as she was by the iron circle.

Cécile.

I opened my palm to reveal the remaining black orb. It shifted and swirled, repulsive, yet incredibly alluring at the same time.
It was easier not to feel
.

But when had I ever chosen the easier path?

Dropping the seed on the ground, I crushed it with the heel of my boot. “Hold the city,” I said. “Give me a few hours head start, then you know what to do.”

“What if she won’t deal?” Marc asked, his arm steadying Sabine. She’d taken a huge risk stepping outside the castle walls and tempting Winter’s wrath, but it had paid off.

I cast a backward glance at Winter – who was watching us with a gaze so alien and strange, it almost made me feel human – and wondered how long it would take her to figure out just how trapped she was. “I don’t think you need to worry about that,” I said, then I started toward Trollus.

W
ater closed
over my head and, when I kicked upwards, my hands hit a glassy sheet. I needed air. Needed to breath, but I couldn’t find a way up. The satchel strapped to my back was weighing me down, but it had Anushka’s grimoire, the perfume bottles full of blood.

They won’t do you any good if you’re dead.

Slipping off the strap, I kicked hard, desperation giving me strength. Then magic wrapped around my waist, jerking me up into the air. “I’ve got you,” Martin said, then there was rock beneath my bottom as he pulled me through the illusion and into the tunnel.

“Wait,” I choked. “The guard.”

We leaned back through the opening, but there was only blackness and silence. Martin sent a wisp of light over the surface of the lake and it reflected off the glossy surface. The water was frozen solid, all trace of both guard and leviathan gone.

Winter had accomplished what she intended.

At the far end, lights from the other guards bobbed into view, drawn by the noise.

“We need to go,” Martin said, and he dragged me through the narrow passage in the rocks, and out into the open. We were on the rock fall, but beneath the wooden bridge that ran over top. Despite the cover the planks provided, Martin had one arm pressed against his eyes, the other raised as though he could ward off the midday sun.

“I’m going to freeze to death if you don’t do something,” I stuttered out through my clattering teeth, unable to move from where I lay. Everything was numb, the act of breathing all I could manage.

Magic enveloped me like a warm blanket, and with it came a wave of sleepiness that I knew I needed to fight. But it was so hard. Too hard, and before I knew it, I’d drifted off.

I awoke to find myself suspended in the air, my body warm from the press of magic. “Where are we?” I muttered.

“On the way to Trianon,” Martin said, squinting at me with teary bloodshot eyes. “I’ve been avoiding the road, just in case.”

“Put me down.” My clothes were mostly dry and, though I was exhausted, I no longer felt on the brink of death. I retied the lace on one of my boots, then started walking. We needed to get to Trianon with the information on Angoulême’s location. And I needed to tell Tristan that his father had defended me from the sluag, had let me go. That he was going to help with the Winter Queen. That Tristan needed to stay where he was.

“Wrong way,” Martin said, tugging on my arm.

I blinked and looked around, feeling disoriented. “But Tristan…”

Wasn’t in Trianon.

“Oh, no,” I whispered. “He’s on his way to Trollus.” But he had to have passed us on his way, and I could think of no good reason why he wouldn’t have stopped when he knew I was all right. Unless it wasn’t his choice.

“We have to go back,” I said, dragging on Martin’s arm.

“But Thibault told us to go to Trianon.”

I fixed him with a glare that made clear exactly what I thought of that proposition, and then I broke into a run.

I
’d seen
Martin carrying Cécile in the direction of Trianon, but hadn’t stopped. There wasn’t time, and I trusted the librarian as much as anyone to get her to the relative safety of the city. Or at least I would have, if she’d remained unconscious. Now she was backtracking toward Trollus, and I didn’t have time to do anything about it.

Slipping under the overhang, I made my way up the River Road until I heard the sound of voices. “Searched the lake from back to front,” someone said. “No sign of her or the half-bloods she was going on about.”

“Maybe she snuck out for a nap,” replied another, and I recognized the voice as Guilluame’s.

“But you heard the noise!”

“Could’ve just been rocks falling into the lake. Tree’s been neglected of late.”

“But the lake was frozen solid.”

I coughed, interrupting the guards’ conversation. Not a one of the four had sensed my approach. “Excuse me.”

“Another blasted human,” one said, resting his elbows on the bars. “Go! If you seek shelter, you’ll find it in Trianon with Prince Tristan.”

“I’m afraid that’s no longer the case.” I pulled back the hood of my cloak, readying to duck and run if one of them attacked.

To their credit, none of them turned tail. The air went scalding hot as they linked their magic, the gate going cherry red and the surrounding rocks smoldering from the intensity of their shield. “I need to speak to my father.”

“Something’s not right,” said the female amongst them. “I can’t feel his power. We should’ve known he was coming a mile off.”

“It’s a trick,” Guilluame replied. “He’s a human disguised as Tristan.”

“That’s easy enough for you to check,” I snapped. There was only so much time, and I couldn’t afford a delay. “Either let me pass or send someone to fetch the King.”

The heat remained, their faces unconvinced.

“I’ve been deprived of my magic,” I said, sweat trickling down my back. “One of you should be more than sufficient to keep me in line, if that is your concern.”

“Go to the palace,” the female ordered the youngest of them. To the others, she said, “Let him in. We’ll keep him here until we have our orders.”

The glowing gate swung outward, and I gave it wide berth as I passed, not wishing to be burned. My skin stung from the radiant heat as it was, healing mortal slow without my magic. So strange to fear something so insignificant.

When I was through, the female pulled off her gauntlet and slapped a hand against my cheek, feeling for the presence of a disguise. “Nothing,” she said, her voice curious. “It’s him.”

“Deprived of your magic, you say.” Guillaume pulled off his helmet. “How’d that come to pass?”

“That’s a conversation I’ll have with my father and none other.”

“Of course.” He grinned, revealing a piece of something green stuck between his two front teeth. “I wonder how well His Grace will reward me for putting you down.” Then he attacked, not me, but his fellows, sending the female flying through the air and then slicing the remaining guard in two.

I turned to run, but his magic caught my ankle, then slammed me against the cobbles. “Some things are better done by hand,” he said, and his boot caught me in the ribs with an audible crack. The female guard raced back and tried to interfere, but he walled her off, his magic stronger, if only barely.

Blow after blow struck me in the sides, in the arms, in my face, and there was nothing I could do to get away. Bones cracked and blood splattered the ground, but through it all I saw the face of my attacker. How he sensed my weakness and reveled in it. Then the air stirred, filling with a sound much like a whip being cracked, and through the swelling of my eyes, I watched Guillaume’s head drop to the ground next to me.

“Get up.”

I struggled to rise, and my father’s hand latched under my arm, hauling me to my feet.

My lone defender stood wild-eyed. “I tried to stop him, Your Majesty,” she pleaded.

“Go find others to replace them,” he snarled at her, and she took off running.

It took every ounce of willpower I had not to pass out from the pain as he dragged me through the streets to the palace. They were empty as they only were during curfew, but the faces of those peering out from behind windows filled with dismay when they recognized me.

“What’s happened?” I asked, spitting a mouthful of blood.

“Sluag,” he said. “Now keep your mouth shut until we’re behind closed doors.”

He brought me to his office, dropping me unceremoniously on the plush carpets. Going to a tray laden with goodies, he plucked up several linen napkins and a pitcher of water before kneeling next to me and wiping blood off my face.

“That hurts,” I complained, flinching away to get into a better position, the knife tucked into my boot burning against my skin.

“Gives you a bit of a taste of what it’s like to be human.”

Neither his words or his tone were what I’d expected, and I lifted my head. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“I’m not.” He rinsed the napkin in the water, then held it to the cut on my cheek. “Winter called your debt. Cécile was here and she told me enough. I sent her to tell you to stay put in Trianon, but it would appear she didn’t make it in time.”

There was never a chance she would.

“Stones and sky, you’re bleeding like a human,” my father muttered, his jaw tightening. Then in one violent motion, he rose to his feet and threw the pitcher against the wall in an explosion of glass. Going to the cold fireplace, he rested his arms on the mantle, head bowed.

And his back to me.

I inched my fingers down to the hidden knife, moving slowly so as not to catch his attention. I’d known without magic that he’d discount me as a threat, would lower his guard. And now was my chance.

Do it!

My hand closed around the hilt, slowly pulling it free.

“You should’ve told me about the debt,” he said. “I could’ve bargained with her. Given her what she wanted in exchange for letting you be.”

I froze.

“Though I suppose I can’t blame you for not trusting me. It was how you were raised.” He sighed deeply. “And now the Winter trickster is free to run around the Isle, slaughtering her enemy’s people at will with no one to stand in her way.”

She wasn’t free, but I’d made sure to make it to Trollus before any of his spies could bring word that she was trapped. It wouldn’t be long now, though, and as soon as he knew, I was sure he’d see through my plot.

Kill him.

I swallowed, my hand still gripping the hilt. “You could stand in her way. You have all of Trollus at your command.”

“I think we both know that’s not the case.”

I bit the inside of my cheeks, unsure of whether he doubted his capacity or his control.

“Besides,” he said. “I can’t leave. You aren’t the only one who’s had to pay the price of a desperate bargain, Tristan.”

Even with the curse broken, he was bound to Trollus. Knowing it was so was like the last piece of the puzzle falling into place, explaining why he hadn’t taken Trianon, why he hadn’t moved to stop Roland and the Duke, and why, given they finally had freedom in their grasp, that he’d locked the citizens of Trollus back in their underground cage. “Who holds this bargain?”

“Your aunt,” he said. “She threatened to drown your mother if I didn’t give my word never to leave Trollus, and for obvious reasons, I can’t kill her to free myself. No one plays the game better than her, and no one is less trusting.”

“Can you blame her?” Pain ricocheted through me as I climbed to my feet, using his desk as leverage. “No one forced you to be a tyrant. That was your choice, and these are the consequences.”

Laughing, he picked up a bottle of liquor sitting on the mantle and drank from it directly. “You remind me of myself at your age. Idealistic.” He took another swallow and grimaced. “So certain you know everything.”

“Since obviously I do not, perhaps you might enlighten me.” The clock was ticking, my chance to put an end to the man who had haunted my steps all my life growing smaller by the second. But I had to hear him out.

He drained the bottle, then turned to face me. “I hated my father as you hate me, perhaps more so, for he was a far worse creature. Perhaps the worst ever to rule, in that he relished in killing. Though they were bonded, he slaughtered your grandmother with his bare hands in front of the court for crossing him, and if it hurt him, he never once showed it.” He paused. “He and Roland were cut from the same cloth.”

I’d heard stories of my grandfather, but they were not given much breath. Why should they be when Trollus had to contend with a living and breathing tyrant king.

“Like you, I had a vision of a better Trollus. And as you have your friends and coconspirators, I had mine, your aunt being one of them. We dreamed of abolishing the enslavement of half-bloods, of setting laws that made everyone equals. That, if given the chance, trolls would choose their matches based on character and commonalities, not power. That, if given the chance to love as they wished, the classism of magic would cease to exist.” He snorted, then snatched up another bottle. “Hearing it now, it sounds like some sort of comedic nonsense a poet might spout.”

I wiped away the blood dripping into my eye as I struggled to come to terms with this vision he was painting.

“Of course, there was a girl.” He sat on a chair, the wood creaking. “There always is.”

“Lessa’s mother.”

His chin jerked up and down once. “Vivienne. She belonged to my mother and then to me, and I loved her. And she told me she loved me. That there was no one but me.”

Lost in memory, his eyes were distant and unseeing.

Kill him!

But I would’ve soon as stabbed my own heart as struck him down, because he was telling his story. And his story was my story.

“I was going to change all the laws of Trollus so that I could bond her and make her my queen. And in doing so, I believed I would start our world on a better path. I kept our relationship a secret, and when she became pregnant – as will happen easily with any girl with human blood,” he gave me a pointed look, “I hid her in the city until she had Lessa. Until I was ready to act.”

“But grandfather found you out?” I asked, fascinated by the notion that my father had not always been infallible. I knew he had killed his own father, but never considered there was a greater reason than a desire for the crown. I was beginning to believe I’d been very much mistaken in that.

“He always knew.” A bitter smile crossed his face. “It seems a universal flaw of youth to believe one’s elders oblivious to one’s undertakings.”

I waited silently for him to say more, curiosity making me forget the pain of my battered body.

“I went looking for her one day and could not find her.”

I tensed, certain that my grandfather had killed Vivienne to make a point, as my own father had done to the human peddler I’d once been so fond of.

But it was worse.

“Whispers and rumors led me to find her in my father’s bedchamber. She was his lover, and had been for some time. It had all been a plot to put me in my place, Vivienne only playing a part, every one of her words a lie. And he laughed in my face, and told me I was a fool for putting my faith in something so weak. And he did not mean just her.”

Hatred that was more than a memory filled his eyes, and I wondered if that was how I looked when I spoke of him.

“When I was done, the only way they were able to identify them was by their absence.” His jaw tightened. “After that, I turned my back on my foolish dreams, and Trollus learned to fear a new king.”

Lies or no lies, Lessa’s mother would’ve had little choice in her actions. When you were property, and especially when you were the property of a king, “no” was not part of your vocabulary, if you valued your life. But I said nothing, because he knew that as well as I, half a lifetime of regret and guilt lining his face in this rare moment of honesty.

“There was no going back after that,” he said, meeting my gaze. “At least, not for me. But I knew early where your sympathies resided, and so began over a decade of planning. I would be the people’s tyrant so that you could become their savior. Their liberator.”

I swayed on my feet, the scratch of my fingernails on the desk barely registering in my ears. “What do you mean?”

A massive concussion shattered the air, and the ground shook, both of us staggering. Righting himself, my father swore. “Stay here.”

I caught his sleeve. “Wait, you have to tell me what you meant.”

He shoved me back into the office, the door slamming shut, locked in place with magic. “Father, wait,” I screamed, but it was to no avail. I knew what that concussion had been: Roland. Too late I remembered Cécile’s repeated words of Angoulême’s strategy; too late I understood why they planned to go first after my father, who had the might of Trollus at his disposal, rather than me. Because the Duke had seen what I had not: my father would defend my life to the bitter end, whereas I’d stand back and watch him die. I couldn’t let that happen. I needed to hear more, needed to understand why he’d done what he’d done.

Picking up a chair, I slammed it against the door, wood splintering and breaking, but the magic holding strong. “Help! Someone open the door.”

Nothing.

I spun in a circle, desperate for a way out. But I knew this room well, and there were no windows. No doors. The walls were solid stone and without magic, I wasn’t strong enough to break through them. I looked up. The ceiling was polished wood, and that, that I could break.

Ignoring the pain in my body, I snatched up a piece of the broken chair. Leaping onto the desk, I slammed it against the panels until one of them broke, then I used it as a lever to pull free enough boards for me to fit through. Splinters catching and tearing at my clothes, I climbed into the narrow space, wriggling on my belly until I was certain the hallway was beneath me.

Breaking through, I dropped into the ground and started running. “The King?” I shouted at the first troll I came across. “Which way did he go?”

The troll stared at me in astonishment, and I grabbed his shirt, slamming him against the wall. “Which way?”