Warrior Witch: Malediction Trilogy Book Three (23 page)

N
ever in my
life had I felt like a greater failure.

I sat in the sled with the bound form of my enemy, wishing I could tear open the wound I’d so casually healed and watch him slowly bleed to death. To make him pay for what he’d done.

To make him pay for what I’d failed to fix.

Tristan ran on silent feet behind me, and the twins before, Vincent mindlessly following his sister’s guiding hand. Angoulême hadn’t just ended one life when he’d detonated that staircase, he’d ruined two, because there was no life for Victoria without her brother. Part of me wondered if they’d have been better off if I’d let them die.

“Chris took Martin back to camp,” Tristan said, and I jumped. It was the first thing he’d said since we departed the tombs.

“His body, you mean?”

He shook his head. “He was alive when they left, but Cécile…” I turned in my seat in time to see him swallow, his throat convulsing as though what he had to say made him sick. “Angoulême dismembered him.”

All the blood rushed away from my skin. Martin, poor dear Martin, who’d wanted nothing more than to bury himself in books until that fateful day I’d walked into the library looking for a way to break a curse.

“Don’t,” Tristan said. “It’s not your fault. He made his choices, and he has to live with the consequences, just as we do.”

“Will they grow back?” I whispered. The idea of it made my stomach twist, but the trolls could recuperate from so many things.

“No.”

Recuperate from almost anything. Except for dismemberment. And injuries to the brain.

And iron.

I chewed absently on my thumb, my mind going to the task the Summer King had set me. Of a surety, iron was the problem, and, to a lesser extent, gold. They were all fascinated by it, every one of them known to extract a gold coin from a pocket to play with while they were deep in thought. It was what had kept those ancient fey in this world long enough for the iron to infect them. To infiltrate their bodies. To steal their immortality.

Infect.

I frowned, trying to think of the iron as a disease that could be healed, but it felt all wrong. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth, the skin on my thumb torn open. “Stones and sky,” I muttered, spitting into the snow and then sitting on my hands.

“Camp’s ahead,” Tristan said. “Victoria, wait here with the sled, and…” He grimaced, then gave me a look that said
don’t let anything go wrong while I’m gone.
As if I could stop Victoria if she decided to have her vengeance.

Tristan trotted off toward the camp, magic falling away to reveal a campfire and a single figure. I recognized Chris’s sturdy frame, his hand going to the pistol at his side, then relaxing as Tristan’s light flickered in the predetermined signal. Their heads bent together, one fair and one dark, and it dawned on me that they’d become friends.

The snow crunched as Victoria approached, and I tensed. “Untwist your knickers,” she said, sitting down in the snow next to the sled. “I haven’t had enough time to think of creative ways to hurt him, so he’s safe for now.”

Angry shouts burst from the camp, Martin’s voice and Tristan’s. “You might have to get in line,” I said, resting my chin on my knees, my eyelids heavy even as I knew there’d be little rest in the coming days.

We both regarded Angoulême, Tristan’s black box of magic having been replaced with fetters that blocked him from sight and sound. He shifted, testing his limits, and my skin prickled with unease. I’d spent so much time fighting against him, watching him hurt those I cared about, that he’d taken on almost monolithic proportions in my mind. It was difficult to reconcile that with the slight troll lying helpless at my feet, his fine clothing dirty and ragged at the cuffs, one boot half pulled off his foot. His strength was in his mind, his genius; and, as he turned his head to me, nostrils flaring slightly, I had to fight the urge to recoil.

He wasn’t helpless. He was a snake waiting for an opportune time to strike.

“I can’t remember why I’m fighting this fight.”

Victoria’s gaze had left the Duke and was now on her brother, who stood stock still in the snow. Rather than saying anything, I slipped my hand into hers and squeezed it hard.

“At first, it was fun,” she said. “A way to alleviate the grinding tedium of Trollus with secret meetings, codes, and plans to overthrow a tyrant. We liked the idea of changing our world, of making it better; we knew the risks, but… Following Tristan has a way of making one feel invincible. Even when we were breaking you out of Trollus, and I knew half-bloods were dying, it didn’t sink in that this fight was going to cost me.”

I gave a little nod, knowing what she meant.

“Even when the King separated us and it was such misery, I believed it was only for a time. That Tristan would come up with a plan and we’d rally.” She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve. “Then he told us that Anaïs was dead – that Lessa was posing as her – and it hit me that nothing we could do, or Tristan could do, would bring her back. Death is final. There is no coming back from it. And since then, no matter how hard we fight, no matter what we accomplish, those who matter most to us keep falling. It seems that even if by some miracle we win,
I
will have lost.”

I wanted to tell her not to give up hope, that maybe there was a way to help Vincent. That to give up now would mean Angoulême had won. That people were counting on her, and her fight would make a difference to them. But it all sounded sour in my mind – false assurances and empty platitudes – and I knew none of it was what she wanted to hear. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to be done.” Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, and she wiped them away with a vicious swipe. “You should’ve let us die.”

“No, I shouldn’t have.” Climbing out of the sled, I took hold of the rope on the front. “As you said, death is final. But where there is life, there is hope.” Tugging hard, I dragged the cause of all our plight into camp.

M
y gran had
a steaming cup of tea ready for me as I stepped into the firelight, and I gratefully accepted it as I handed off the rope to Tristan. “Where’s Martin?”

“In the tent.” Tristan rubbed at one temple. “I’d leave him be. He’s angry that Angoulême is still alive.”

“Aren’t we all.” But the fact remained that the librarian was a wealth of knowledge, and right now, I needed him. Motioning for my gran to follow, I ducked under the canvas.

“Thank you,” I said, taking a seat on top of a rough wool blanket.

“For what?” Martin’s eyes were closed, but the muscles of his jaw were working back and forth as though he intended to grind his teeth to dust. I was thankful, because I felt my face lose its color at the sight of his injuries. Both arms were gone at the shoulder, and his legs, judging from where the blanket fell flat against the ground, had been removed just above the knee.

“Helping me catch Angoulême.”

Martin’s eyelids snapped open, silver gaze full of fury. The air around us warmed, and I felt Tristan come closer, ready to step in if things got out of hand. “Bad enough,” he said, “that you went back on your word to kill him, but must you also mock me?”

“I’m not mocking you,” I said. “You said once that you’d see him bleed out like his daughter. At first, I thought you meant Anaïs, but then it occurred to me in the tombs that you meant Pénélope. That Angoulême had the same affliction as her.” I swiftly explained what had happened.

“You bit him?” Martin shook his head, then accepted a mouthful of tea from my gran. “You know I can do it myself,” he said to her, the cup lifting out of her hand and floating in the air.

“Gives me purpose,” she said, taking hold of the handle and pulling it back. “And what’s a life without purpose?”

“What indeed.” He stared at the blanket where the rest of his legs should’ve been. “I never saw any proof that Angoulême was afflicted,” he said. “But a number of years ago, several volumes of research on the condition went missing from the library, and there was a rumor that circulated amongst the librarians that someone from the peerage had paid for them to be destroyed. After Lady Pénélope’s affliction became known, my curiosity was piqued, and I delved into the matter. Of a surety, the girls’ mother was no more than a carrier if she was able to bear two children, which, based on my research of other inherited conditions, lead me to believe the Duke was a victim of the ailment.

“I thought you never speculated,” I said, realizing that I’d staked everything on an unproven notion.

“It was a well-researched hypothesis,” he said, accepting another mouthful of tea. “Which you subsequently proved to be correct.”

“Right,” I said, wishing my cup was filled with something stronger. “I need your help with something else now.” I explained my meeting with the Summer King, and his belief that the trolls could somehow be brought back to their homeland.

“Fascinating,” Martin breathed, leaning back on the bags stacked behind him, lost in thought. “There are very old manuscripts within the library recording the accounts of the fey who lost their immortality. Many spoke of a growing difficulty in passing between worlds, that it became physically painful for them to do so. Some took it as a warning and left, never to come back, but some couldn’t help themselves and remained. The change happened swiftly and to nearly everyone at once; only a few were able to flee back to Arcadia, the rest no longer even possessing the ability to open paths. It was as though our link to our homeland had been severed.”

“What did they do?” I asked

“It was a panic, of course,” Martin replied. “They knew it was iron that was holding them back, but not how to rid themselves of it. Many tried starving themselves and forgoing water; others attempted to bleed themselves dry, believing they could remove the contaminant that way. There were casualties, but when they realized that they’d started aging, that their magic had begun to change, that they were no longer immortal, they tried anyway. Those ancient fey were still long-lived by our standards – hundreds of years – but with each passing generation, lifespans grew shorter. Now they are no better than the average human. In a few hundred years, perhaps we’ll live and die in the space of a handful of decades.” He sighed. “There have been some who have postulated that it is this world’s way of getting rid of that which does not belong, but that strikes me as fancifulness.”

“It’s a poison to you,” my gran said thoughtfully, tapping an index finger against one tooth. “One that is compounding over the generations. Has it caused trouble other than mortality?”

Poison.

“Birth defects; madness; and, as is the case with the Duke, hemophilia,” Martin said. “Though some of it might be caused by inbreeding, particularly amongst the aristocracy.”

Gran wrinkled her nose. “Vile habit. And what of those with mixed blood: human and troll? Are they similarly afflicted?”

Martin shook his head. “There isn’t a single case of an afflicted half-blood on record; and for the thousands of years our kinds have intermingled, the life expectancy of half-bloods has remained constant. Injuries inflicted with steel weapons on half-bloods heal at approximately the same rate as those inflicted by other metals. If not for the marked decrease in power, the injection of human blood into our lines might have been a viable method of adapting ourselves to this world.”

I heard everything he said, but my mind was all for the word
poison.
“Gran,” I said. “How do you cure poisoning in humans? With magic, that is?”

“Depends,” she said. “Some poisons run their course quickly, and the magic cures the damage that has been done to the body. With others, the toxin lingers or builds, and the magic is used to draw it out of the body, which sometimes does more harm than good. It’s painful, and always more magic is required to heal the damage.”

“That’s it. The latter,” I said, my mind racing. “Do you know a spell?”

She nodded. “The best requires
lobelia
, but there will be none of that found in the dead of winter, so we will have to use alternatives. Regardless, it’s what needs doing afterward that’s the difficult part. But,” she eyed Martin, “you’ve told me time and again that the earth’s magic is ineffective on full-blooded trolls.”

“It is.” But what Martin had said about the earth using iron to rid itself of what didn’t belong had struck a chord. “A witch’s magic won’t work on them because they are not of this world,” I said. “But the iron is. What if the spell could be used to draw it out?”

“Surely it’s been tried?” Gran asked Martin, who shook his head. “Not that I’ve ever heard. Or if it has, it certainly didn’t work. ”

Excitement flooded through me, chasing away the cold and exhaustion. “It won’t hurt to try.”

Gran hissed softly between her teeth. “It will hurt. For better or worse, the iron is part of them now, has infiltrated every part of their bodies, even their magic. You’ll be tearing them apart to get it out.”

“And putting them back together with their own power,” I finished. There was a perfect symmetry to the idea. It felt right. “I want to try it.”

“Then you’ll need a test subject,” Martin said. “I propose that subject be me.”

I hesitated. He’d been through so much, and the thought of causing him more pain made my stomach sour. “Are you sure?”

His smile was more of a grimace, but he nodded. “A life without purpose is no life at all. The fight to make our world a place worth living was everything to Élise, but she didn’t get to see it through. I’ll do this for her.”

“
A
ll that effort to
keep him from taking control of the islanders, and now you’re just going to let him have them?” Chris jabbed a stick into the fire, sending a cloud of sparks up into the air. “What a waste of effort.”

“It wasn’t a waste.” I winced as a slight breeze blew smoke into my eyes, making them water and sting. Chris had a strong sense of fair play running through him, and he’d insisted if the rest of them had to take smoke to the face, so did I. “Your saving Courville was never a possibility, so in that, nothing’s changed. And they’ll only be bound to him for as long as he’s alive, which won’t be for much longer.”

“Unless he kills you,” Chris said. “And then everything will go to shit anyway.”

“Thank you for your vote of confidence.”

“You’ve got enough of that,” he replied. “I consider it my duty to keep it in check.”

“Noted.” Picking up a stick, I jabbed the fire, hoping the smoke would switch directions. Instead, I was rewarded with a cloud to the face.

Chris laughed and threw on another log. “So you’re sure he’s in Courville?”

“Reasonably. Marc and the half-bloods are holding the perimeter at Trianon. It would be nothing for Roland to force his way past, but they’d know it, and Marc would have signaled us.” My eyes went to Angoulême, who I’d left in the sled a few feet away. “He knows I won’t attack Roland while he’s surrounded by so many humans.”

“We could always put him on a spit over this fire and see how long he lasts before calling his pet troll to come save him.”

“Tempting,” I muttered. “But what would be the chances of him leaving Courville unscathed in his departure? There has to be a better way to lure him out.”

“And here I thought you were some sort of strategic genius.”

I grunted. “So is he.”

Snow crunched, and Cécile approached the fire, eyed the damp ground and then perched on my knee. Extracting the stick from my hand, she nudged the burning wood a few times, and the smoke switched directions. Chris scowled and I smiled, pulling her closer.

“I think we’ve figured it out,” she said, and I sat up straight, almost toppling her to the ground. “Are you serious?”

She nodded. “Martin’s volunteered to be my test subject. I think he’s the best choice, for… for obvious reasons, but I know we’ve few enough trolls on our side that you might not be willing to let him go.”

Cécile was right about that. I rested my chin on her shoulder, staring into the flames. Sentiments aside, the loss of Vincent was a major blow, especially as it had rendered Victoria unreliable. I didn’t dare pull Marc away from Trianon, which meant that my arsenal was a group of armed farmers and a maimed librarian with only middling power at his disposal. If Cécile’s plan worked, Martin’s magic would almost certainly change: I’d be down a weapon and up a fairy with a new set of powers he had no idea how to use. Not that there wasn’t potential in that, but was it worth the risk?

“Waiting to try it on one of the half-bloods in Trianon would be better,” I said. Cécile’s expression didn’t change, but there was no missing the flash of disgust.

“We discussed that,” she said, pushing away my arm and climbing to her feet. “If I were to attempt this on a human, it would kill them as surely as a knife to the heart. We believe it would do much the same to most half-bloods, if not all.” Her arms crossed, she swiftly explained the premise of the spell. “I will very nearly have to kill him to cure him.”

“You might, in fact, kill him,” I said. “We’ll have gained nothing and lost another member of our force.”

“And what would you have gained killing him on that mountain top?”

Chris whistled through his teeth. “I’ll leave you two to this little chat.” He rose and swiftly left the fire’s circle of light. I waited until he was gone before saying, “That would’ve been mercy, Cécile. You weren’t there. You didn’t see him bleeding on the ground, his limbs scattered about him like chopped wood.”

Her intake of breath was sharp, and she closed her eyes for a moment. “He doesn’t need mercy, Tristan, he needs a victory. He couldn’t help Élise, he couldn’t stop Angoulême, and now what? Do we strap him to a horse and send him galloping into battle where in all likelihood he won’t make a damn lick of difference? This could be something. It could be the solution.”

“To what?” I demanded. “To my moral dilemma over killing my brother?”

“No,” she shouted. “To our mistake!”

I froze, not entirely believing what I was hearing.

“I was wrong,” she said. “You were right about not breaking the curse and a fool for letting me convince you otherwise. Maybe we might make it work for our lifetime if we rule with an iron fist, but what then? There will always be more Angoulêmes, and God help us, more Rolands, and what will happen with us not there to stop them? So many have already died because of the choices we made, and this might be the chance to make things as right as they can be. To save both your kind and mine.”

She scrubbed a hand across her face, leaving a smear of blood and grime. “Your kind doesn’t belong here, and with God as my witness, I’ll send every troll back. And if it’s what you want, I’ll send you along with them.” Then she turned on her heel and stormed into the darkened woods.

My boots seemed fixed to the ground as I watched her retreating form. Of all the things I’d expected to hear her say, that wasn’t one of them. Always, always, she was the optimist, and to hear her give up on our dream, to say that our fight was hopeless… It made it true.

Your kind doesn’t belong here.

If she was right, if the spell worked, then what she was offering was a solution beyond what I could ever have hoped for. Not only a way to save both our kinds and keep blood off our hands, but for me, it was a chance to see my people thrive. They’d be immortal once more, no longer afflicted with iron-wrought maladies, or fearful of what the cursed metal would do to their children.

Your kind.

It would be a freedom so much greater than just release from Trollus. The lands of endless summer would be theirs again, along with countless other worlds and endless years to explore them. It would be the greatest gift I could give them – the ability to return home.

You.

You don’t belong here.

The cold seemed to bite through my clothing, the wind blowing through the trees a mournful howl. On numb feet, I slowly followed her tracks into the woods.

I found her sitting on a dry patch beneath a fir tree, face buried in her knees, shoulders shaking. “If it’s what Martin wants, do it,” I said, swallowing the tightness in my throat. “And if it works, I’ll do what I can to see every other full-blooded troll goes with him.”

“Every?” Her voice was soft.

“I think most will clamor for the opportunity.”

“Will you?”

I thought of her sharp words, the guilt and the blame. What I had done and left undone, and all the blood on my hands. Our hands. I knew she would forgive me for my failures, because that was her way. But would she ever forgive herself? If I stayed, would I not always be a constant reminder of how she’d forsaken her own kind, however temporarily, for me? Would it be better if I left? Would it help her forget?

“This is all speculation,” I said. “Neither of us know if your spell will work.”

It was the worst of silences, but I felt too cowardly to ask if her heart had veered so far in the opposite direction that she now wanted me gone with all the rest of my kind. And I feared her silence was reluctance to ask it of me.

“Do you have everything you need for your spell to do it tonight?” I asked, needing the moment to end. “One way or another, I need to leave at first light.”

“Gran was gathering what we needed,” she said, getting to her feet and wiping her face with a sleeve. “She should be done by now.”

Cécile started back to camp, and I knew I needed to say it now. “Cécile–”

She stopped in her tracks.

“Given the choice between one lifetime spent with you or a thousand without, I will always choose you.” I took a deep breath. “That is, if you still want me.”

She didn’t turn, kept her back to me and didn’t answer. But this was what made the bond between us worth every risk – she didn’t need to say anything at all. Slowly, she stretched her arm back, palm open, and I took it.