Warrior Witch: Malediction Trilogy Book Three (31 page)

“It’s a tomb,” he said. “And it’s time it was sealed.”

Gripping my hand, he led me down the river toward the gates, and as we walked, I felt the heat of magic manifesting. When we were almost at the River Road, the roar of falling rock shattered my ears. Twisting to look over my shoulder, I watched as column after column collapsed, the rock of Forsaken Mountain falling from the sky to smash into the city below. Elysium disappeared, then the library, then the palace. The glass gardens – so many long years of labor – destroyed in a moment. Tears flooded down my cheeks, but Tristan didn’t look back.

Not once.

Instead he drew me into the tunnel of the road, his magic stalling the collapse of the mountain until we stood on the beach, sunlight on our faces. Then he turned back to look at the rock slide that had given him so much purpose and nodded once.

Trollus was gone.

I
’d returned
to my laboratory to pack what things I wanted while Tristan had gone to the castle to give Aiden the keys to the kingdom and to deliver the Élixir to Zoé to use as she wished. I sang as I packed, thinking about the plans we’d made on our ride back to Trianon. The places we’d go. The things we’d see.

“You’re beautiful when you smile like that.”

I turned to see Tristan leaning against the door frame, coat unbuttoned and shirt loose at the throat. His hair was longer than he usually kept it, inky black where it brushed against the white of his collar. Silver eyes unearthly bright and beautiful, and for the first time that I’d known him, free of concern. “Like what?” I asked.

“Like you’re happy.”

“Then expect to see it often,” I said, crossing the room. “Because I am.”

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I rose on my tiptoes and kissed him, relishing the feel of his lips against mine. The heat his touch sent racing through my veins.

“I love you,” he murmured into my ear, the warmth of his breath making my body ache. I parted my lips to respond in kind, when the smell of summer washed across my face. I turned in his arms in time to the tear open wide, and the King of Summer stepped into our world.

“Your Majesty,” Tristan said, and to my surprise, he stepped away from me and bowed low.

I stood my ground, goosebumps rising to my skin despite the balmy temperature of the room.

The King inclined his head, then turned his attention to me. “You owed me a debt, Cécile de Montigny.”

I lifted my chin. “And I have paid it. You have your people back.”

His head tilted, and I found I had to look away, my eyes burning as though I were staring at the sun. “Not all of them.”

“You cannot have the half-bloods,” I said, catching hold of the fabric of my gown and clenching it tight. “They belong as much here as they do there, more so, in fact. If I tried to take the iron from their flesh, they’d die.”

“Not them,” he said. “Their magic and that of all those born to them I will bind by name.”

“Then…” I closed my eyes. I couldn’t breathe.

“No,” Tristan said, and the word sounded torn from his throat. “I will not go.”

The Summer King’s words rang through my mind:
Your debt has been called due, Cécile de Montigny. I will have all my people back, and you will make it happen.

All.

All.

“Please.” Tristan dropped to his knees. “I’ll do anything. Promise anything. Bind my magic, take it away, I don’t care. Just don’t make me leave her.”

The fairy said nothing. He didn’t need to. The weight of my debt was enough.

My body moved, picking up the pouch of
lobelia
and then the basin, my hand mechanically preparing the potion even as sobs tore from my chest.

“Cécile, don’t.” Tristan jerked the basin out of my hands and tossed it aside with a clatter. “Please don’t do this.”

“I have to.”

The pouch burst into flames in my hands, the flowers incinerated but my hands untouched. “Fight it,” he pleaded.

But it was like stopping an ocean tide. A hurricane wind. The sands of time. It could not be done. Flowers burst up through the floorboards, the reek of
lobelia
filling the air, cloying and horrible. Tristan tore at them, the petals turning to ash at his touch, but more sprang up in their place.

“Tristanthysium,” the King said. “Abide.”

His fury made my mind scream in pain, but he could not deny his name, especially when uttered by the one who had given it to him. Tristan dropped to his knees in front of me, and I flung my arms around him, refusing to let go.

But it was for naught.

The spell tore from me, magic rising from all directions to take back what belonged to this world. I wrenched the iron from his veins, feeling his pain as though it were my own even as I forced his magic to heal the damage I was causing. And when it was done, I was holding on to nothing.

He was mist, and the tears running down his face disappeared the moment they left his skin. But that did not stop the King from closing a hand on his shoulder. He handed Tristan a vial, waited until he’d drained the contents, then drew him back toward the tear. Back and back.

“Tristan, I love you,” I said.

Then he was gone.

T
hey found
me in a carpet of flowers, my anguish uncontrollable. Voices. Questions. Hands lifting me up and carrying me out. A tonic forced down my throat, and then nothing.

Even when the tonic wore off, I clung to that nothing.

Because I’d lost everything.

D
ays passed
.

It wasn’t fair.

They took me home to the farm; to a familiar bed. Familiar sheets.

We’d fought so hard.

Joss and Sabine took turns forcing food down my throat.

We’d won.

I could still feel him, distant, but there. But not here.

We’d been happy.

Days passed.

T
hen one morning
, I got up. On weak knees, I dressed in an old gown of homespun and tied back my hair. The kitchen was empty, so I went out into the yard and into the barn where I found my sister working. Her eyes widened at the sight of me, but she said nothing until I picked up a pitch fork and started mucking a stall.

Setting aside her shovel, she came over and gently pried it from my hands, meeting my gaze. “It will be a fall baby.”

“Yes,” I said, a tear running down the side of my nose.

“Gran knew, you know. She told me before she died.”

I bowed my head, not able to speak.

“Maybe he…” She hesitated, and I caught her hands, cutting off the thought. “Just give me something to do. Something to keep me busy.”

Joss nodded, but she didn’t give me back the pitchfork. Instead she said, “Perhaps you ought to do what you do best.”

For a moment, I wanted to refuse. To tell her that it was not in me to seek respite in something that had once given me pleasure. But Tristan wouldn’t have wanted that. And I found that I didn’t either.

So I sang.

A
nd I listened
.

Time was different here, and it seemed I spent days with that song in my ears, sitting in silence while I watched through a fissure I’d torn between our worlds. It was all I’d done since my uncle had forced me here against my will, and if I had my way, it would be all I’d ever do.

Vines sprung from the earth, twisting up a web of green and brown, obscuring my view. I scowled, and turned. “Cécile’s pregnant. You must let me go back.”

“Must?” As always, his voice was amused. As though I were some minor curiosity providing a few moments of entertainment. “I fail to see why?”

“She did what you asked,” I snarled, tearing the vines away only for them to spring forth anew. “You have the lost bloodlines back in Arcadia, are gaining the ground you lost, are driving Winter from worlds frozen for millennia, and all because of Cécile. Yet you punish her for it.”

He cocked his head. “Do I?”

Questions answered with more questions. The fey were irritating, and he was the worst of all. I stared down at my hands, at the golden marks painted across my knuckles. Were they really still there, or were they only a reflection of what I wanted to be?

No,
I decided.
They were there.
I could still feel her – a whisper of presence in my mind.

“There are worlds beyond count for you to explore, and yet you’d waste your time watching this mortal life?” he asked. “Why?”

“Because it is my life,” I whispered, forcing the vines to grow apart so that I could see once more.

C
écile remained
on the farm in the care of her family and Sabine, her cheeks regaining their color even as her stomach took on a noticeable curve. Visitors came and went. Tips, whom Aiden had taken on as an advisor, came often, keeping her informed of the developments of the Isle as though she were queen. Marie and Zoé, whom Aiden was now courting, arrived with bolts of silk and velvet from the continent, regaling her with gossip from the city. Chris, who had returned to his father’s farm, took her riding often. And when she grew too large to do so comfortably, on carriage rides up and down the coast, Souris sitting at their feet. Everyone came together for her eighteenth birthday, the farmhouse filled to the brim with those who loved her.

For all of them, she smiled.

For all of them, she laughed.

For all of them, she pretended.

Only when she was alone, in the darkest hours of the night, did she unleash the hurt, curling in on herself. Soaking the pillow with tears. Muffling her sobs with a quilt. Every time it tore me apart, filled me fury, and sent me in pursuit of my uncle, where I begged, pleaded, and raged that he allow me to go back.

The answer was always the same.

C
hildbirth was not
easy for her. Two days of pain, Sabine and Josette’s eyes filled with the fear that they would lose her, the marks on my fingers tarnishing and blackening at the tips as she labored and bled.

Then our son was born.

From the lands of endless summer, I watched the arrival of this small half-blood boy who would never know me, but whom I already loved above all things. So caught up was I in examining his perfect little features, that at first I didn’t feel the flux of power as a portal formed between our two worlds. Noticed only when the room filled with a warm glow and my uncle stepped into the room.

Cécile lost her mind, throwing herself from the blood soaked bed and crawling between him and our child. “You cannot have him, too,” she screamed. “You cannot take him.”

He bent down to say something in her ear; then, ignoring her pleas, his insubstantial form passed through her so that he could bend over the wailing infant and whisper a name in his ear. A command, binding him from using his magic before he ever knew he had it.

Then he was gone, leaving Cécile to clutch our son to her chest, all the anger, pain, and fear she’d pent up over the months unleashing in a torrent.

I tore into his court, my fury splintering into countless nasty creatures that clawed and bit, scattering all those present until my uncle’s creations rose to battle with them. Monsters made of fear and thought multiplying and attacking. We stood in the center of a war of nightmares, and in countless worlds, the seas rose high and the winds raged.

And finally, his temper snapped.

“You do not belong there,” he snarled, a storm of wind and heat, thunder and lightning punctuating his words. Claws caught me by the throat and hurled me to the ground, defeated.

“You could have told her that I love her,” I said into the dirt. “You could have told her that I can see her. Hear her.”

A scaled foot tipped with bloody claws dug into the ground next to my face. “And what would knowing do for her?” he said, shape blurring and shifting into a human form. “How well would she live her life knowing you were constantly looking over her shoulder?”

“It might be some small comfort.”

“For her? Or for you?”

T
hey were wise words
. Not that I listened, the stubbornness that was my best and worst ally pushing me back to my portal to watch the life I longed for. The life that should’ve been mine.

Cécile, by contrast, lived.

With Sabine and our son, who’d eventually informed her his name was Alexandre, in tow, she moved back to Trianon, where she met with the banker, Bouchard, about taking the reins of the businesses she’d inherited from Anushka, the foremost of which was the Trianon Opera House. She took control of it with characteristic ferocity, ruthlessly firing those who stood in the way of her vision, while hiring the best and brightest stars, who she paid exorbitantly, or in her words, “Precisely what they’re worth.”

It took several months of work to repair the damage done to the opera house while it had housed refugees, and I smiled every time she muttered, “It’s your cursed gold that’s paying to fix this, Tristan.”

And on opening night, she took to the stage in front of a sold out crowd. I opened a portal in Bouchard’s box, watching over his shoulder as she sang her heart out.

She did not stop there, investing in opportunities with a keen eye for business that I wouldn’t have expected from her. For Sabine, she provided the funds for a dress shop, and my coconspirator swiftly became the most in demand designer in Trianon, her creations worn by nobility and songstresses alike. After much argument, she convinced Chris to accept the gold needed to import stock from the continent, and he spent his days surrounded by horses and Souris’s growing number of progeny.

When all was settled as she wanted it, Cécile toured the continent, singing on every great stage and becoming as famous for her voice as she was for her role in the events that had taken place on the Isle, which had become legendary throughout the known world. And with her, she always brought our son, raining affection on him even as she castigated him for all the less desirable traits he’d inherited from me.

He was a clever boy, dark-haired and slight, and constantly getting into trouble. As he grew older, he took liberal advantage of his fame and good looks, and kissed half the girls in Trianon before Aiden and Zoé’s daughter took a liking to him, thus ensuring he never looked twice at another girl ever again.

Time passed, and Cécile lived it well. But it was a mortal life.

And all mortal lives must come to an end.