Warrior Witch (The Malediction Trilogy #3)(76)
The orb disappeared, replaced by a book that was deeply familiar to me. “I lost this,” I said, letting the cover fall open. “It’s at the bottom of the lake.”
“Do you still need it?”
I didn’t. Not really. It had been in my possession long enough that I knew nearly all of the spells by heart. Well enough to know that none of them could do what he wanted.
“It will take someone or something more knowledgeable and powerful than I am to accomplish this task,” I pleaded, knowing what it meant to be dealt an impossible request. “I’m only a human witch.”
“You limit yourself,” he said. “Sometimes, one must become the unimaginable.”
I shook my head. “You ask too much.”
“Your debt has been called due, Cécile de Montigny,” he said, my name ringing in my ears like a bell. “I will have all my people back in Arcadia, and you will make it happen.”
And before I could press him as to how I might accomplish such a feat, my body was wrenched back into blackness.
* * *
“Breathe, you cursed weakling of a human!”
Sunlight burned into my retinas, and I heaved a mouthful of air into my lungs before knocking Angoulême’s hands away from my chest so that I could roll over and heave my guts out onto the damp earth. Shoving aside all thought of Summer, I propped myself up on one elbow, the water soaking into my sleeve warm, mist rising up in a ghostly cloud that partially obscured the broken statues surrounding the muddy lakebed. The Duke was crouched next to me, blood still pouring from the circular wound on his neck.
“Heal this,” he snarled, “or on my last breath, I’ll command Roland to destroy the world and everyone you love.”
“You could’ve asked nicely,” I whispered, my throat raw. Before he could respond, I slapped my hand against the wound, took hold of his magic, and bent it to my will. It was formidable, greater than all I’d used save that of Ana?s and Tristan, but it struggled at the task. Halting. Fluttering. Resisting. But slowly the injury closed beneath my hand.
He slumped, taking several measured breaths before fumbling about in the mud for his cane. What for a troll of his power should have been nothing had drained him to exhaustion. On what must have been sheer willpower alone, he rose to his feet, then reached down and jerked me up. “We’re going.”
“I don’t think so.”
Angoulême turned, and Tristan’s fist caught him square in the face, sending him sprawling back to land unconscious in a puddle.
Tristan lowered his arm, his breath coming in swift pants as though he’d been running hard. He squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them, they were gleaming liquid bright. I stumbled the few paces between us, collapsing into his arms. We stood there in silence, the mist collecting in little beads on our faces, the weight of what we’d accomplished rendering us speechless. We’d caught Angoulême. But now…
“Roland’s in either Trianon or Courville, I don’t know which.” Tristan turned his head in the direction of the coast, though it was impossible to see anything from where we stood. The cities were in opposite directions, and if we chose wrong, the chances of us making it to the other in time to save it were slim. Stones and sky, I thought, there’s little enough hope of us making it in time if we choose right.
My sense of accomplishment fell away as I turned back to the already stirring Duke. Even lying there in the mud, bound with Tristan’s magic and cut off from his power, he still had the upper hand. And as his silver eyes flickered open and met mine, I knew he knew it.
“Did you know,” Angoulême said, “that Roland wept when I told him you would have to die for him to be king? The same when I told him he would have to kill your father, which is why I sent him after Matilde instead. Too much of a chance he’d hesitate and Thibault would finally grow the stones to put an end to him.” A cruel smile grew on his face. “For all that he knows I cannot lie, he refuses to believe you’ll hurt him. The innocence of childhood, I suppose.”
It was the worst thing he could have said. His jaw bulged as Tristan jammed magic between his teeth to shut him up before encasing him in a black box, probably as much to protect him as to closet him away. Then he twisted away from me and strode over to one of the broken statues. He took one deep breath, then another. Then in a blur of motion, he punched the stone, a piece breaking off even as he swore and doubled over.
I watched in silence, knowing what it felt like to prefer the rush of physical pain to the relentless and inescapable press of emotional anguish.
“This is why, Cécile,” he shouted, rounding on me. “This is why I didn’t want the curse broken. Because this is my life now – running up and down this blasted Isle trying to keep my people from harming yours. Roland will be the first I have to put down, but not the last. He probably won’t even be the last child I have to kill. How long until it drives me mad; or worse, how long until I start to like it?”
Grabbing both sides of his head, he howled, the frustration and torment in it making me step back a pace. “Tell me the solution, Cécile. Give me a solution that doesn’t see half my people dead at my hand.”
I licked my dry and split lips, praying it hadn’t been a dream. Praying that it was possible, and that I’d find a way, and that this wasn’t just another false hope. And when I was done with praying, I met Tristan’s desperate gaze, and said, “We send them back where they belong. Back to Arcadia.”