The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(102)

“Let’s see how the queen and her children like choosing between death and losing a part of themselves.”

Throwing her head back, she plunged their joined hands into the water and said, “By the power of blood, bone, and spirit, I command you to give up your dead.”

The wraith opened its mouth and wailed, its magic unleashed in a tidal wave of unstoppable strength. The sound was a soft, haunting melody that grew, swelling into a scream of terrible power that shook the ground and struck the sea like a hammer.

The waters bubbled and churned, the currents shifting until they tore a path between the wraith and a distant point in the sea, just under the far horizon.

“Come to me,” Dinah commanded.

The water at the horizon rushed forward along the path, carrying with it a skeletal shape that rode the wave like the figurehead on a boat. When it reached Dinah, the water stopped, swirling away from them in frothy eddies and leaving the skeleton standing silent and still before them.

Dinah and the wraith lifted their hands and touched the skeleton’s breastbone.

“Take your form, draw your breath, and answer only to me,” Dinah said.

The wraith exhaled, a long rush of blood-scented air that wafted over the skeleton, scouring its bones from head to toe.

For a long moment, nothing happened, but then the skeleton jerked forward, its movements spasmodic and uncontrolled as muscle, veins, blood, and skin spun into being over its bones. It knit together, one limb at a time, until finally the last piece of skin settled onto its face. Its dark eyes flew open, and Dinah was staring into the face of Queen Adelene’s departed husband, King Talbot.

Dinah laughed, triumphant and wild, as the king turned to her. She smiled.

“Welcome back to the world, Your Majesty. Or should I say, the remnant of Your Majesty? Not that it matters. Let’s get you cleaned up and dressed. You have a ball to attend.”

“A . . . ball?” The remnant’s voice was thick and uncertain.

“Don’t worry, you won’t have to dance.”

“What will I have . . . to do?”

The wraith swirled around Dinah, wailing its victory while Dinah said softly, “You will kill your wife and your children.”





FORTY-TWO


“WHERE ARE WE going?” Lucian asked as Blue turned toward the garden instead of the road.

“My grandmother’s house.”

“Why?” He kept pace easily with her, his long legs eating up the distance.

Blue clutched the jar of poison to her chest and prayed Dinah and the wraith weren’t outside. “Because she can keep you safe.”

And maybe she could help Blue figure out how to poison the wraith.

“What about you?” he asked.

“I’ll be fine.” Blue launched herself out of the garden and into the orchard.

She’d be fine, but she shouldn’t be. Dinah was furious with Blue’s family as well. She’d killed Papa to get control over the farmhouse and the shop so that she could find the spell. Once she had the spell, she ought to have killed Blue too.

Unless she thought she might need Blue alive because she wanted to perform other spells that would need a binding agent like Blue’s blood. As Blue had just discovered, her blood could hold even the most incompatible substances together, and unless someone had a spell that also contained her blood, that bond couldn’t be broken.

Her blood had been the key all along, and now that Dinah knew it, there was no way she was going to leave Blue alone. No, she’d use the wraith to kill everyone she hated, and then she’d keep Blue for the rest of her life, using her blood whenever she wanted.

Blue would rather die than watch those she loved be killed, knowing her own blood had been their undoing. She’d rather die than live the rest of her days as Dinah’s slave, her blood destroying more and more lives.

She stumbled to a halt just inside the grove that led to Grand-mère’s, her heart pounding in quick, sickening thuds.

She’d rather die.

The solution to her problem hit her, a wave of ice that prickled through her veins and settled into the pit of her stomach like a stone.

“What’s wrong?” Lucian asked, pausing as he reached the steps to the cottage and realized Blue wasn’t with him.

She stared at him without seeing him. Instead, she saw the hill full of small corpses. Ana’s arms with two jagged-edged circles torn out, her skin pale as parchment. She saw the wraith coming for her, its gaping maw open wide, vicious teeth glistening as it wailed its insatiable hunger.

“Blue?” Grand-mère called from the porch.

Blue reached out, one hand grasping the trunk of a shirella tree while the hand that held the poison pressed hard against her fluttering heart.

The wraith would come for her if she got close enough to it. It had already tried at the gate. Whatever Mama had bonded to it with Blue’s blood connected them. The firestorm of magic that had driven Blue to reach for the monster had also driven the monster to reach for her.

It would come for her. She just had to get close enough. And when it came, she’d be ready.

She couldn’t throw the poison on it, or stab it with a poisoned knife, or hope that somehow she could wrestle the thing to the ground and pour the poison into its mouth. Especially when she wasn’t sure if the poison was strong enough to kill a creature with fae in its blood.