The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(48)
“It will come off,” Blue said, rubbing heat back into her arms. “I’ll hire Lucian to get a crew of kids to scrub it.”
The words would come off, but the message would still linger in the back of her mind. And if it lingered in hers, how many others would walk by her shop and remember it? How many believed it? And would she ever feel truly safe until the witch responsible for the carnage was caught?
Not for the first time, she was deeply grateful to Kellan for assigning extra guards around her shop during the day.
Hours later, Blue had rushed Nessa through her regular tutoring session, thankful that Kellan hadn’t come with her that day as he had the four previous days. She didn’t need any distractions. Not with Dinah suspicious that Blue might have magic.
Not that Blue’s magic was anything spectacular. Certainly nothing dangerous. Just a little affinity with harvesting and combining plants. Still, she couldn’t afford to take any chances.
Once Nessa and her guards left to return to the castle, Blue turned her attention to the painstaking process of alchemizing ordinary metal into something precious. She heated the stove, prepared her pressurized pot, and pulled down the Eldrian mineral that had nearly worked last time. Soon, she lost herself in the rhythm of her work, forgetting about the passage of time or the fact that Dinah sat at the worktable, her sharp eyes following Blue’s every move.
The first attempt produced a rough chunk of milky white metal with streaks of gray. The second produced a faint golden sheen, but the threads of gray were still there. She was working on the third experiment when Dinah got up from the table and moved to the stove.
“Why do you keep singing that ridiculous song?”
Blue startled, nearly dropping the tongs into the pressure pot. She hadn’t realized she’d been singing Mama’s lullaby. And she certainly hadn’t realized she was singing it in front of an audience. She’d been caught up with her experiment, and everything else had faded away.
“Habit,” Blue said.
“I’ve never heard it anywhere else,” Dinah said as she approached the pressure pot and peered inside. “The rhymes could use some work.”
Blue shrugged, irritation flaring. “My mother wrote it for me when I was a child. It’s not meant to be critiqued.”
Dinah stared at the lump of metal Blue held. “Fine. Who else knows that you’re working on this?”
Blue was about to say no one but paused. Did she really trust Dinah enough to let her think she was the sole person involved in this secret? Blue wasn’t sure how it could be used against her, but Dinah was both desperate and used to manipulating others to maintain order and control. Cautiously, she said, “Some members of the royal family.”
The lie tasted like ash in her mouth, and she promised herself that she’d make it the truth as soon as she could.
Dinah’s brows arched. “Really? And the queen has no issue with it?” She turned away before Blue could answer, pacing the storeroom as she tapped her fingers restlessly against her legs. “Of course she doesn’t. Why would she? It’s the perfect answer to any problem. If she has an unlimited source of gold, she’d never need another alliance with a head family if she didn’t want one. Is that the plan?” She rounded on Blue, who was standing beside her pot staring at Dinah with wide eyes. “Get a supply of gold so that the rules of betrothal become about personal preferences instead of about which family can offer the strongest alliance?”
Blue shook her head.
Dinah closed the distance between them, her expression cold, though her eyes were still lit with fervor. “You listen to me, girl. The gold belongs to me first. You remember who you owe a debt to. I took you in when you had no one.”
“I have Grand-mère.” Blue lifted her chin, anger sparking along her nerves.
Dinah slapped her hard enough to send her stumbling back into the stove. Her arm grazed the side of the pot, and she hissed in pain. Pulling her arm toward her stomach, she tried to move around Dinah, but the woman blocked her path. Blue’s pulse thundered in her ears, and she braced herself in case Dinah lashed out again.
“You have nothing,” Dinah said calmly. “Just like me. Your property belongs to someone else. Your standing in the city is at the mercy of someone else. We’re the same, except that I’ve taken care of you. I’ve made sure you were able to keep working in your shop and living in your house. The gold comes to me first. Once I’ve paid off my husband’s debts and restored my standing, you can report your success to the queen.”
Blue didn’t plan to report anything to the queen at all, and she trusted Nessa and Kellan not to either unless they thought somehow it would protect Blue to have the queen know. But Dinah wasn’t going to listen to reason, not when she thought someone else might take what she now desperately wanted for herself.
So Blue simply nodded her agreement, cradling her burned arm against her body while she waited for Dinah to move so she could get the burn cream and treat her wound. As Dinah hovered over the stove, anxiously awaiting the results of the next experiment, Blue bandaged her arm and reminded herself that she hadn’t offered to help for Dinah’s sake. She’d done it for Halette and Jacinthe. She’d done it because no one deserved to be gambled away like that.
And she’d done it because it would free her of Dinah’s violent mood swings and constant interference. She wasn’t sure how much more of the woman she could take.