The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(53)

Maybe these steps were cursed, but they were familiar, and the witch at the end of them was the only person who could help Dinah now. She had every right to be here, and she wasn’t leaving until she got what she came for.

Wearing that thought like armor, she left the road and hurried through the orchard, the leafy apple branches rattling above her as her boots sank into the muddy ground. The neat rows of trees ended in a tangle of wild rosebushes, overgrown fennel, and windswept hazel trees. To the unpracticed eye, it appeared to be impassable, but Dinah knew better.

Angling her tall, thin frame, she edged between two leafy hazel trees, their wide skirt of leaves swallowing Dinah whole for a moment before spitting her out the other side. Brushing at a stray twig caught on her cloak, Dinah raised her face to stare at the tiny weathered cottage that was tucked in the center of a garden that was part vegetables, part flowers, and part herbs.

The cottage listed to the right now, and there were shingles missing from the roof. Two steps leading up to the porch were caving in, and cheerful clusters of bluebells grew out of cracks in the home’s foundation.

Dinah’s hands shook as she slowly made her way to the porch and knocked hard on the faded blue front door. The last time she’d been here, she’d made a bargain thinking she understood the strength of the witch she was dealing with.

She’d been wrong, and it had cost her dearly.

She wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

The door swung open. The woman who stood on the other side barely reached Dinah’s shoulder. Her belly was wide, sagging toward the floor beneath the cover of her stained apron, and wrinkles furrowed their way across her brow now, but her dark eyes were as sharp as they had been sixteen years ago.

“You!” The witch moved back a step, and Dinah took that as permission to crowd her way into the cottage.

Dinah’s face was a cold mask, her gaze as unrelenting as the rain that fell outside the cottage’s windows. She could show no fear. No weakness.

“What are you doing here?” The witch asked, though she’d stopped backing up and was reaching for a slip of hazel wood that rested on a table beside the door.

“I came to buy spells, Riva,” Dinah said, her voice as cold and steady as her expression, though she was surreptitiously glancing around the cottage, searching for something she already knew Riva would have the good sense to keep hidden.

Riva grabbed the hazel wood and raised it, one end pointed at Dinah’s chest. Her voice was a low hiss. “Liar.”

The barbs of anger became a flush of rage pressing against Dinah’s skin, and she raised her chin. “I’ve never lied to you.”

Riva’s mouth tightened. “You think I don’t know what you’re really after? I’ve had sixteen years of silence, and now you show up stinking of desperation and greed, and it isn’t for a few small spells from me. You want to let the blood wraith out of its cage in the Wilds. You want to sacrifice innocents for the promise of the wraith’s dark power again. Let me tell you this: I wouldn’t help you open its cage even if I could.”

“Even to save my daughters?”

Riva’s eyes narrowed.

“I’ve been to the gate that holds the wraith in the Wilds. I know the spell that was used.”

Riva froze, the pulse in her neck pounding. “That’s impossible.”

Dinah waited for Riva to glance toward wherever she’d hidden the spell, but the witch held Dinah’s gaze, a frown digging in between her brows. Dinah glanced around the cottage, taking in the tumble of books on the shelves, the loose piles of parchment where Riva had written spells for every conceivable situation.

Every situation but one that required her to take a life. That had always been her weakness. So much power, so little will to use it.

“You’re bluffing,” Riva said, her voice low and furious. “Trying to trick me into giving something away—”

“One strand of silver, one of gold, and one of rose lead,” Dinah said. She drifted toward the closest pile of parchment, but pulled up short when a brilliant green spark shot from Riva’s wand and nearly collided with Dinah’s face.

“Anyone can look at the lock and see which metals were used. You’re fishing, and it isn’t going to work.”

Dinah turned the full force of her gaze on Riva. Pretending she was in the council room with the queen instead of facing a witch who could destroy her, she lifted her chin and armed herself with absolute confidence. “Burnt bolla and myrrh. Ground yew with notes of wintermint.”

She leaned toward Riva, ignoring the wand that was pointed at her chest. This was it. Her big gamble. If Riva didn’t fall for it, if she didn’t give Dinah a clue she could use, there were no other cards she could play. “And one very special ingredient. Very rare. It took me forever to isolate it.”

Riva paled, and Dinah smiled, slow and cruel, though her knees were shaking. “However did you come by it, Riva? It’s not like you to be quite that creative.”

As soon as she said the words, Dinah saw the truth on Riva’s face.

Riva truly wasn’t that creative. And whatever had been used to bind the spices to the metal had been something so far out of the ordinary that even Dinah, with all her years of experience with such things, couldn’t identify it.

“You didn’t make the lock, did you?”