The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(100)
It didn’t matter why Dinah hated the royal family. All that mattered was that she wanted revenge with every fiber of her being, and the betrothal ball tonight would be the perfect way to get it. All the royals, anyone of influence who was also involved in imprisoning the wraith, would be under the same roof. What better way to exact vengeance than to turn the wraith loose on them all while they danced in celebration of Kellan and his soon-to-be bride?
The idea of Kellan choosing a girl from one of the head families sent a pang though her heart, but she ignored it. She had a wraith to destroy. Her broken heart would have to wait.
How was she going to kill the monster?
She closed her eyes and thought through all her options. She’d tried every combination of compatible ingredients. Used her blood to alchemize them. They were solid potions, but if these were enough to kill the wraith, Mama would’ve already done it years ago.
She needed something that could dissolve the thing. Acid, maybe, though transporting that safely would be difficult and throwing it at the wraith was an imprecise delivery system. The wraith could dodge most of it. It could splash onto people around the creature. It could wound it, but not kill it, and then Blue would’ve only made it angry.
No, she needed to kill it from the inside out. A poison. Something strong enough to destroy a fae.
But she didn’t have a poison strong enough to kill a fae. Unless . . .
Her eyes flew open, and she stared at the group of items she’d moved to the side because they weren’t compatible with anything else.
Would they be compatible if she used her blood? There was only one way to find out. Pulling the jar of syphur weed and the satchel of mink’s foot herb to the center of her makeshift workstation, she carefully shook out a pinch of each into a small bowl. She added a dash of yaeringlei oil to act as a conduit and then scratched open the wound on her hand so she could squeeze out a few drops of blood. The mixture immediately bubbled, smoke rising to sting Blue’s eyes. Hastily, she backed away, lest she breathe any of the poison into her lungs, and waited for the bubbling to stop. When all was silent again, she crept forward and looked into the bowl.
The syphur weed and mink’s foot had dissolved, turning the oil into a thick brown liquid that smelled like death itself.
There was no way to know if the amount of liquid in the bowl was enough to kill the wraith, but it was certainly enough to take down at least four horses. Maybe more. She’d used far more generous amounts of each ingredient for this potion than she ever had when using them separately to make a spray for farmers to use to keep bugs and vermin away from their crops.
It was the strongest poison she could create. Two lethal doses bonded together with the strength of her blood. Now she just had to figure out a delivery system.
“Blue, someone’s in the house!” Lucian whispered from where he was balanced at the top of the ladder, the jar of acid poised over the doorknob. “I hear footsteps upstairs.”
Quickly, Blue poured the contents of the bowl into her last empty jar, corked it, and hurried toward the ladder. She’d figure out the delivery system once they were clear of the house.
“Get us out of here,” she said.
The acid sizzled against the doorknob, and the hot stench of melting iron filled the air. Soon, Lucian had the door open. The sounds of Halette and Jacinthe getting ready for the ball drifted down from upstairs as Blue and Lucian crept out of the root cellar. Blue grabbed the volshkyn leaf that had bonded with Dinah’s blood from the floor, and they tiptoed out the front door and began running.
FORTY-ONE
MOONLIGHT BATHED THE landscape in silvery light as Dinah stalked over the marshland that led to the Wilds, triumph a wicked flame inside her bones.
She’d spent the day in the de la Cours’ shop testing the spell’s ingredients. Figuring out which ratios made the most sense. And figuring out a counterspell strong enough to destroy the lock as long as she used Blue’s blood to bind the lock and the spell together. All those years studying to be a witch had paid off.
All this time, the answer to her problem had been standing right in front of her. She hadn’t known Blue’s family possessed magic, but now that she did, everything made sense.
Riva, that fickle witch, hadn’t had enough power on her own to defeat the wraith. She’d needed someone with a different sort of magic. Someone who could create unbreakable bonds.
Someone like Blue.
But Blue’s bonds weren’t unbreakable. Not if Blue’s blood was used against itself. Dinah had tried it out in the shop with extremely satisfactory results.
She kicked bones aside, sending a small corpse spinning down the hill as she approached the gate. The strands of silver, gold, and rose lead glittered in the moonlight, and Dinah’s smile stretched wide and feral as the wraith’s scream split the air.
Pulling the potion from her pocket, she carefully poured it over the lock. The metal sizzled and hissed, acrid smoke rising to sting Dinah’s eyes.
Sixteen years of waiting and planning. Sixteen long, torturous years pretending to adore the royal family who’d ordered the wraith’s destruction. Pretending to be satisfied with an ordinary life. With the fragile power that came from wealth and status. Power that could so easily disappear with a single wrong move.
The lock was melting, silver running into gold running into rose lead and bleeding down the iron bars of the gate. The wraith rushed forward, its scream turning from anguish to vicious anticipation as the iron cracked.