The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(113)

A spell erupted from the wand and struck Marielle as she whirled to face Nessa. Thorny vines spread rapidly along Marielle’s back, wrapped around her body, and sank barbs into her skin. The chair landed on the floor in pieces.

And Marielle, her palms still cradling the storm of magic, slammed her hands together.

The storm exploded outward—a silvery-clear pulse of magic that tore through the cottage, blew out the windows, and sent Blue hurtling through the door.

She landed on her back in the same bed of lavender, and all the air left her body. Frantically, she tried to ease the fist that had wrapped around her lungs as the cottage creaked and tilted, cracks running along its walls. She had to get up. Get to Nessa.

A thin wheeze of air flowed into Blue’s lungs, and she struggled to her feet. Dread was a shroud of stone wrapped around her as she mounted the steps once more and saw Nessa held tightly in the wraith’s grasp while Riva lay in an awkwardly crumpled heap on the floor.

“You’re supposed to be dead.” The wraith spat the words at Nessa, its black eyes blazing with fury.

So are you. Nessa was bleeding from her ears, and there were bruises blooming on her face, but she was alive, and Blue had to keep her that way.

A thud sounded behind Blue, and distantly she thought she heard Kellan’s voice shouting, but all her attention was focused on Nessa. The princess squirmed in the wraith’s grasp, clawing at the hands that held her, terror in her eyes.

Blue ran into the cottage.

The wraith opened its mouth wide, double rows of jagged teeth gleaming, and Nessa screamed, a high, thin wail that tapered off abruptly as the wraith sank its teeth into her shoulder.

“No!” Blue leaped over Riva’s body and threw herself at the wraith. It was like throwing herself at a boulder.

Desperately, she cast around for something to use as a weapon. The floor was scattered with debris. Books, parchment, jars of herbs, Riva’s wand, and the broken bits of the chair Nessa had used against Marielle.

Only one of those had any chance of being the kind of weapon Blue needed.

Blue snatched up the wand and waved it at the wraith.

Nothing happened.

Nessa’s body twitched, and she moaned as the wraith continued feeding.

Panic blazed through Blue, but she forced herself to think. A wand concentrated magical power. Blue’s power told her what wanted harvesting. What to combine. And bonded those things together. She had to think about what she wanted to harvest. What she wanted to combine. She had to will those things to bond.

She drew in a deep breath and raised the wand as Kellan burst into the cottage. He brushed past her as he attacked the wraith, desperately trying to wrench his sister from the monster’s grasp.

Blue made herself look at nothing but the wraith. Think of nothing but the wraith. The wraith and Blue.

Harvest the wraith. Combine it with my blood. Bond us together.

She aimed the wand at the wraith and held fast to what she wanted.

Her magic ignited, a swirling firestorm of power and hunger aimed straight at Marielle.

“Kellan, get back.” Her voice, full of magic, echoed throughout the cottage, shaking its walls.

The wand shivered eagerly in her fingers.

He stumbled back, one hand still on Nessa, his eyes beseeching Blue to save his sister.

She wasn’t going to let him down.

The storm churned through her veins, boiled in her blood, and then exploded out of the wand in a stream of brilliant light. The light struck the wraith, wrapped around its chest, and sank into its body.

Marielle dropped Nessa and came for Blue.

Blue opened her arms, her skin swelling with the poisonous blood that flowed in her veins. The wraith collided with her, mouth gaping wide. There was a flash of bright, burning pain as it sank its teeth into her neck, an instant of seeing the horror on Kellan’s face, and then there was simply nothing.





FORTY-SIX

KELLAN WAS DESPERATE.

The wraith had Blue pinned to the floor, its vicious fangs sunk deep into the side of her neck. Every pull, every swallow of blood sent a tremor through her. Her eyes were closed, and she looked weaker by the second.

Nessa was huddled beside him, blood slowly dripping down her shoulder from the wraith’s bite mark. She shivered as she stared at Blue.

Save her.

“I have to save you first, or she’ll never forgive me,” he said in a voice that broke at the end.

Pulling his coat from his shoulders, he wrapped Nessa in its warmth and scooped her up. Her hands moved furiously.

Put me down and save her. It’s killing her.

“And she’s killing it. She bonded a powerful poison to her blood as a trap for the wraith. We have to trust that she knows what she’s doing.” Please, please let Blue know what she was doing. Otherwise, he’d just condemned her to a pointless death, and he’d never be able to live with himself.

If you won’t save her, I will.

Kellan’s arms tightened around his sister, and he hung on for a moment as he pressed a kiss into her hair. “You already did. You followed her, and I followed you.”

Actually, the enchanted dancing slipper had done the following. It had pulled him through the city streets, out of the western gate, and down the lane until he’d reached an orchard in time to hear the thunderclap of the wraith’s magic as it half destroyed the cottage. But he didn’t say any of that to Nessa. Not when he needed her to believe her job was done so that she’d stay clear of the wraith.