The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(37)
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the hot, sharp grief within her had settled into a dull ache, and that instead of feeling irritated with him, she found herself telling him the truth.
“I wanted to dance. I thought the laughter and the music sounded so much better than walking home alone in the dark to a house full of strangers.” She lifted her shoulders in a tiny shrug. “I guess it was kind of foolish since I didn’t have a dance partner.”
He met her gaze and gave her the charming smile that usually made her want to smack him. Bowing low, he offered his hand and said, “You have one now.”
FIFTEEN
TIME WAS RUNNING out. Dinah had pressured every contact she had, but no one would loan her anywhere close to the amount of coin she needed. She had taken bold measures to kill Pierre de la Cour and forge a guardianship document that gave her control of his daughter and his property, but the girl had yet to even reach for the little pot, where Dinah knew for a fact the results of her experimental gold still lay. And she had less than a week before the estate’s debts were turned over to the royal magistrate for review, effectively ending her bid for the throne.
In truth, she might not even have that long. Rumors had begun to spread. People wondered why she wasn’t living in the Chauveau mansion, and even her lie about wanting a change of scenery for her daughters after their father’s awful death wasn’t enough to convince everyone. She could pack them up and move back home. It was still her house until the estate review was completed.
But if she did that, she put her daughters in close proximity to the odious Mr. Dubois, who’d taken to visiting all the business interests she owned, asking questions only a prospective owner would ask. True, he could ask the right staff members for her current location and find her easily enough, but at least her daughters wouldn’t be subjected to the daily injury of whispered speculation about their father, their finances, or their future.
Plus, if she returned to the Chauveau quarter, she’d have to either give up on her plan to get Blue to create gold for her or take the girl and her ridiculous cat with her, and Dinah was certain Blue would fight tooth and nail to stay at her farmhouse. She needed the girl on her side. Needed her to start making gold again because she wanted to, not because Dinah was forcing her. It was the only way to ensure the girl didn’t deliberately botch the experiment. There was a wide streak of independence in Blue, and Dinah needed the girl to feel like making gold for the Chauveaus was her own choice. Dinah just hadn’t quite figured out how to do it.
Meanwhile, she needed a distraction from the rumors that were swiftly spreading. Something that would grab the attention of the queen and the entire royal council so completely that they never thought to look into any silly little whispers about the Chauveaus.
Blue leaving the shop early gave Dinah the perfect opportunity. First, she double-checked the locks on both shop doors. It would never do for the woman who’d championed for the death of those caught using magic to be seen doing magic herself.
When she was certain no one could interrupt her, she pulled one of Blue’s pots onto the stove, lit the burner, and reached for some elfynrod, threffalk, mollywog, and charing root. A dusting of silver and a small thread of copper went into the pot next. Then Dinah stood over the mixture, stirred counterclockwise thirteen times, and whispered the words to a spell she hadn’t used in nearly two decades, praying the tiny spark of fae in her blood would be enough to infuse the mixture with magic.
Fat, glossy bubbles rose to the surface of the bloodred liquid, and Dinah smiled.
You could take a girl away from her cauldron, but you could never really take the witchcraft out of her heart.
Setting her spoon down, she leaned over the mixture and whispered her intent as the bubbles burst, their hearts blooming black until none of the red remained. Dinah cut a burlap sack into small squares and measured three drops of the spell onto each square. The thick, tarry liquid soaked into the squares and hardened. After quickly cleaning the pot, restocking the ingredients she hadn’t used, and then wiping down her work surface, Dinah gathered the burlap pieces into her cloak pocket and left the shop as the sun sank into the distant horizon, disintegrating around the western mountains in ribbons of fire.
For a moment, Dinah stared at the far-off mountains, her heart beating in strange, heavy thuds.
That’s where the true magic existed. That’s where true power lived and breathed, trapped in a cage Dinah didn’t know how to break.
If she had the wraith at her disposal, all of Mr. Dubois’s carefully laid plans, all his guards and the many locks on his doors, would be nothing. Ash in the wind. A pile of twigs trying desperately to stop a fire from spreading.
But she didn’t have the wraith, and it was no use dreaming about weapons that were out of reach. She had her own ingenuity, her own courage, and her own unflinching readiness to do what was necessary. It would be enough.
Turning, she began moving through the Gaillard quarter until she reached a small crowd standing outside a butcher’s shop waiting to buy at a discount the poorer cuts of meat left over from the day’s customers. She slipped a square from her pocket and whispered, “Sruthán gan scor.” The square heated in her hand, the tarry black of the spell beginning to bubble. She dropped the burlap between the feet of those closest to the road and then hurried on.
She was just turning toward the next quarter when the screaming began.