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

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?”

“Of course I did.”

Riva was a terrible liar. She blinked repeatedly, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

Now it was Dinah who hissed, “Liar.”

Riva took a step forward and jabbed the wand into the skin above Dinah’s heart. A jolt of power leaped from the hazel wood into Dinah, and pain crashed through her. She clenched her teeth to keep from crying out.

“I told you I wouldn’t help you, even if I could.” Riva’s voice was steady, though something dark haunted her eyes. Grief? Remorse?

“I’m going to lose everything,” Dinah said quietly, hoping to appeal to the part of Riva that had once welcomed Dinah with open arms. “My home. My businesses. Maybe even my daughters too.”

Riva closed her eyes as if pained by Dinah’s words, but when she opened them again, they were hard. “The blood wraith isn’t the way to solve those problems.”

“I just need the wraith for one day. One single day.”

“No.”

“Riva—”

“Leave it be. I can’t help you.”

“Then the person who made the lock—”

“She’s dead.” Riva spat the words at Dinah. “Been dead for years. There’s nothing you can do to change that. The blood wraith is out of your reach.”

Dinah held Riva’s gaze and waited, but the witch’s breathing remained steady, her stare unwavering.