The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(91)
“Yes. And the wraith is a living being, just like everything else you harvest. Your magic must be interpreting the monster’s longing for freedom as a need to be harvested.” Grand-mère’s voice shook. “If you had touched it, if it had sunk its teeth into you and drank your blood, it could’ve bonded with anything else you were touching.”
Blue’s knees trembled, and she abruptly sank onto the porch beside her basket. “I was touching Kellan.”
Grand-mère lowered herself to the step beside Blue. “And you were touching freedom. You were touching the world outside the gate.”
“Did you suspect this? Is that why you didn’t want me to go?”
Grand-mère gave a short, hard laugh. “If I’d suspected this, you would never have come within an hour’s walk of the Wilds, Kellan or no. No, I didn’t want you to go because I saw what the wraith did to children while it walked our streets. And I heard your mother cry for months afterward whenever she tried to talk about locking it away. She made me promise I would keep you from the wraith. I thought it was simply because she didn’t want to risk losing you. Now I wonder if she already knew what your blood could do.”
“She wasn’t trying to protect me from the wraith,” Blue said softly. “She was trying to protect all of Balavata from what the wraith could do through me.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
THE PROTECTION SPELL Blue had begun two days ago was ready. She donned gloves, grabbed a pair of tongs, and set out fourteen small glass vials. She’d already placed a hair from each person who needed protection into a vial and marked the bottom with their initials. Now she lifted each vial with the tongs and carefully poured an ounce of the spell inside. The liquid swirled in streaks of pink and silver and smelled like honey and musk.
When each vial held an ounce, Blue scraped the bottom of the cauldron she’d used to brew the potion and came up with slivers of the pink sapphire she’d used to concentrate the power of the spell. Slipping one tiny shard of the jewel into each vial, she corked them, sealed them with a dab of black wax, and pushed one end of a silver chain into the wax so the chain would be permanently attached once the wax dried.
Lucian waited by the storeroom door. Dinah still hadn’t made an appearance, and Blue decided that meant the woman had what she wanted and would now leave her alone.
“Lucian, could you come here, please?” she called. When he joined her at her counter, she gathered all the vials except for Kellan’s and Nessa’s and showed him the labels. “I need these delivered to each of the head families. They should be expecting them since they willingly gave up a strand of each girl’s hair three days ago.”
Lucian packed them into his bag, but before he could leave, Blue pulled him close. “Remember what happened to Ana. Don’t go anywhere with anyone. Not even for a job. Promise me.”
“I promise,” he said, and Blue’s heart ached.
She’d told him about finding Ana when they’d first entered the shop. Asked him to warn the other street kids. Held him while he cried and shed some tears of her own.
“Hurry, now. And stay safe,” she said as she sent him on his way.
As soon as he left for the long trek to each head family’s home in Falaise de la Mer’s nine quarters, Blue packed up the other two vials and locked the shop. Then she hurried through the city streets toward the castle. She’d give the necklaces to Nessa and ask her to pass Kellan’s along to him. It was better that way. If she didn’t see him, she wouldn’t be tempted by what she couldn’t have.
The sun hung heavy in the sky, a ripe orange waiting to be plucked. Soon dusk would fall, and Blue didn’t want to be alone on the city streets after dark. Not after seeing the wraith come for her. Not after hearing it scream while she was surrounded by the bones of the children it had devoured.
She picked up the pace and was nearly out of breath when she approached the guards at the castle’s entrance. They nodded respectfully to her and let her pass. The advantages of being a frequent visitor.
She didn’t want to be a frequent visitor once Kellan married someone else. Didn’t want to see him walking arm in arm with his chosen bride and imagine all the things she wished she’d said to him. The things she wished she’d done with him when she had the chance.
The butler informed her that Nessa was in the royal garden, and Blue opted to skirt the south side of the castle rather than walk its halls, where she might run into Kellan. She reached the garden’s main path soon enough and ducked beneath the hanging roses that twined around the raised arch that spanned the entrance.
The path wound through regal oaks, large iron pots with cheerful collections of flowers in riotous colors, and small groves of cypress and shirella trees. She hadn’t found Nessa yet, and nerves sparked as the shadows stretched longer, and the sun dipped closer to the horizon.
She’d just entered a grove of gently swaying shirella trees, their branches laden with the pale blue fruit, their glossy green leaves blocking out all but fragments of the sunlight, when she heard footsteps on the path. Turning to face the way she’d just taken, she said softly, “Nessa?”
Something rustled behind her, prickling the hair on the back of her neck. Whirling, she ran straight into Kellan. His arms shot out to steady her, and he tipped his face down to look at her.