The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(97)
Dinah tapped her dagger against the counter. The ingredients Blue had included in the fake spell were strewn across its surface, including a small leaf of volshkyn. “Do you know, I almost admire your ingenuity?”
Blue glanced around, hunting for a weapon. Papa’s apron hung on a hook to her left. To the right was the dish rack with a few bowls and mugs still set out to dry from the Chauveaus’ breakfast.
Dinah picked up the ingredients one by one—thresh moss, bolla root, yew, myrrh, and bergamot, along with the small volshkyn leaf. “This created a good protection spell, though carpa leaf would’ve been better than bergamot, don’t you think? And adding the volshkyn . . . that was inspired. Guaranteed to give me hope.”
She threw the ingredients at Blue and rushed toward her.
Blue twisted to the right, grabbed a mug, and dashed it against the counter. It burst into pieces, leaving the jagged shard of a handle in Blue’s grasp. Dinah slammed into her, trying to reach the doorknob. Blue slashed at her with the pottery, slicing through the woman’s sleeve and into her arm. Blood welled, and then Dinah was grappling with her, trying to stab the hand that held the pottery with her dagger.
Blue threw herself at Dinah, ramming the bony part of her shoulder into the woman’s stomach. Dinah’s breath wheezed, and she slashed at Blue with the dagger. Its blade bit into Blue’s chest, tearing open a small wound.
Blue pressed a hand to her chest, but the blood was already spilling faster than she could stop it. Dinah shoved her away from the door, and Blue grabbed the woman’s wounded arm for balance. They went down in a tangle of limbs, and the weapon Blue had been using flew out of her hand.
“Just tell me where it is, and I’ll spare you and Lucian,” Dinah snarled as Blue slapped her hands against the floor, hunting for another shard to use.
Her hand, covered in her own blood and blood from Dinah’s wound, hit something sticky, and she pulled back, leaving a bloody handprint on the volshkyn leaf.
The leaf sizzled, its edges curling up as the blood bubbled into tiny crimson beads, danced across the surface, and then sank into the thin veins that ran through the leaf.
Beside her, Dinah gasped and then lunged for Blue, knocking her onto her back.
“How did you do that?”
Blue swallowed hard and put every ounce of fury she possessed into her face. “Go crawl off and die.”
Dinah’s smile sent ice down Blue’s spine. “You had your blood and mine on your hand when you touched that leaf. And now that blood is bonded with the plant.” Her eyes widened as her smile grew. “You have magic, don’t you? So did your mother. It’s the only way she could have locked up the wraith. The only way she could have permanently bonded all those ingredients, because believe me, I’ve tried everything to break that lock. All the antidotes to the things she used to build it have failed.” She dipped her face closer to Blue’s, the dagger’s tip digging into the soft skin of Blue’s throat. “And now I know why. The rare ingredient wasn’t a stone or a leaf or some rare mineral from another kingdom. It was you.”
Blue couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak as the truth blazed through her mind like lightning.
That’s why Mama never told anyone the spell. Not even Grand-mère.
She wasn’t protecting the kingdom from the wraith’s return. She was protecting Blue from those who might want to free the wraith, foolishly thinking to harness the creature’s power for themselves.
Dinah started humming, and Blue’s throat closed at the look of vicious triumph on the woman’s face. Mama’s lullaby. The one she wrote just for Blue. The one with the scattered mention of plants and metals that Blue had always assumed meant nothing more than a way to connect a budding alchemist child with her mother.
“She did leave the spell behind, didn’t she?” Dinah asked softly. “It’s in that atrocious lullaby you sing to yourself every time you harvest in the garden. How does it go again? I’ll just skip to the important parts. A branch of myrrh and bolla root, silver, gold, and rose, a drop of mint and a sprig of yew.”
She leaned closer, pressing the dagger until blood flowed down its blade. “And three little drops of Blue.”
Standing, she wrenched open the root cellar door. Blue rolled to her knees and reached for Dinah, desperately trying to stop her from going after Lucian.
But Dinah wasn’t going after Lucian. She was going after Blue. Grabbing Blue’s outstretched hands, she dragged her across the floor and flung her face-first onto the ladder that led down into the root cellar.
Blue grabbed on to the sides of the ladder, desperately trying to keep from sliding all the way down to the ground. Below her, Lucian cried out as the door to the root cellar slammed shut and locked with a sharp snick, leaving them in utter darkness.
FORTY
“BLUE?”
Lucian’s voice floated out of the darkness at the far end of the root cellar, where he was carefully searching the shelves for the alluminae flax she’d harvested nearly a month ago from a riverbed north of the city.
“Yes?” She tried and failed to make her voice strong and steady. Panic raged within as she sat in the center of the root cellar, her back to one of the wooden chests Papa had left behind, her arms wrapped around her middle. If she held on tight, she could keep herself from falling apart at the seams. She wouldn’t think about being trapped in the cellar once more in the dark. Wouldn’t think about hours spent crying, screaming for help.