Sharp teeth rasped against my neck, though they did not break the skin. “It will be amusing to play with her.”
“Our plan was to kill her,” Kit complained. He was even twitchier and more restless now that Louisa was here. I remained silent, trying to figure out what game they were playing. “Then everything will be as it was before.”
“Patience.” Louisa drank in my scent. “Can you smell her fear? It always sharpens my appetite.”
Kit inched closer, fascinated.
“But you are pale, Christopher. Do you need more physic?” Louisa modified her grasp on me so that she could reach into her pocket. She handed Kit a sticky brown lozenge. He took it from her eagerly, thrusting the ball into his mouth. “They are miraculous, are they not? The warmbloods in Germany call them ‘Stones of Immortality,’ for the ingredients somehow make even pitiful humans feel that they are divine. And they have made you feel strong again.”
“It is the witch who weakens me, just as she weakened your brother.” Kit’s eyes turned glassy, and there was a sickeningly sweet tang to his breath. Opiates. No wonder he was behaving so strangely.
“Is that true, witch? Kit says you bound my brother against his will.” Louisa swung me around. Her beautiful face embodied every warmblood’s nightmare of a vampire: porcelain-pale skin, dusky black hair, and dark eyes that were as fogged with opium as Kit’s. Malevolence rolled off her, and her perfectly bowed red lips were not only sensual but cruel. This was a creature who would hunt and kill without a hint of remorse.
“I did not bind your brother. I chose him—and he chose me, Louisa.”
“You know who I am?” Louisa’s dark eyebrows rose.
“Matthew doesn’t keep secrets from me. We are mates. Husband and wife, too. Your father presided over our marriage.” Thank you, Philippe.
“Liar!” Louisa screamed. Her pupils engulfed the iris as her control snapped. It was not just drugs that I would have to contend with but blood rage, too.
“Trust nothing she says,” Kit warned. He pulled a dagger from his doublet and grabbed my hair. I cried out at the pain as he wrenched my head back. Kit’s dagger orbited my right eye. “I am going to pluck out her eyes so that she can no longer use them for enchantments or to see my fate. She knows my death. I am sure of it. Without her witch’s sight, she will have no hold on us—or on Matthew.”
“The witch does not deserve such a swift death,” Louisa said bitterly.
Kit pressed the point into my flesh just under the brow bone, and a drop of blood rolled down my cheek. “That wasn’t our agreement, Louisa. To break her spell, I must have her eyes. Then I want her dead and gone. So long as the witch lives, Matthew will not forget her.”
“Shh, Christopher. Do I not love you? Are we not allies?” Louisa reached for Kit and kissed him deeply. She moved her mouth along his jaw and down to where the blood pounded in his veins. Her lips brushed against the skin, and I saw the smear of blood that accompanied her movement. Kit drew a shuddering breath and closed his eyes.
Louisa drank hungrily from the daemon’s neck. While she did, we stood in a tight knot, locked together in the vampire’s strong arms. I tried to squirm away, but her grip on me only tightened as her teeth and lips battened on Kit.
“Sweet Christopher,” she murmured when she had drunk her fill, licking at the wound. The mark on Kit’s neck was silvery and soft, just like the scar on my breast. Louisa must have fed from him before. “I can taste the immortality in your blood and see the beautiful words that dance through your thoughts. Matthew is a fool not to want to share them with you.”
“He wants only the witch.” Kit touched his neck, imagining that it was Matthew, and not his sister, who had drunk from his veins. “I want her dead.”
“As do I.” Louisa turned her bottomless black eyes on me. “And so we will compete for her. Whoever wins may do with her as she—or he—will to make her atone for the wrongs she has done my brother. Do you agree, my darling boy?”
The two of them were high as kites now that Louisa had shared Kit’s opiate-laden blood. I started to panic, then remembered Philippe’s instructions at Sept-Tours.
Think. Stay alive.
Then I remembered the baby, and my panic returned. I couldn”t do anything that might endanger our child.
Kit nodded. “I will do anything to have Matthew’s regard once more.”
“I thought so.” Louisa smiled and kissed him deeply again. “Shall we choose our colors?”
Chapter Thirty Five
"You are making a terrible mistake, Louisa,” I warned, struggling against my bonds. She and Kit had removed the shapeless straw-and-burlap mannequin and tied me to the post in its place. Then Kit had blindfolded me with a strip of dark blue silk taken from the tip of one of the waiting lances, so that I could not enchant them with my gaze. The two stood nearby, arguing over who would use the black-and-silver lance and who the green-and-gold.
“You’ll find Matthew with the queen. He’ll explain everything.” I tried to keep my voice steady, but it trembled. Matthew had told me about his sister in modern Oxford, while we drank tea by his fireplace at the Old Lodge. She was as vicious as she was beautiful.
“You dare to utter his name?” Kit was wild with anger.
“Do not speak again, witch, or I will let Christopher remove your tongue after all.” Louisa’s voice was venomous, and I didn’t need to see her eyes to know that poppy and blood rage were not a good mix. The point of Ysabeau’s diamond scratched lightly against my cheek, drawing blood. Louisa had broken my finger wrenching it off and was now wearing it herself.
“I am Matthew’s wife, his mate. What do you imagine his reaction will be when he finds out what you’ve done?”
“You are a monster—a beast. If I win the challenge, I will strip you of your false humanity and expose what lies underneath.” Louisa’s words trickled into my ears like poison. “Once I have, Matthew will see what you truly are, and he will share in our pleasure at your death.”
When their conversation faded into the distance, I had no way of knowing where they were or from which direction they might return. I was utterly alone.
Think. Stay alive.
Something fluttered in my chest. But it wasn’t panic. It was my firedrake. I wasn’t alone. And I was a witch. I didn’t need my eyes to see the world around me.
What do you see? I asked the earth and the air.
It was my firedrake who answered. She chirped and chattered, her wings stirring in the space between my belly and lungs as she assessed the situation.
Where are they? I wondered.
My third eye opened wide, revealing the shimmering colors of late spring in all their blue and green glory. One darker green thread was twisted with white and tangled with something black. I followed it to Louisa, who was climbing onto the back of an agitated horse. It wouldn’t stand still for the vampire and kept shying away. Louisa bit it on the neck, which made the horse stand stock-still but did nothing to alleviate its terror.
I followed another set of threads, these crimson and white, thinking they might lead to Matthew. Instead I saw a bewildering whirl of shapes and colors. I fell—far, far until I landed on a cold pillow. Snow. I drew the cold winter air into my lungs. I was no longer tied to a stake on a late-May afternoon at Greenwich Palace. I was four or five, lying on my back in the small yard behind our house in Cambridge.
And I remembered.
My father and I had been playing after a heavy snowfall. My mittens were Harvard crimson against the white. We were making angels, our arms and legs sweeping up and down. I was fascinated by how, if I moved my arms quickly enough, the white wings seemed to take on a red tinge.
“It’s like the dragon with the fiery wings,” I whispered to my father. His arms stilled.
“When did you see a dragon, Diana?” His voice was serious. I knew the difference between that tone and his usual teasing one. It meant he expected an answer—and a truthful one.
“Lots of times. Mostly at night.” My arms beat faster and faster. The snow underneath their span was changing color, shimmering with green and gold, red and black, silver and blue.
“And where was it?” he whispered, staring at the snowdrifts. They were mounting up around me, heaving and rumbling as though alive. One grew tall and stretched itself into a slender dragon’s head. The drift stretched wide into a pair of wings. The dragon shook flakes of snow from its white scales. When it turned and looked at my father, he murmured something and patted its nose as though he and the dragon had already met. The dragon breathed warm vapor into the frigid air.
“Mostly it’s inside me—here.” I sat up to show my father what I meant. My mittened hands went to the curved bones of my ribs. They were warm through the skin, through my jacket, through the chunky knit of the mittens. “But when she needs to fly, I have to let her out. There’s not enough room for her wings otherwise.”
A pair of shining wings rested on the snow behind me.
“You left your own wings behind,” my father said gravely.
The dragon wormed her way out of the snowdrift. Her silver-and-black eyes blinked as she pulled free, rose into the air, and disappeared over the apple tree, becoming more insubstantial with every flap of her wings. Mine were already fading on the snow behind me.
“The dragon won’t take me with her. And she never stays around for very long,” I said with a sigh. “Why is that, Daddy?”
“Maybe she has somewhere else to be.”
I considered this possibility. “Like when you and Mommy go to school?” It was perplexing to think of parents going to school. All the children on the block thought so, even though most of their parents spent all day at school, too.
“Just like that.” My father was still sitting in the snow, his arms wrapped around his knees. He smiled. “I love the witch in you, Diana.”
“She scares Mommy.”
“Nah.” My father shook his head. “Mommy is just scared of change.”
“I tried to keep the dragon a secret, but I think she knows anyway,” I said glumly.
“Mommies usually do,” my father said. He looked down at the snow. My wings were entirely gone now. “But she knows when you want hot chocolate, too. If we go inside, my guess is she’ll have it ready.” My father got to his feet and held out his hand.
I slipped mine, still wearing crimson mittens, into his warm grip.
“Will you always be here to hold my hand when it gets dark?” I asked. Night was falling, and I was suddenly afraid of the shadows. Monsters lurked in the gloom, strange creatures who watched me as I played.
“Nope,” my father said with a shake of his head. My lip trembled. That wasn’t the answer I wanted. “You’ ll have to be brave enough for both of us one day. But don’t worry.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “You’ ll always have your dragon.”
A drop of blood fell from the pierced skin around my eye to the ground by my feet. Even though I was blindfolded, I could see its leisurely movement and the way it landed with a wet splat. A black shoot emerged from the spot.
Hooves thundered toward me. Someone gave a high, keening cry that conjured up images of ancient battles. The sound made the firedrake even more restless. I couldn’t let them reach me. The results could be deadly.
Instead of trying to see the threads that led to Kit and Louisa, I focused on the ones wrapped in the fibers that bound my wrists and ankles. I was starting to make progress loosening them when something sharp and heavy splintered against my ribs. The impact knocked the breath from my body.
“A hit!” Kit cried. “The witch is mine!”
“A glancing blow,” Louisa corrected. “You must seat the lance in her body to claim her as your prize. You agreed to the rules and must abide by them.”
Sadly, I didn’t know the rules—neither of jousting nor of magic, either. Goody Alsop had made that plain before we left for Prague. All you have now is a wayward firedrake, a glaem that is near to blinding, and a tendency to ask questions that have mischievous answers, she’d said. I’d been neglecting my weaving in favor of court intrigue and stopped pursuing my magic to hunt for Ashmole 782. Perhaps if I’d stayed in London, I would have known how to get myself out of this mess. Instead I was bound to a thick log like a witch about to be set alight.
Think. Stay alive.
“We must try again,” Louisa said. Her words faded as she wheeled her horse around and rode away.
“Don’t do this, Kit,” I said. “Think what it will do to Matthew. If you want me gone, I’ll go. I promise.”
“Your promises are nothing, witch. You will cross your fingers and find a way to wriggle out of your assurances. I can see the glaem about you even now as you try to work your magic against me.”
A glaem near to blinding. Questions that elicit mischievous answers. And a wayward firedrake.