Blood Prophecy

CHAPTER 15



Solange


I let go.

I didn’t know how else to save Lucy. I couldn’t afford to call Constantine’s bluff. There was no reason to think he wouldn’t drink her dry, as he’d threatened.

I ended up on the stone stairs again. At least I wasn’t wearing a silk slip anymore. The tapestry pouch of boxes full of Viola’s memories was still slung over my shoulder. I felt disoriented and numb. Tears made my vision waver. I had to find someplace safe to hide before I fell apart completely.

I stumbled down the steps and out onto the first landing I came across. Torchlight flickered down the hall. I slipped into a room with an unlocked door. It looked relatively innocuous, full of heavy and elaborately carved medieval furniture. There was a huge cabinet on the far wall. It was big enough for me to curl up on the bottom of it and still shut the door completely. A selection of woolen dresses hung on one side, smelling strongly of cedar and smoke. Light filtered through the keyhole. I tried to take deep breaths but I couldn’t stop the loud animal sobs from tearing through me.

London was dead.

She wasn’t undead like the rest of us. She was well and truly gone. There wasn’t even enough of her left to bury.

I cried until I felt empty and sick. The wooden slats of the cupboard were rough under my cheek and I’d lost feeling in my legs, except for the stabbing pain in my left knee. It was tempting to give up and stay here forever, hidden in an armoire where no one was currently trying to kill me or, worse, save me. I could fade away, becoming just another shadow in Viola’s subconscious. Gwyneth had done it for hundreds of years.

Actually, that wasn’t a comforting thought.

Gwyneth was half-crazy and alone. I could easily picture myself pale and thin, flitting between the stables and the castle, crawling over the moat filled with bloated corpses. I’d hide in the forest and eat leaves and bugs, cover myself in mud when it got cold. I’d forget this place wasn’t real. I’d forget my own name, Lucy’s, Kieran’s. Everyone. Everything.

I didn’t want that. A spark kindled in the cold pit of my stomach.

Apparently, I had some fight left in me, after all.

I’d miss my family. I’d miss the way Nicholas seemed to know what I was thinking before I thought it. The way Quinn smirked, the way Logan teased me. My mom, my dad. Eventually, I’d even miss Aunt Ruby.

I already missed Lucy. I missed how cheerful and brave she was, and her irreverence for the things that would make other people quake with fear.

And I missed Kieran. I’d been missing him before Viola possessed me completely. She’d broken us up in the end. And she’d done it so she could be with Constantine. The rat bastard. He’d fooled me right from the start. He’d made me believe I was special, that he understood me the way no one else had. I’d let him kiss me. I’d even let him drink my blood, that night in the Bower when I’d cut my hand on the wine bottle. I’d let him convince me that the only way to find Nicholas was to take the crown and control the guards.

He’d done it all for Viola.

The same way she’d stolen my very body from me, to be with him again.

They had each other now, but at what cost? I wouldn’t sacrifice the world to be with Kieran. And neither would he. That was one of the things I loved most about him. He had honor and courage. He held my hand like I was just a regular girl.

London had died to keep me safe. If I stayed here and fell to pieces she’d have died in vain. I’d be selfish and weak, letting everyone suffer because I hurt inside. I’d be as bad as Viola. I don’t care what happened to her in the past. She still had no right to ruin so many lives.

I forced myself to sit up and wipe the salt stains off my cheeks. The embroidered collar of my dress was damp and my hair fell in tangles covering my face. Viola had waited over eight hundred years to steal my body. I didn’t need to be told that she wouldn’t give it up without a fight.

Well, she was about to get one.

Because she might be a Drake, but I was the daughter of Helena Drake. I’d learned how to kick ass while still in the womb.

I reached into the tapestry bag. If Constantine was Viola’s strength, then he was also her weakness. I sorted through the boxes, trying to decipher what was inside by the clues provided on the outside. The last box I’d opened was decorated with a knight, a dragon, and a lady and it had shown me Viola and her own knight, Tristan Constantine. And her dragon: Madame Veronique. The Drake family.

There were seven boxes left. There was a gold one, a silver one, and one covered in brass inlay in the shape of tiny leaves. I hovered over one painted with a dragon but in the end I decided on the smallest one. It was small and sturdy and the red enamel made it look as if it was a tiny heart wet with blood.


1199


Viola thought the witch would have been older.

At the very least, older than herself. But she looked roughly the same age, with long brown hair adorned with strange beads. Viola could smell the mint on her from even a few feet away.

“Are you her?” she asked.

Viola nodded, propped up on the stone wall of the castle battlements, barely able to keep her eyes open. She’d never felt so exhausted in her entire life, and now, when she needed all of her strength, only her own willpower and love for Tristan kept her upright. “Did you bring it?”

“Of course.”

Viola had tried everything else. Her father could not be convinced. He alluded to family secrets, aside from the rumors of her illegitimate birth, which the Vales already knew and were comfortable with, reminded her that Tristan was newly knighted and penniless, and in the end, lost his temper and threw his goblet at the wall, startling his favorite hunting hawk off her perch. He refused to release her mother or take down the barbaric post and chains, or even to deny Madame Veronique’s claims that Viola was, in fact, a bastard. He softened long enough to remind her that he loved her as though she were truly his daughter and that she was never to speak of it again. And then he banished her to Bornebow Hall.

So it had to be tonight.

By tomorrow she’d be sixteen years old. She’d been lucky to be granted a reprieve until her sixteenth birthday. Her friend Anna was married to an old man with few teeth the day she turned fourteen. And no amount of weeping and wailing had changed her fate. Nor would it change Viola’s future. But now the maidservants fretted over her pale cheeks and her lack of appetite. She slept for hours and hours, long after the sun rose, and still she felt tired.

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

Only Tristan.

He was forbidden from being in her presence, and she was carefully guarded by soldiers and knights. Even the gatehouse keeper knew the color of her golden hair and would recognize her if she’d tried to sneak out to see him. She’d been reduced to bribing one of the kitchen maids with an enamel brooch to send word to the witch rumored to live in the woods.

“I thought witches were supposed to be old hags,” Viola said.

Gwyneth shrugged. “It’s naught but power and my nan taught me well.” She surveyed her dispassionately. “You’d be Viola then?”

“Lady Viola Drake,” Viola corrected, suddenly feeling vulnerable. Witches weren’t to be meddled with, after all. Her old nursemaid’s warnings prickled through her. “Can you help me?” she asked, picturing Tristan beside her to drive away her childish fears.

“That depends,” Gwyneth replied.

“There’s your payment.” Viola motioned wearily to a pouch lying on the crenellated top of the battlements. It was filled with several of her most valuable rings and bracelets.

“It’s not that,” Gwyneth said. “Magic can be fickle and the price is always more than any amount of gold you can hold in your hand. Are you willing to pay it?”

“Yes,” Viola said immediately. “For love, I’m willing to risk everything.”

“You don’t look well.”

Viola waved that aside. “I was told you can make demons dance. What’s a little love spell to that?”

“A great deal more.” She smiled smugly. “But I can do it.”

“Now? Here?”

She nodded. “Aye.”

Viola fell asleep as Gwyneth puttered around her. When she woke again, she was curled on the hard stone inside a circle of salt and herbs. Gwyneth had pulled her hood up over her hair and was muttering under her breath. Viola sat up.

“Don’t disturb the salt,” Gwyneth said sharply.

Viola froze, adjusting the hem of her dress. She stood slowly, noticing that the salt formed more than just a circle. There were designs as well, marching round the border in complicated patterns. The world tilted dizzily for a moment but she forced herself to stay standing.

“You brought it?” Gwyneth asked. She sounded different, powerful. “As I asked?”

Viola nodded and pulled a long chain out from under her dress. Gwyneth had requested an image of Viola and her lover; a drawing or painting. Viola chose her favorite pendant. It was simple wood in a gold frame. She’d discovered one of the stable boys whittling behind the stalls one summer morning. He had impressive talent and she’d paid him with apples from the orchard and extra mutton at supper to carve a relief of her and Tristan. She’d been wearing it around her neck ever since. She’d painted it so that it looked even more like Tristan, with his dark hair and violet-blue eyes.

Gwyneth circled around Viola. “You remember what I told your serving girl? A sacrifice is required, a gift for a gift.”

Viola pointed to an iron cage covered in cloth. Inside, a dove fluttered its wings as the covering slipped off and Gwyneth transferred it into the circle. “When the moon turns red,” she said. “You do what must be done. Anoint the pendant with the blood and speak your wish. Are you ready?”

Viola nodded, even though she could barely keep her eyelids open. She lowered to her knees next to the cage, feeling ancient. Everything was blurring. The torchlight hurt her eyes. The sound of Gwyneth’s hem dragging the ground felt like needles in her ears. Gwyneth spoke what sounded like a mixture of Saxon and Latin, throwing down handfuls of roses pierced with needles. Red thread bound them together in a garland.

Viola glanced at the moon, waiting for it to turn red. She felt as if she’d had too much mead, as if she were floating and the moon was close enough to touch. The magic must be working already. She chewed on her lip until it bled, staring at the moon. Just as she tasted the copper of her own blood on her tongue, the pale moon went faintly red, as if soaked in wine. Viola paused as she reached inside the cage. The bird flapped into the bars, panicking. Surely, this sacrifice was too small.

If she wanted to secure Tristan and her happiness, she had to be bolder. She had to be a knight on the field of battle, taking no quarter. She stood up, even though her feet were as heavy as a blacksmith’s anvils.

“I will be with my love,” she said. “Tristan Constantine and I will be together, nothing will keep us apart, not family, not treaties, not even death. We will always find each other, no matter the obstacle.”

“No,” Gwyneth snapped as Viola shuffled her feet through the salt boundary. “It’s not safe. Stay in the circle.”

If Viola had cared to look, she would have seen the energy whipping around the battlements, billowing under Gwyneth’s cloak and blowing out the torches. The shadows seemed to form into malevolent faces, turning into kind weeping girls, into snarling beasts. But she didn’t see them.

All she saw was a way to be with Tristan.

Gwyneth frowned at her. “Are you ill?” she asked over the howling of the unnatural winds.

“I’m sorry,” Viola whispered, before unhooking the small dagger hanging from her belt. Ladies always carried them, mostly for embroidery floss, eating supper, or gathering herbs from the garden.

Viola had nothing ladylike in mind.

She grabbed Gwyneth by the hair, curling her fingers tightly into the tangles. She’d felt sluggish and weak before, but a sudden burst of manic energy had her jabbing up with the dagger. The blade stuck into Gwyneth’s neck. She gurgled, blood welling almost instantly out of her mouth. The moon went dark. The winds died abruptly but the faint, ghostly howling remained. Viola jerked the knife across Gwyneth’s throat, the witch’s blood pouring out of the wound, soaking into her dress and dripping over the carved pendant of Tristan kissing Viola.

Gwyneth’s body collapsed in the salt and flowers. Viola slumped over her, half-unconscious. She felt as if there were ice inside her bones, as if fire seared under her skin, as she was completely filled with power and utterly devoid of it, all at the same time. She didn’t even have the energy to lift her head when she realized there was blood trickling down the side of Gwyneth’s neck and over her own mouth. It tasted sharp, metallic.

Good.

She swallowed despite herself, gingerly at first, with her eyes squeezed tightly shut and then greedily as she felt indescribable vigor and strength coursing through her. She was unstoppable. Magic fueled her. “Tristan,” she murmured, wiping blood off her face with her sleeve.

Sated, she stood slowly, unfurling like a pale deadly flower.

She tossed Gwyneth’s drained body over the side of the tower and turned away, back to the sleeping inhabitants of Bornebow Hall.