Blood Magick (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy 3)
“It’s for me, if there is a way, and I won’t ever stop looking, as because of this you can’t give me tomorrows. I can’t ask for them or give them to you. We could never have children.” He nodded. “I see you know that, too. Neither of us would bring a child into the world knowing he would carry this burden.”
“No.” Despair, and brutal acceptance, twisted her heart. “And when this is done . . . you’ll go again.”
“When this is done, could either of us be together as we are, knowing we’d never have the life we once imagined? Knowing this”—he touched his shoulder—“stands between us even after Cabhan’s end? As long as I wear it, he doesn’t truly end, and Sorcha’s curse goes on, in me. So I’ll never stop looking for a way.”
“So her curse comes back threefold. You, me, and the life we might have had.”
“We have today. It’s more than I believed I’d have with you again.”
“I thought it would be enough.” She walked into his arms, held tight.
“We’d best not waste it.”
“No, we won’t waste it.” She lifted her face, lifted her lips to his. “If I could wish it, we’d be ordinary.”
He could smile. “You could never be ordinary.”
“Just a woman who makes soaps and candles, and has a pretty shop in the village. And you just a man who has the stables and the falconry. If I could wish it. But . . .”
As she did, he looked at the counter, with the spell books, the jars. “If we were ordinary, we couldn’t do what has to be done. Best try the spell or you’ll be bleeding me again saying the blood’s not fresh enough.”
Duty, she thought, and destiny. Neither could be shirked.
She got the cauldron, lit its fire low.
The long, painstaking process took precision and power—step by careful step. Branna ordered herself to put all the previous failures aside, to treat this as the first attempt. The toxic brew bubbled and smoked as both she and Fin held their hands over the cauldron to slowly, slowly stir.
She drew a breath as they appr
oached the final step.
“Blacken, thicken under my hands,” she said.
Fin followed. “To make this poison for the damned.”
“Power of me,” they said together as with the words the brew bubbled forcibly. “Power of three, here fulfill our destiny. As we will, so mote it be.”
She felt the change, the spread of power and will, from her, from Fin. They reached for each other, linking that power and that will, letting it merge and, merging, increase.
Blocking all else, she focused only on that merging, that purpose, while her heart began a hard, quick tattoo in her breast, while the warmth and scents of her workshop faded away.
All light, bright and brilliant, rising in her, flowing from her. Blooming with what rose and flowed from him.
A meeting, physical, intimate, psychic, potent that built like a storm, ripped through her like a climax.
Her head fell back. She lifted her arms, palms up, fingers spread.
“Here, a weapon forged against the dark. Fired by faith and light. On the Dark Witch’s sacrificial ground, three by three by three will stand against the evil born in the black. Blood and death follow. Bring horse, hawk, hound together, and say the name. Ring bell, open book, light candle, say the name. Into fire white, all light, blinding bright, cast the stone and close the door. Blood and death follow. Be it demon, be it mortal, be it witch, blood and death follow.”
Her eyes, which had gone black, rolled back white. Fin managed to catch her before she fell, simply folded like a puppet with its strings nipped.
Even as he swept her up, she pressed a hand to his shoulder.
“I’m all right. Just dizzy for a minute.”
“You’ll sit right here.” He laid her on the little sofa in front of the fire, then going to her stock, scanned until he found what he wanted.
He didn’t bother to put the kettle on, but made tea with a snap of his fingers, poured six drops of the tonic into it, then brought it to her.