Coven: a dark medieval paranormal romance (Witches of the Woods Book 2) (16 page)

“The ritual was a failure.” Bernadine croaked, turning her head away. “I should have known this would happen. I should have discouraged Maerwynn, but I—”

I looked at her face, and for the first time saw her true feelings expressed there. Bernadine had
hoped
. She’d
wanted
the ritual to work so badly, to save Aubrey and I from the burden we carried. But now she blamed herself for what had happened.

But what
had
happened? I glanced back toward the circle. It was a charred ring of dead earth. The ringing in my ears had started to abate, and all around me I heard the women moaning and crying.

Still shaky on my feet, I hobbled over to where a large group of women had gathered. Some of them turned away, sobbing loudly. My chest tightening with fear, I pushed through the crowd, terrified of what I might find.

Brunhild lay on her back across the ground, the lower half of her body covered with the altar cloth – once white, but now streaked with black soot. Her neck was bent to the side, in an angle no neck should ever be bent. Her eyes were open, but unfocused. She didn’t move.

“No,” I whispered, my eyes filling with tears.

“When the cone broke down, she flew out of the circle and landed on one of the stones.” Ryia murmured, her voice choked with sobs. “I saw her fall …”

I bent down beside her, lifting one of her hands. Her skin was deathly cold. “Brunhild …” Tears streaked my cheeks. She was so young, and she’d had her whole life ahead of her.
She was the only real friend I’d ever had. She gave her life trying to help rid me of a curse.

Maerwynn crouched beside Brunhild’s body, stroking her hair as she whispered under her breath. She turned to face me, her eyes growing cold as she recognized me. “Leave us.” she said, her words dripping with hatred.

“But, Brunhild...”

“I said, leave us!” Maerwynn screamed. Her voice cut across the silent hilltop. Her eyes flashed with wild anger. I dropped Brunhild’s limp hand, and backed away.

The women stepped aside as I inched away. I cast one last glance back at my poor friend. She didn’t move, her face ethereally pale against the lush grass.

Aunt Aubrey ran straight for me, and gathered me into her arms. I sobbed into her shoulder, for the first time in weeks grateful that she was here, that she still saw me as a little girl in need of protection. She walked me away from the huddle of witches, to the shelter of the oak trees on the edge of the hillside. Bernadine waited there for us.

“What happened to the ritual?” I sobbed. “Why is the circle all charred? How did Brunhild—”

“We don’t know exactly,” Aubrey said, stroking my hair. “I felt your hand slip from mine, just as the cone of power around us collapsed in on itself. There was this huge BANG, as though something had exploded, and I was thrown to the ground. Everyone must’ve been, and the power we’d been summoning and containing burst forth. It was too much energy all at once, the coven couldn’t hold it in. But even then, it wasn’t enough to break the curse.”

“It wasn’t?” My heart sank. Brunhild had died for nothing.

“Did you feel the ground rumbling beneath us? The way your skin grew cold? That was the curse, fighting back. It pushed out the power so that we wouldn’t be able to touch it. It’s a more powerful enchantment than even Bernadine and I realized.”

The curse cannot be broken this way,” Bernadine said softly. “We know this now. There’s only one way to rid ourselves of it, and that is to kill the descendent of the first witch who cursed us.”

W
itches
, I learned, did not bury their bodies as Christians did. Instead, we lit a fire beside the banks of the river, and built a small, sturdy boat from wood felled from the forest nearby. Into this boat we lifted the body of Brunhild, wrapped in a crisp, new white shroud. Maerwynn took a flaming branch from the fire and used it to set the shroud alight, and then Ryia and Catrain and I pushed the body away, so that it bobbed along the water as the river swept her from view. Women wailed as the light of her fire faded through the trees.

Brunhild was gone.

I didn’t cry during her funeral, but I shed many tears for Brunhild in the privacy of my own cabin. She had been my first real friend, the first person my age who had seen me for me, not as a vessel to get what she wanted. Now that she was gone, I realized how valuable that friendship was, and how I’d allowed rotten people like Rebekah to pollute my idea of what true friendship really was.

No one spoke of the ritual after that, but something had altered in Haven. Over the following days and weeks, it became clear that we were no longer welcomed as sisters. The women were still kind, but they kept their distance. They knew now the power of the curse that bound us, and it was almost as if they feared touching us and contracting the curse themselves.

Maerwynn spent most of her time inside her cabin, or walking in the woods around the valley. She did not speak to me again, nor even look in my direction if she could help it. It was as though she were trying to pretend I didn’t exist.

In my loneliness, my every thought was occupied with Ulrich
. Where was he now? What was he doing? Had he found his father?
The new moon couldn’t come fast enough. I hoped fervently that Maerwynn would still help me to scry for him. Surely she knew that knowing his whereabouts would benefit the coven, not just me? I was too afraid to ask her, so I just waited with impatience, and hoped.

I needed Maerwynn, for I couldn’t go to my aunts. I still hadn’t told them I’d been scrying with her, and I had a feeling that if they knew, they would be against it.

On the day of the new moon, I was a nervous wreck, wondering if Maerwynn would come for me to perform the ritual. In the morning I went hunting with Aubrey, Maerwynn and two other women. I missed two easy hits in a row, my arrows flying wide. Aubrey looked at me in concern, but Maerwynn glared at me, her eyes alight with barely-suppressed rage. I shrugged. “I think I am just having a bad day,”

As the hunt went on, I could feel Aubrey’s eyes on me. Trust her to know something was up.

The hunt returned with several hare for the evening meal. The women set about gutting and dressing the carcasses, but Maerwynn waved me away impatiently. “With your mind wandering today you’re likely to slice your own hand off.” She snapped. I didn’t argue. Instead, I went down to the banks of the river, washing my feet in the icy water and thinking of Ulrich.

As the day turned into evening, my stomach knotted up in nervous excitement. I couldn’t wait to see him again.
Please let Maerwynn remember her promise to me.
I tried to act normal, but I jumped at every noise. I sat next to Aunt Bernadine by the fires, tapping my spoon against the edge of the bowl with increasing ferocity, and trying in vain to prevent my mind from wandering to Ulrich.

“Ada!”

I looked up. Something stung my cheek. I raised my hand to the spot where Aunt Bernadine had slapped me.

“What was that for?”

“I asked you a question,” Bernadine frowned. “Your mind is wandering tonight, girl. Fetch me a wine skin, I am thirsty.”

Usually I would apologize, but I was feeling bolder these days. It angered me that they had known about the ability to scry and not told me about it. “I am not your slave. Fetch it yourself.”

Aubrey and Bernadine exchanged one of their meaningful glances, and a thousand unspoken words passed between them. “Ada,” Aubrey started. “If there’s something you want to tell us, then you should feel—”

“There’s nothing.” I snapped. “I’m just sick of the two of you treating me like I’m some invalid who cannot look after herself.” I stood up and smoothed my tunic. “I am tired. I think I will go to bed.”

I wasn’t tired, of course. So instead, I tossed and turned, listening to the women at the fires below. After what felt like an age, the moon rose higher and the women began to wander back to their cabins, and Haven was plunged into silence. When Maerwynn came to find me, she found me already sitting up, undressed and waiting. Relief rushed my body when I saw her standing in the entrance of my cabin. She was still going to help me, after all.

Silently I followed Maerwynn out into the frigid water. We chanted the spell, and spilled our blood into the water. Once more, I felt the heat rush through my body, running down my legs and exploding outward, churning the water into swirls of colour and pattern. I steeled myself for what was coming, telling myself over and over, “It’s just an image. It’s not happening here, but somewhere else.”

The waters shifted, and became an image. I saw Ulrich and Tjard galloping through the woods, swords drawn. I saw them leap upon two scharfrichters who were raping a woman in a clearing. They killed both men, and stole their clothing and supplies. Then, they were back along the road, heading south, back the way we had come. Why?

I saw tall walls of stone rise up between them. The walls of a city. I’d never been there before, but from the look of the buildings and the castle, I thought it might be Stuttgart. Aunt Aubrey had visited the city many times on her travels, and she told lively stories rich with details. Ulrich and Tjard snuck through the wicket, and hid at the back of a beer hall. Then, they were on the move again. I saw them standing before the gates of an enormous, opulent castle. Pennants featuring a strange crest of two swords and a coiled snake hung from every tower.

The image shifted again, and I was following Ulrich down a narrow, dark passage, lit by the dim light of a single torch. The water lapped against my legs, rippling across Ulrich’s handsome face. He glanced all around him, on high alert.
Ulrich, what are you doing?

Ulrich emerged in a long, dark hall, the vaulted ceiling hung with chains and cages. In every corner stood frames and racks of shackles and knives. A torture chamber, like the one where I had first encountered Ulrich, but larger and grander, each corner stocked with new and despicable machines of pain. Ulrich hid behind a furnace, watching for several moments while another black-clad figure bent over a naked women who was strapped into the rack. It was another scharfrichter, and he turned the wheel slowly, his shoulders tensed as he strained to pull the machine tighter. The woman’ mouth fell open in a silent scream.

Ulrich rushed forward, his sword drawn. The scharfrichter looked up, and I saw a handsome face framed by greying hair and calm eyes. I gasped as I saw how similar he looked to Ulrich. I was staring into the eyes of his father, Damon of Donau-Ries, the most dangerous man in the entire land.

Ulrich flung his sword out wildly, and their bodies blurred together as their blades clashed, their black clothes flapping around their bodies. Guards rushed in, sword points flashed. I saw through Ulrich’s eyes as they surrounded him. The soldiers stabbed at him in an attempt to stop his attack. Panic seized me. As a blade slashed at his skin, tearing open a cut in his chest, I felt his pain as if it were my own. Fire seared across my chest.

Another blade slammed into my chest, tearing at my heart. I gasped as the air rushed from my body. Suddenly, even though the heat from the water swirled around my legs, a wave of ice flowed through my body. My teeth chattered. I grew colder, deadly cold.

Ulrich.

I watching him topple backward, blood spurting from his wounds. His head bounced against the stone floor, the loud CRACK resonating through my head, even though I knew I couldn’t have really heard it. The men set upon him, their swords catching the light as they slashed madly at his body.

I thrashed in the water, tearing my hands from Maerwynn’s, breaking our bond. She took a step toward me, her face concerned, but I cowered away.

Ulrich is dead.

“Get back!” I screamed, pulling my hands over my chest, trying to smother the pain that welled there. I sank to my knees in the water, barely noticing the pain in my knees as they hit the sharp stones at the bottom of the river. The water covered me, sweeping me up and dragging me under, my body plunged into the icy torrent that mirrored my own heart.

P
ain surrounded me
.

My chest heaved, my whole body felt as though it were being stabbed by a thousand tiny needles. A frigid coldness crept through my limbs, threatening to overtake me. I knew once that cold reached my mind, I was gone.

The pain was so brutal, so all consuming. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. There was nowhere to go to escape the pain, only blackness surrounded me. I thought I was screaming, but the screams were such a part of me that I couldn’t hear them. I
was
the scream.

But above it all, rising over the pain, calling me back, was Ada. Her voice was like honey, her wide eyes regarding me from the furthest reaches of my mind.

Ada.

How could she be here? Why had she come? It wasn’t safe for her here. If he caught her, she too would feel what I felt now. She too would be trapped inside a prison of ice, her own body her tomb.

The ice rose higher, clutching at my chest. I gasped again. As the air entered my chest, it stabbed at me, sharper than any knife. Silently, I howled for release, begging to be set free of this agony. How pleasant it would be to just stop breathing, to just let the pain carry me away...

I wanted so badly to surrender, to lose myself completely to the darkness, to be free of the pain. But Ada was in the light. She
was
the light. She called me to her.

And I had to obey.

I
awoke some hours later
, in my bed, the sun streaming through the cabin door. I did not know how it was that I had ended up there. Maerwynn must have carried me there, but I did not remember. I reached over to the chair beside my cot and saw a goblet sitting there, empty now, the rim dirty with some kind of sweet-smelling potion. She must have given me something to help me sleep.

The truth of what I’d seen last night hit me with all the force of a thunderstorm. I remembered the terrible vision I had witnessed, the pain that arced through my body as I felt the deadly blades enter Ulrich. I remembered feeling Ulrich’s life leave him, as if it was my own life ebbing away.

Ulrich is dead. My love is dead.

Fresh tears welled in my eyes. I could not believe that he was gone, that I would never again feel his strong arms around me, hear his voice like gravel in my ear, kiss those soft, hungry lips of his.

I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head, letting the tears fall freely down my face and splash across the furs. How could I go out there and face the world, knowing that he was no longer in it? How unfair it was that I had finally found someone and he had been taken from me?

“Ada? What are you still doing in bed?”

I peeked out of the blankets with one eye. Aunt Aubrey stooped in the doorway, a ceramic bowl of porridge in her hand. She looked at me with concern.

She doesn’t know.
She couldn’t know, because she wouldn’t act so flippant if she’d known what I had seen last night. That meant Maerwynn hadn’t told her. She was still keeping our secret about teaching me to scry. But why?

“Are you feeling ill?” Aubrey placed the porridge down on the chair and bent over to feel my forehead. I let her, the warmth of her hand reassuring, reminding me of how comforting she had been whenever I got sick as a little girl. I needed that comfort now.

“A little,” I said weakly, as another tear trickled from my eye. I wanted to tell her, but the thought of speaking the words aloud –
Ulrich is dead
– made my heart ache. So I did not. I sank back into the furs, hoping the bed might swallow me up so that I never again had to dwell in a world that did not have Ulrich in it.

Aubrey rushed to my side, and pressed her hand against my forehead, as she had done when I was a child. “You feel a little warm,” she said. “Does anything hurt?”

“My stomach,” I said weakly. “And my chest.” It was true, but not because of any illness.

“You poor thing. Perhaps you’ve eaten something that doesn’t agree with you. But Bernadine and I find some of the plants here upset our stomachs. I will make you something to settle you.” She rose again, stroking her finger across my damp cheek. “Don’t worry, Ada. You’re going to be fine. You’re in the best hands here.”

“Thank you,” I whispered as she left the room. I turned over and faced the wall, squeezing my eyes shut and giving over to my grief.

I
stayed
in my bed for three days, alternating between sleeping, weeping, and staring at the ceiling, my mind a dark void of despair. Aunt Aubrey brought me droughts mixed with ginger and yarrow, special potions designed to calm a sore stomach and break a fever. But they did nothing for me, because I had no fever. My only ailment was a broken heart, and that could not be mended with any potion or poultice.

I heard footsteps approaching the bed. I opened one eye, and saw that it was not Aubrey, but Maerwynn. She stared at me with knowing eyes, and I felt embarrassed to be seen in such a state, as though I were disappointing her. I wondered if she was still angry with me over Brunhild’s death. She was behaving extremely kindly… for Maerwynn, that was.

“How do you fare?” she asked me.

“The pain is like a great wild beast standing upon my chest,” I said. “It crushes me as it devours me, swallowing me down. You have not told my aunts what we saw?”

“It is your sorrow to bear as you will,” she said. “When you are ready, you will tell them. I suspect Aubrey already suspects the sickness is of your heart.”

“Maerwynn, is there any chance… could what we have seen been false? Could Ulrich have survived his wounds? Could someone have created a false vision for us to see?”

Maerwynn shook her head. “I am sorry, Ada. The images you saw are the truth.”

“Oh.” The last drop of hope was crushed from my heart. My chest felt heavy, the weight upon it sinking deeper, pushing my further into my depression.

“If it is any consolation,” she said softly, as she left the cabin. “I too mourn him with this unrelenting agony.”

I glanced up, curious, but Maerwynn had already disappeared from view. Had I heard her correctly? I had read Maerwynn’s antagonism toward Ulrich as hatred, but now I saw that it could have been her own fearful desire.