The Witch's Hunger (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 3)
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Authors: Katherine Sparrow
The Witch's Hunger
The Fay Morgan Chronicles: Book Three
Katherine Sparrow
Copyright 2015, Katherine Sparrow
All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously or are entirely fictional.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed to [email protected].
Editing by Erica Satifka.
Cover background photo by Renee McGurk.
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1
Do Anything
I lay on my back and took in the cloudless sky and unblinking sun. The deep-green water of Belize held me as I drifted out into the ocean. I sucked in breath, curled into a ball, and let myself sink down into the watery depths, so clear I could see silvery fish swimming through orange coral fifty feet away.
I sank to the bottom, twelve feet down, and let my toes sink into the clay-like sand. I grabbed a lovely conch shell, and then pushed my feet hard against the ground and arrowed up, like flying in slow motion.
His unsuspecting body lay above me. The man who had once been my greatest enemy treaded water, unsuspecting of what lay beneath. I erupted into the air beside him and splashed his face.
Merlin wiped water off his cheek as I moved closer to him and kissed his fine lips. His arms circled around my waist.
"Do you think we can hear the ocean while we are inside of the ocean?" I asked, holding up the conch shell.
I pressed it to my ear. All I could hear was my own breathing. Merlin took the large shell from me, and a stray barnacle cut his palm open. Blood dripped from the wound. He cursed as the salt water sank into his cut.
"Gwella," I said, and kissed the ruby stone on my pinkie ring before touching it to Merlin's hand. My healing spell mended the wound, but there was still blood in the water. I looked around and saw that the gray fins that had been safely swimming in the distance were getting closer.
Merlin noticed them, too. I wore a bikini and he swim trunks. Neither of us had any defensive spells on us.
"Come, sharks, and do your best," Merlin murmured with a half-smile on his face.
The sharks circled closer and the water began to churn. Being immortal didn't mean one couldn't die, but merely that we did not age. I waited for Merlin to do something clever.
He did nothing but make a half-assed punching motion toward one of them and then began laughing. "Oh. That tickles."
Before I could begin to conjure up some sort of makeshift killing spell, I began laughing, too. One of the sharks gently butted my side and nuzzled against me. "What is this sorcery?" I asked as the sharks continued to playfully move against us.
"Nurse sharks, a gentle species within a ferocious family. I was hoping to meet them on this journey. They remind me of you."
I kissed him again, right there among the sharks.
We swam back to the land. I felt bone-deep relaxed in that way of being truly warmed through. I had made reservations at the open-aired restaurant perched on the end of the beach, and we walked there holding hands and easily matching our strides. Because we belonged together. Always. So what if the world looked more and more gray as the hours passed? So what if I was hungry in a way that had nothing to do with food? I was having a harder time focusing on anything as that hunger grew with every passing moment. Who cared? I had Merlin. Life was wonderful.
It grew harder to feel that as day turned toward night.
We drank tall glasses of beer with lime and ate tacos with shrimp so fresh I could taste the ocean on my tongue. Merlin told me about places we should go to next on our extended vacation. He wanted to take me on the quest for the perfect cup of gelato in Florence, and then on to Paris on the quest for amazing street art. We ordered a dessert made of layers of different chocolate, and they brought it to us with two spoons. We fed each other and Merlin laughed as though we were teenagers. As though the world wasn't made of ash.
He let me eat the last bite of creamy chocolate. I tasted none of it but smiled as he watched me with his clever eyes.
"Do you ever feel it?" he asked after a long silence. "Even on the best days of our days, I feel it coming closer—that moment when you will remember why you banished me from your mind. Every day, a little closer."
"Hush." I slipped my hand into Merlin's.
"I would do anything to keep you with me this time around."
"Anything? I can think of a few things that might please me." I raised one eyebrow, making a joke of it, even though it was not at all funny. My forgetting spell had not broken fully yet, and until it did, the mystery of why I’d made it and erased him from my life remained. But no good would come of talking about it. I led him down the star-lit beach to the casita we'd rented.
As I opened the door, Merlin wrapped an arm around my from behind and pressed his face into my hair. He kissed my neck and then gave me a soft bite on my bare shoulder.
"My witch," he whispered.
I turned and held him, willing myself to feel this, to be here, truly here, and have it be enough. I wouldn't let my mind wander to the exquisite moment when he fell asleep and what I would do next. This was everything I wanted.
Almost.
Merlin and I touched each other gently, teasing each other in the way we both liked. Then he turned more hard-lipped and desperate. I grasped his hair, his shoulders, and the small of his back where my hand fit so perfectly. We stumbled toward the bed that was pushed into one corner of the small room.
There were whole moments when I truly did forget, where I was soaring in ecstasy, or lost in the intensity of our connection, for my wizard was skilled in the ways of hands and spells. I used my own tricks, like turning my fingers into points of icy fire that made him laugh and moan.
Eventually, when it all died down, Merlin held me and yawned. "A perfect day, fair Morgan."
I stroked his hair and nodded, looking beyond him into the darkness. Waiting.
I forced myself not to fidget. Finally, his breaths turned slow and rhythmic. I moved away from him and grabbed the small stone by the bedside. “
Cysgu,”
I whispered, activating the sleeping spell and placing the small stone on his forehead. He would not wake until I returned and took it off his body. It was a well-made stone, yet even so, leaving him made me nervous as I slipped my arm out from under his head and stood. If any in the world were to discover my night’s journeys, it would be him.
I draped a robe over my naked form and walked to the closet where I'd put my suitcase. Inside an inner pocket, spelled to be unnoticed, I grabbed hold of a small crystal ball. I held it up in one hand, and whispered, "
Cartref
."
Home.
The crystal ball pulsed with a purple light and then took me instantly to my store, half a continent away. Morgan's Ephemera was dark and smelled like the incense Lila burned when I was gone. Something Indian and spicy, with a hint of soil. I walked quickly to the back of the store, not even bothering to turn on a light, and unlocked the spells that guarded my most secret and sacred space. The door opened into a brightly lit room with floor-to-ceiling shelves on every wall. The shelves were full of my most powerful spells and objects. I stepped in and closed the door behind me. There was no one here to see me, but still, a trilling nervousness moved through me. With sweating hands, I reached for the plain looking metal cup.
The Grail.
The Holy Grail that held a thin line of water along the bottom of it. Not water though, but life: pure, vital Grail water that was like nothing else. I raised it to my lips, trembling all over, and drank the small mouthful down. The water overtook me and I slumped to the ground. The lovely oblivion of the Grail water filled me and my entire world turned beautiful and vast. All I wanted and needed was here, and I would do anything to stay here.
2
Margaritas and Flexible Men
I came back to myself with a start. I lay in a crooked position on the floor of my spell room. I stood up on aching legs. My knuckles were bruised. I felt empty. Spent. I found my crystal ball: it had rolled behind some angel spikes. I quickly held the ball aloft and uttered, “
Y galon
.”
As commanded, it took me back to my heart. To my Merlin. He lay sprawled on the bed with arms and legs akimbo, as though he had been searching for me in his sleep. The spelled stone still sat on her forehead. I plucked it off and then lay down quickly beside him, nuzzling into his side moments before his eyes blinked open.
“I had a dream you were gone,” he said blurrily.
Paranoia fizzed through me as I smiled and kissed the tip of his nose. Did he know? No one must know. Anyone who did would want my Grail. Even Merlin.
“But then I woke and here you are,” he said and kissed my cheek.
I kissed his mouth. “I’m always here, love.”
“Always
…
for now,” he said and rubbed his pointer finger over the forgetting spell wrapped around my arm. Blue light shone through from where the spell was slowly breaking.
I hated looking at it. I hated knowing that I had worn the damned spell for over a thousand years, and had only discovered it four months ago when it began to break and I realized that the man who seemed so familiar to me was actually Merlin. My ancient foe, who had then been my true love, and then, for reasons I did not yet know, I’d erased all memories of him from my life. It had made me forget the Grail, too. Somehow, someway, I had put a spell on myself to forget them both, but why? I had no answers, and would have broken the forgetting spell all the way were it not such a massive spell that it might drive me mad. So I lay beside Merlin, wanting to promise him eternity, but I couldn’t. “Breakfast? Smoothies and scones and then another swim with our shark friends?” I said.
“The perfect day with the perfect lass.” Merlin stretched his arm upward and grinned just as my phone rang.
Few had the number. It was Lila calling. I’d asked her to call me every couple of days to check in about how my store was faring, but we had spoken yesterday.
“Has something happened? Are you all right?” I asked as I answered the phone and stood up. I turned from Merlin and pulled on a long silk robe.
“Good morning,” she said. “I really don’t mean to bug you, Morgan. I shouldn’t be bugging you. It’s only there’s this woman here and she kind of reminds me of you? I mean she’s mean. I mean, not that you are. And she’s bossy. And—”
“Hand me the phone,” someone said sharply. A moment later, a voice spoke crisply into the phone. “If you are behind this, Morgan, I will skin you alive.”
I scowled at the phone and had no idea who was speaking, or what she meant. Then a memory pulsed out of my forgetting spell. It hit me lightly and though it made my head ache, I didn’t pass out as I remembered this woman. It was Cleopatra.
Not Queen Cleopatra—this was Cleopatra the great alchemist. A commoner with no relation to the Queen of gold and asps, born hundreds of years after the first one. This woman was Egyptian too, and had taken the Queen’s name as a pseudonym back when she had first started alchemy and needed to hide her true identity. She was older than me by a good six hundred years. “Why might you take my skin, Cleopatra?” I asked coldly.
