Crown of Briars Read online

  Jean reached down to haul Simon over one shoulder… but a shadow flickered behind him, and the vampire staggered forward before he could finish. Jean hit his knees; excruciating pain flickered in his aura, as blood stained his immaculate white shirt.

  Zoe reacted instinctively, lashing out at the shadow with her power. It was only the barest shroud; her magic tore it away in shreds, revealing the person beneath.

  Malcolm stood behind Jean, his one red eye burning. The witch was even more ragged than the last time that Zoe had seen him. A maddened swirl of power had now broken the thin shield of his composure, clashing with the underlying shadow of his own Scorpio magic. An iron knife in his right hand dripped blood, and Zoe’s eyes fixed upon it with a deep sense of foreboding.

  He has Jean’s blood.

  Calmly, Malcolm kicked the seigneur aside. Jean’s eyes glowed a sudden fiery red — he snarled with a mixture of pain and hunger, the injury already knitting together. He was on his feet again, lunging for the witch… but Malcolm barely had to touch the iron anchor with his magic to send the vampire reeling back, clutching at his stomach. Nausea mixed with agony in his aura. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he shuddered, going limp.

  “You don’t belong here,” Malcolm informed the vampire, bemusement in his tone. “This world is beyond your petty politics.”

  Zoe stepped quickly in front of Simon’s unconscious body. She shoved her hand into her pocket, closing her fingers around the letter opener there. Blood trickled down her fingers. She gathered her power around it, intending to take advantage of Malcolm’s current distraction with Jean… but the shadow that hissed around her hand was so unexpectedly solid that she gasped, and her attempt went wide.

  The spell still came within a hair’s breadth of Malcolm’s arm — but he swatted it so carelessly aside that it was clear he considered Zoe to be of even less danger than the seigneur before him.

  “This is Arcadia, Zoe,” Malcolm told her. His mismatched eyes remained on the vampire. “Ideas made manifest. Magic feels different when you can touch it, doesn’t it?” He shook his head. “Why am I trying to teach you anything? You’ve decided you don’t need me.”

  Zoe stared at him. Even with the power of the Briars, even with Malcolm in this maddened state, he was still too much for her. Simon was still unconscious. Jean was hurt, but it didn’t look like he was dying… not yet.

  She needed another option. Another way out.

  Buy time.

  “I blackmailed him into coming here,” she said, gesturing at Jean. “He probably hates me as much as you do.” Guilt stabbed into her stomach as she looked at the vampire on the floor. Whatever she’d told Jean — whatever she’d told herself — the idea of his death did bother her.

  Jean. The thought hit her like a thunderbolt. He drank my blood.

  “I don’t hate you, Zoe,” Malcolm sighed. “I am disappointed in you. I gave you everything — more than should have been humanly possible. I opened your eyes to an entire world. And in return? What have you given me?”

  He turned to regard her more fully. Good. Look away. Don't pay attention to him. Zoe clenched her nails into her bloody palm. Blood called to blood — the shadow in Jean’s body began to burn away. Not quickly or completely… but maybe just enough.

  “You’re right,” Zoe breathed carefully. “Maybe… maybe I can still help you.” She bit at her lip, doing her best not to show the pain that speared through her hand. “I can… try to undo what you’ve done—”

  Malcolm shook his head gently. “Buy time,” he mocked her. “I taught you even that. But you’ve finally rebelled too much, Zoe. You’ve sold your soul. How could I ever trust you now, knowing that the Lady of Briars holds a tether on everything you are?” He flicked something into his hand. Kaleidoscopic starlight glinted off glass; a tiny globe of dark liquid. Zoe didn’t need to see it clearly to know what it was: every fiber of her being recognized it as blood.

  Her blood.

  “Where did you get that?” she whispered. No wonder he’d been able to steal her wards. He wasn’t skilled beyond her comprehension — he didn’t have any special, secret knowledge that allowed him to brush away her power without care. He’d simply had her blood all along.

  “I considered it prudent to take precautions when I first made you,” Malcolm sighed. “I never thought the day might come when I truly needed to use this.”

  Zoe lashed out at him with a spell, desperate. She knew the moment that he touched her blood with his magic, she would be every bit as helpless as Jean.

  Malcolm closed his fist on the sphere. Glass crunched and dug into his hand. Zoe felt the shadow of his magic take hold of her, digging into her soul. There was no delaying it, no isolating it: he had her dead to rights, and she knew it.

  White-hot pain blossomed in her skull. She’d fallen to the floor, knocking her head against it. Her body wracked with pain.

  Jean, she thought dimly. I’ve got to wake him up…

  But Malcolm’s hold on him was burning away too slowly. The vampire wasn’t going to wake up in time.

  Zoe struggled uselessly, casting about for something, anything to use. Instead, her hand brushed Simon’s shoulder. Fear stabbed into her stomach. She’d been so close, so close to getting him somewhere safe and fixing everything…

  “Is this the creature that stole you from me?” Malcolm whispered. His shoe pressed against Zoe’s fingers, kicking them away. He pressed his foot into Simon’s chest, leaning down with a wild gleam in his red eye. “What did he promise you, Zoe, if you swore yourself to his queen? Was it riches? Power?”

  Vomit crawled its way up Zoe’s throat as she burned in agony. She forced it down with a snarl. “Don’t… touch… him!”

  Malcolm smiled, but there was no pleasure in the expression. His aura swirled with anger, fear, injury, madness. “The lord of this realm traded me protection in return for this warlock,” he said. “But what good is protection, if I continue to lose my mind?” He considered Simon coldly. “He can die along with you.”

  Malcolm raised the iron knife once again.

  Zoe wrenched herself up and threw herself at him, grabbing the knife by the blade. Her strength wasn’t nearly enough; the edge came down on her shoulder, jamming into bone. She opened her mouth to scream in pain — but she had so little breath left in her that nothing came out.

  Something spasmed in her chest. At first, she thought it was more poison, more nausea. But it crawled within her, seething, furious… and she realized that it was the Briars.

  The Briars love Simon, she thought.

  Rose loved Simon.

  Zoe gasped and choked, fighting her way against the pain. She reached out toward Malcolm — not with her stolen magic, but with the furious seed that the Lady had bestowed upon her.

  The stolen seed within Malcolm answered in a rage.

  Malcolm was no warlock. He’d stolen Rose’s power — power that had been born from the Briars — but he had no authority to control it. Zoe did have that authority — she’d pacted with the Lady, exchanging her true name and her promised service for the right to wield the Briars.

  Zoe awoke that seed within Malcolm’s soul, stoking its rebellion. It burst and bloomed within him, crawling its way into every corner of his power like a creeping vine.

  Malcolm screamed. The knife dropped to the floor.

  “Rose Leclair sends her regards, mon tabarnak,” Zoe rasped.

  The Briars surged. Malcolm choked and clawed at his throat, but it was no use; he’d intentionally stitched the Briars right into his soul. There was no escaping them.

  Bloody thorns wriggled up from his mouth, sliding between his lips. A single, wicked rose blossomed there, as though to mock him.

  Zoe curled herself into Simon’s chest, fighting off unspeakable pain. She didn’t watch what happened next.

  All she knew was that when Malcolm’s body hit the ground, his aura had gone dead and cold.

  Chapter 16

  M
alcolm’s spell shouldn’t have faded with his death. But without him actively controlling it, Zoe slowly became aware of the poison in her blood receding, pushed back by the lily at her throat.

  Another withered black petal fell away from her neck. She breathed in with difficulty, wincing at the gash in her shoulder. Someone hauled her up, and she hissed in pain.

  Jean set her back on her feet, steadying her on his arm. He didn’t look terribly healthy himself — he had a ghastly pallor, and his normally disciplined aura was growing more than a little bit wild — but there was a determined set to him that suggested laying down again was not an option he would be entertaining any time soon.

  “I cannot carry you both, in my current condition,” the vampire told her, jerking his head toward Simon. “Can you wake him?”

  Zoe pressed her lips together, smothering a soft groan. But she jerked her head in a reluctant nod, and Jean helped her over toward the other warlock.

  Simon’s lily was half-withered now; Zoe hoped that was a sign that it had managed to leech a good portion of the poison from his system. Sure enough, much of the acid green in his body had cooled or disappeared. He probably should have been at least dimly lucid by now… but as Zoe gently shook his shoulder, his eyelids didn’t even flutter.

  There was something buried in his aura, she thought — something deeper and more insidious than the poison itself. Had Lord Wormwood done something to him directly?

  Zoe breathed out, feeling dizzy and displaced. Clumsily, she tried to reach out to Simon through the bond they shared, as he had done earlier. His mind seemed beyond her reach, though — sunk into a deep and terrible slumber. It was far from dreamless, unfortunately, if the clash of color in his aura was any indication.

  She breathed out, fighting back against the pain in her shoulder. “There’s something else affecting him. I think Lord Wor— I mean, a certain faerie lord did it to him.” Zoe shook her head miserably. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to fix it. It’ll take another faerie lord to break it, probably.”

  “Inconvenient,” Jean muttered. His eyes held a consistent sheen of red to them now. Zoe felt his hunger starting to run away with him. “Naturellement, the man who studies faerie tales would become their victim.”

  Zoe paused at that. Something niggled at her mind. Simon had mentioned… something about curses. God, that felt like forever ago now.

  “True love’s kiss will break most faerie curses, even if you’re a pauper,” he’d said.

  She let out another breath. “All right. I’m gonna try something stupid. If you laugh at me, I swear to god, I’ll make you regret it.”

  “I have no sense of humor, mademoiselle,” Jean said with a straight face.

  Zoe snorted, and returned her attention to Simon. Doubts roiled through her mind. She’d said the words I love you… and she’d meant them. Simon had changed her whole world — before him, she hadn’t realized just how strongly it was possible to love and admire someone. But what the hell was true love? It was the kind of thing she imagined Simon felt for others — the way he’d felt about Rose. Zoe’s love wasn’t like that. It was selfish and desperate and needy. What if it wasn’t the right kind of love?

  Part of her didn’t want to find out. But if it meant there was even a slim chance that they might all get out of here alive… well, her pride could take the hit.

  Zoe leaned down to brush her lips over Simon’s, her heart twisting with anxiety. “Hey,” she whispered. “It’s time to go home.”

  Nothing happened.

  Zoe closed her eyes. A pang of misery hit her in the stomach. Not good enough.

  “If you are attempting what I suspect you are attempting,” Jean said, “I would suggest a different approach.”

  Zoe shot him a dirty look. “Would you turn around?” she demanded. “This is weird enough as it is.”

  Jean ignored her. “You are currently miserable and afraid,” he said patiently. “If there is love in you, then it is buried quite deep beneath the rest.”

  Zoe flushed. Right. He knows what I’m feeling. “I’m having trouble thinking about nice things right now for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on,” she shot back.

  That numbing touch hit her mind again — stronger and hungrier this time, less controlled. Zoe lost her train of thought entirely for a moment, drifting in the absolute lack of emotion. Her fear, her guilt — even the pain in her shoulder — all fell away in a blissful, nihilistic relief.

  She lost track of time in that emptiness. At some point, her body protested, and she realized she had stopped breathing. Do I really need to breathe, though? the thought came. I’m not sure that matters either.

  A tiny, frantic part of her surged from the bottom of her mind, fighting back against that thought. He’s lost control. He warned you. You have to beat this, or maybe none of you will leave at all.

  The idea of laying down and dying sounded pleasant, actually. Everything hurt. There were so many difficult things left to do.

  But Simon.

  I promised, Zoe thought. Her fingers tightened on his shirt. I promised I would come for him. He’s right here, all I have to do is get him home…

  That awful piece of Zoe that sometimes wondered about giving up had no defense against that. She needed to get Simon home. He deserved that. The idea of a world without him was bleak — unimaginable. She wanted to see him smile again, wanted to hear his voice, feel his touch—

  The emptiness couldn’t touch that feeling. It wanted to; Zoe could feel its desire to steal it away from her. But love was every bit as much a mystery to that hunger as it was a mystery to Arcadia.

  Zoe took a shuddering breath… and kissed Simon again.

  She couldn’t see it happen — she’d never been able to see her own emotions. But she felt something shiver and give way inside him.

  Simon’s bright green eyes opened, clear and fever-free. His brow knitted; she saw him struggle for a moment to understand where he was, what was happening.

  Pure relief surged through her. He’s all right. I found him, he’s awake, we’re going home…

  The emptiness still struggled with her, eager for more. Jean’s eyes burned — he’d utterly lost control. Zoe gave one last shove against his hunger, reaching up to dig fingers into the blood on her shoulder.

  Blood called to blood, one more time. Jean staggered as though she’d hit him with a two-by-four. The red in his eyes dimmed, though it didn’t disappear. She watched him reassert his conscious mind, inch by painful inch, his breath rattling in his chest.

  The numbness in her mind ebbed. Zoe sighed in relief. For just a second, as the fight went out of her, her muscles gave in and she collapsed.

  “Zoe!” Simon pushed himself up quickly, eyes wide. He caught her in his arms. He was still shaking, confused… but there was a dawning cognizance in his aura. He tightened his grip on her, burying his face in her hair.

  Zoe groaned lightly at the pain that shot through her shoulder — but the greater part of her didn’t care. It was worth it just to be in Simon’s arms again, to lose herself in the feel of him.

  “I thought… I thought I’d never…” Simon choked before he could finish. A twinge of guilt went through Zoe. She’d had only a taste of Delirium, and she already desperately wanted to leave. She couldn’t bring herself to imagine what it might be like to be entirely at the realm’s mercy for as long as he had.

  I shouldn’t have taken so long, I should have hurried—

  Someone cuffed her lightly across the back of the head. Zoe hissed in pain.

  “It is best I do not try to eat that,” Jean informed her. “But it is an unnecessary emotion, at the moment.”

  Zoe tried to steady herself. Simon glanced up at the seigneur — his eyes were circled with dark shadows, but Zoe felt the moment that his protectiveness kicked in. He staggered to his feet, shoving her behind him. A flicker of golden fire licked up his hands, hot and bright and real, and Zoe grabbed at his arm quickly, wide-eyed
.

  “Nononono!” she gasped. “Don’t hurt him, he’s on our side.”

  Simon shuddered. There was still a wild look to his eyes as he watched Jean. The last time they had interacted, Jean had more or less threatened Zoe, so it was… well, understandable. But the seigneur was clearly just as ragged as the rest of them, and there were few explanations for his presence in Arcadia that involved him showing up without Zoe’s help. As that understanding slowly sank in, the fire in Simon’s hands began to gutter out.

  Zoe held onto Simon’s arm a bit longer than was strictly necessary. It was a good thing she did; she had to catch him over her shoulder as he wavered on his feet. The weight made her cringe against the pain again, but she ignored it.

  Jean coolly ignored the threat he’d just been offered, and ducked to loop Simon’s other arm around his back. As he took some of the weight off Zoe, she whimpered in relief.

  “You’re hurt,” Simon managed, horrified. “I should have noticed—”

  Zoe shook her head. “I’ll get a handle on it,” she said. She took in a deep breath, considering her own body. Normally, she had enough control to lower her heart rate — but it occurred to her that in Arcadia, she might be able to do more. She flared her magic, testing out the theory. Blood belongs inside me, she reminded her body, annoyed.

  The injury in her shoulder stopped bleeding. The gash was still there — it still hurt like a bitch — but at least she wasn’t losing more blood.

  Simon cast his gaze around them, still taking in the scenery. His expression went grim as he caught sight of Malcolm’s body, but he didn’t say a word.

  “Blackfrost and the Lady are here,” Zoe told him, by way of distraction. “They’re at the border, kicking up a huge fit. All we have to do is get there.”

  Simon forcibly steadied himself, peeling himself away from Jean. Zoe was halfway convinced that he only found the strength to stand on his own out of sheer, suspicious distaste for the vampire’s closeness. It was unlikely she was going to convince him to ignore the implied danger that the seigneur posed anytime soon.