Until you looked into her eyes.
“It's you,” Shea said, clutching the Artifact, still secure in the fire cage Torin had forged in Scotland. This was the woman she had seen studying them in a scrying glass. This was the woman who had done everything she could to trap them. To stop them. “You've been watching us all along.”
Beside her, Torin stiffened. “I should have left you in that prison.”
“Yes,” she said amiably, “you should.” Then she turned her gaze on Shea. “My name is Kellyn. But why not ask your Eternal who I am? He knows me.”
“Kellyn?”
This was the witch who awakened when she wasn't supposed to? Shea spared Torin a quick glance, somehow uncomfortable at taking her gaze away from the woman.
He stepped in front of Shea, moving to put himself between her and any possible danger. The dark-haired witch chuckled at the action.
“What are you doing here?” Torin demanded.
Shea sensed the tension in him. Every muscle in his body tightened, coiled, as if he were preparing to spring into attack. Shea stared at their adversary and had to admit she didn't
look
dangerous. But there was an air of darkness surrounding her that sent warning bells ringing in Shea's mind.
Torin kept his gaze fixed on the other woman. “What do you want here?”
Kellyn laughed dismissively and one eyebrow winged up.
Shea watched her. “Mairi told me that you weren't supposed to have come into the Awakening yet.”
“Not everything moves to the schedule of the grand dear High Priestess,” Kellyn mused, her eyes sliding toward the stone staircase behind her that led to the chapel.
Shea followed the woman's gaze, half expecting to see her aunt Mairi step through the open doorway. The last time Shea and Torin were here at the castle, they'd had to avoid the ambushers and race through the great hall to the back wall of the chapel to gain entrance. Had Kellyn arranged that trap? Probably. She had been working against them from the beginning, Shea realized.
“No men with guns today?” she asked.
“I don't need guns.” Kellyn sneered and shook her head. “That ambush was not my doing.”
“And we're to believe you?” Torin taunted.
Shea touched him briefly and felt his anger pumping through him. “What do you want, Kellyn? Why are you here? Now?”
“What do I want? Where should I begin?” She laughed, then changed the subject entirely. “How is Mairi?” she asked, her tone clearly indicating that she didn't give a damn. “Still pontificating? Still warning all and sundry about the evils of too much power? Don't suppose she bothers to recall that she too gave in?” Kellyn laughed again. “Remember, Shea? How she sent all of us out into the world, hiding shards of the Artifact?”
“Of course Iâ”
“But not her,” Kellyn mused, moving closer. “Not the great High Priestess. She didn't have to go tromping off on an adventure. No, she just sat back and gave orders.” Her features tightened and her pale blue eyes flashed with temper. “Well, I don't take orders anymore and neither should you.”
Shea's mind tumbled with broken bits and pieces of the past. The days after that last battle with the demons had been filled with pain and torment and regrets. When together, they broke the Artifact, they had decided, all of them, to cast the spell of atonement and go out into the world, hiding the shards of black silver. Mairi hadn't given any orders. Not that Shea remembered anyway.
“You're not here to talk about the past, Kellyn,” Shea said. “So why not get down to what's really brought you here?”
“You've no business here,” Torin thundered, gaze fixed on the woman. “Leave now and there'll be no trouble.”
“I'm here to talk, Eternal,” she said smiling, lifting both hands as if in surrender.
Shea shouted a warning, convinced the dark-haired witch was going to use magic against them. “Torin!”
“Oh, relax!”
Torin didn't move. He was a pillar of strength. Coiled power. “What are you doing, Kellyn? If you think to harm Shea, know that I will kill you, Awakening be damned.”
Shea's heart swelled with pride in him. Strong, relentless, and more powerful than ever thanks to the mating, Torin would be a much more formidable opponent than Kellyn realized.
Shea rested one hand on his back, covering the branding tattoo so that he would feel the burn of her magic sliding into him.
“If I wanted her dead, Eternal,” Kellyn said with a shrug, “she'd be writhing on the ground at your feet.”
The easy, casual way she said it did more to convince Shea than any demonstration of power would have. There was something evil about this witch. Something deadly. Dangerous. Magic flared in her eyes and shimmered around her in a dark red haze as if it were all too much for her body to contain.
Torin speared the woman with a hard glare and spoke quietly. “Shea. Go to Haven. Take the Artifact to safety.”
“That would be a mistake,” Kellyn said.
“And why's that?”
“I'm sorry.” Kellyn glared at Torin. “Did you assume I was talking to you?”
“Fine, then,” Shea said, stepping out from behind her lover before he had a chance to let his anger explode. “Talk to me.”
“Sheaâ”
“No, Torin. It's fine,” she assured him, keeping her gaze fixed on Kellyn. “She won't hurt me.”
“You know this how?” he demanded.
“Because she needs something from me,” Shea told him, tipping her head to one side to study the woman looking at her.
“Aren't you the perceptive one?” Kellyn's mouth curved as she folded her arms across her chest.
“Not really,” Shea said, keeping her grip tight on the Artifact within the fire cage, since she half expected the witch to make a grab for it. “You're not exactly subtle, Kellyn. You've been scrying on us for weeks. If you didn't want something from me, you would have killed me already. Or at least you would have
tried.
”
“You know,” the other witch said, “I always liked you, Shea. Back in the day, we were friends.”
Somehow, Shea doubted that. This woman didn't have friends. Only people she used.
“That was then, this is now. So what do you want?”
“To make you an offer.”
“Not interested.”
“Too scared to hear me out?” Kellyn laughed, delighted. “So, eight hundred years pass and you're still the tentative one.”
“Nothing tentative about the word âno.' You don't know me,” Shea said, taking a step farther away from Torin. “Eight hundred years is a long time. I'm not that womanâthat witchâanymore.”
She distanced herself physically from Torin so that she and the other witch were on more common ground. She didn't know what else was coming, but she had the distinct impression that it would be decided between the two of them. No Eternal was going to be able to help her now.
This was magic to magic, witch to witch.
And Shea knew, with a sinking sensation that dropped into the pit of her stomach like a ball of ice, that her powers were no match for Kellyn's. Even with the mating, she didn't have the strength Kellyn did. And that thought worried her. If Kellyn wasn't Awakened, how did she have so much magic churning inside her? Power rippled off the other witch in thick waves that were hard to miss. If Shea didn't do something to alter the balance between them, Kellyn would win.
She glanced at Torin.
Please. Just be still and let me deal with her.
No. She's too dangerous.
This is for me to handle, Torin.
Shea sent that last thought firmly, then shut her mind to him. She needed to focus on Kellyn. To prepare for whatever might come next.
“Talk him into butting out, did you?” Kellyn asked. “Good.”
Shea knew the risks in this. If Kellyn killed her with the mating incomplete . . . hadn't Torin told her that their souls would die? Trepidation rose up inside her, but she pushed it down and steeled herself for what was about to happen. Too much was riding on her success to take any chances at failure. And there was only one sure way to give herself the edge she needed.
The morning air sparkled with promise. The sea crashed into the cliffs below, sounding like the heartbeat of the worldâthunderous, impossible to ignore. Here, they had once traded the world's safety for their own greed.
Now, a time for the choice was here again.
And Shea would make the only choice she could.
“Shea, don't do this,” Torin said, his voice low and compelling.
“I have to,” she answered and snapped her fingers.
Instantly, the fire cage disappeared and the Artifact shard lay in Shea's palm. She swayed with the fierce release of its dark power into her system. It swelled inside her, erupting with the force of a long-dormant volcano at last allowed to show the world what it was made of.
Every cell in Shea's body eagerly drank in the energies pumping through her. As if from a distance, she heard Torin's shout and Kellyn's delight. But they didn't matter. Nothing but the rich, intoxicating buzz of something
more
inside her mattered.
“By the moon, I envy you,” Kellyn whispered, stepping closer. “I've waited so long to touch it again. To feel that rush again. Let me just . . .”
Shea shot her a look of contempt and held up one hand to keep her at bay. “Stay where you are.”
Kellyn's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Greedy, huh?” She shrugged. “Well, who can blame you? I wouldn't want to share it either.”
Her now black hair flying in the wind, Shea fought to hold on to who she was in the face of who she had once been. “It's not yours to share. It's not mine, either. It goes back to Haven. Where it belongs.”
“Don't be stupid,” Kellyn snapped. “Do you know what you're holding? Do you remember what it was like to command such dark forces?”
“I remember what it was like to lose control of it,” Shea told her, trembling with the battle to hold on to her soul. Her heart.
The wind kicked up, howling, swirling around the three people in the inner ward of the castle. Cold dripped from the stone walls surrounding them like the spread of frost.
Shea's fingers tightened around the black silver and the element took a stronger grip on her as well. It whispered through her mind of glories to come. Of battles to be won. Of victory and more power than any witch had ever before claimed.
She heard it all and fought anew to retain knowledge of who and what she was.
“Think about it Shea,” Kellyn said, her voice as musical and compelling as a chant. “Think of how the world has changed in eight hundred years. Think how much more we could have now. Think of the dynasty we could build. Together. The black silver craves us as we need it. We are blood-bonded, the coven and the Artifact. Each of the other, we are pieces in a puzzle, incomplete unless joined.”
“She's lying to you, Shea.”
Shea heard Torin, but her soul listened to Kellyn.
“We can be gods, Shea,” the witch said, moving closer still until they were only an arm's reach apart. “Danu created the witches. Belen created the Eternals. We can be bigger than either of them. Mortals don't understand real power. But they will. Don't you see? We can harvest the darkness for ourselves. We can be what we always were meant to be . . .”
Shea swayed and locked her knees to keep from toppling beneath the onslaught of images racing through her mind. Dark, terrible, glorious images of witches running the world. Leaders of nations. No longer hunted, but the hunters. No longer held beneath the thumb of humans who couldn't possibly understand what the witches really were.
“And our souls?” Shea finally managed to ask, fixing her gaze on the witch in front of her.
Kellyn's eyes glittered with victory, excitement. She felt Shea weakening and was rejoicing in it. “With enough power, we can enchant a spell of immortality and live forever. Who cares about a
soul
? I'm offering you everything. All you have to do is reach out and take it.”
Shea shifted a look at Torin and read his expression. His complete trust in her. How, she wondered. How did he trust her when she couldn't trust herself? Couldn't he hear the irresistible lure of Kellyn's words? Couldn't he feel the pull of the dark power? He'd held the Artifact. Didn't he realize what that black silver was doing to her, even now?
But his pale gray eyes remained steady on her, filled with his unshakeable belief in her.
“Stop thinking about him!” Kellyn shouted, as she clapped her hands together and a man-size cage with white gold bars appeared on the bullet-shredded lawn. The cage bars glinted in the early-morning sunlight.
“What're you doing?” Shea looked from Kellyn to Torin and back again.
“I'm taking care of your problem as I took care of my own,” Kellyn told her. “The power's in you, Shea. Force your Eternal into the cage.”
Torin tensed as if ready to flash out. But Shea knew he wouldn't do it, not without her. And she wasn't within reach. He wouldn't leave her, no matter the cost. She glanced at him, but kept her hand tight around the black silver still pumping dark energy into her body. The sweet rush of temptation pooled within her and she took short, shallow breaths, relishing all of the dark sensations.
“Do it, Shea,” Kellyn demanded. “Then we'll finish our talk.”
Chapter 50
F
ingers and thumb caressing the smooth, glassy surface of the black silver, Shea whipped her head around, lifted her free hand and aimed her power at Torin.