“You have to excuse Maeve,” Flynn said. “She likes everything to be logical.”
She shook her head. “Yes, sorry. It’s hard to be logical after what I’ve been through. I’ll try to remember everything that might be useful. Back then, I had this idea that maybe the belief in magic would be just as powerful as actuallyperformingmagic. Belief, after all, is one of the most powerful forces on earth. Belief makes Gods of men. It topples nations. It changes hearts. I wondered if drawing on belief instead of our elemental magic in a ritual would enable us to collect belief from the people around us and weaponize it. The fae have fallen out of knowledge – so belief is not a force they can wield – but thanks to Christian dogma and modern pop culture, witches are still very much part of the human psyche, and very much tied toCrookshollow’s mythology in particular. I didn’t think it would be too hard to stoke the fires of belief in the village.”
That’s an intriguing idea.
“I couldn’t find much in the books about the power of belief, but I did a little experiment. I used Daigh’s belief that he had pulled his deception over on me to capture some of his magic.” She reached over and touched the pendant on my throat. It flared with heat under her fingers. “I stored it in there, because I knew I’d need it during the ritual to perform a glamour that even Daigh would believe. I tested it first, giving myself the appearance of my friend Bree and eating a meal with the coven. They were completely fooled. Even Andrew chatted away to me without realising I wasn’t his wife.”
“You’re very scientific about your magic,” I said. Rowan took my hand and squeezed it, his wide eyes signalling he understand what I was thinking. Aline’s experiment was exactly what I’d have done, testing a theory before jumping in.
Needles stabbed at my heart, and I had to gulp down another lump in my throat.
Forget coffee. I needed a glass of Arthur’s strongest mead.
“Magic and science were one and the same for many centuries,” Aline said, in a haughty voice I wondered might sound similar to what Flynn referred to as Corbin’s ‘Boring Professor’ voice. “Alchemists made many scientific breakthroughs while searching for their philosopher’s stone.”
“We could have done with your help when we first told Maeve about her powers,” Flynn said. “This stubborn wench took ages to believe what we all knew was true.”
“How I wish I could have been there,” Aline said. “I wish you’d been able to grow up knowing what you would be capable of. You could have prepared for it.”
I yanked my hand out of Rowan’s and folded my arms across my chest.
Aline straightened up. “As I was saying, once I knew that my glamour would work, and it would work on Daigh, I knew what I had to do. I made plans with Andrew and Bree, and prepared myself to die.”
“How would you know you would die?” Corbin asked. I glared at him, knowing what Aline was going to say.I’m not dealing with the predestination issue today on top of everything else.
“Because I saw it. I see the future in visions that leave my mind open and my body bleeding. The last vision I saw was my own death. I knew I would die to protect Maeve, so I made sure that I stopped the fae on the way out.” She lifted her hands, indicating the room and all of us. “It turns out, even Fate can play tricks on her most ardent servants.”
That’s because fate doesn’t exist, and premonitions are completely impossible,I thought, but didn’t say. Flynn looked at me like he expected me to bite at the Fate comment.
“The ritual,” Corbin took her back to the story.
“Yes, yes. Witches started arriving at Briarwood from miles around – the new age hippies from Avebury and Glastonbury, the German coven in their black goth gear, the eastern Europeans with their folk magic and dark auras. The presence of so many strange people converging on Briarwood fueled the town’s simmering distrust of us. Belief in witchcraft soared. I could feel the power pulsing in the streets, exuding from the church steeple. If this worked we would have more than enough.
“We had to wait for your birth before we could perform the ritual. It was dangerous to wait, because Daigh was assembling a fae army. He’d killed many Seelie and taken their power for himself. His warriors moved up and down the countryside, stealing unbaptised children to grow his power still further. The night you came, the wind howled outside, but the castle was warm and filled with love. Robert was by my side the entire time,but I was too far gone to know when it was him or Daigh whose hand I crushed with my grip. You were born in the early hours of the evening, a slithering alien of a thing, covered in blood and mucus – and yet, you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Monet’s water lilies didn’t come close to the sublime wonder of holding my child in my arms. I cradled you to my breast and wept. All I wanted to do was curl up with you and sleep. But instead I called the witches for the ritual, and wrote you the letter. Did you get my letter?”
I nodded, digging my shaking fingers into the pocket of my jeans. I drew the letter out and handed it to Aline. She brushed her hand over the broken seal, inhaling sharply.
“I remember every word I wrote,” she whispered. “I’m so so sorry.”
“The ritual,” I whispered, struggling to hold back tears of my own.
“Yes. You must know the truth of it.” Aline gripped the edge of the letter, where her tears from all those years ago had thinned the paper. “We gathered in two circles in the field – an inner circle of the High Priestesses, and an outer circle of the other witches. They called up their powers, and I drew that power into myself, becoming the conduit for their belief in me. I’d made sure to spread gossip in the village that something interesting would be going on at the castle that night, so a bunch of local kids were hiding in the bushes. One ran back to report of women dancing and chanting under the moonlight at the pub, creating a chain of belief that funnelled into our ritual, extending me more power than I’d ever known possible.
“It was time. I touched my fingers to the amulet, and I was able to use Daigh’s power to cast a glamour. I picked up the knife. I held it above your head. Twelve High Priestesses and Bree and Andrew and Robert and Daigh inside Robert’s head saw me plunge that knife into your heart.”
She held up her hand, and I noticed a long scar across her palm, the tiny imperfection I’d felt on her skin. “Instead, I plunged the knife into my hand. I knew I could not hold the glamour for long, and for it to be believed Daigh would expect to see blood. Unfortunately, I cut too deep. Weakened by the birth, my body shuddered under this new trauma as Daigh tried to rip your body from me. The witches – knowing that I had committed this horrific act to save the world form the Slaugh – held him back, and Andrew bundled you away. Robert escaped from their grasp and fell on me, clawing at me, torn between the twin minds sharing the same body, both wallowing in the horror of what I’d done to them.” She rubbed the cuts on her cheeks. “I think that’s where I got these cuts.”
“I had a balm for them,” Rowan said.
“Thank you, beautiful.” That flirtatious tone was back. “Fae poured out of the sidhe, answering Daigh’s anguished call. They rushed the circle, breaking the outer ring. But they were too late. Daigh’s belief in my breaking his pact with the underworld by killing his daughter had, in fact, broken his pact with the underworld and robbed him of all his power. And he thought I’d killed his child. Robert thought I’d killedhischild.” Darkness passed over her face. “It was twice the amount of pain one soul was able to hold. The grief on his eyes, intheireyes – it broke me to see it. I could feel myself losing my grip on life.
“Robert wrapped his hands around my throat, tightening, loosening, as the great internal struggle tore apart his mind. Which one of them wanted me to live and which wanted me to die, I did not know. I have no clue into whose eyes I stared as my life drained from my body. I was too weak to fight back, even if I’d wanted to. But I had to die. I had to go to the underworld, it was the only way to be sure we’d won.
“The cut in my hand bled profusely, and soon my vision swam and the carnage of the ritual fell silent. The world wentdark. I thought he’d choked the life from me, and that I’d awake in the underworld. But instead, I slumbered in the nightmare of darkness inside that painting until you lot woke me again.”
“Robert was the one who placed you inside the painting,” I explained to her what we learned from our visit to Robert Smithers, how we believed he’d traded his mind with Daigh in exchange for the fae king’s artistic talent, and how he said they were both in love with her. Aline looked distressed as I described the institution he lived in and the precarious state of his mind. “We couldn’t get it out of him when we visited him – he’s not exactly coherent. But the painting bore traces of water magic, not fae magic, and we recently found out that witches can store energy inside objects.” I touched the pendant on my throat. “The same way you stored that piece of Daigh’s magic inside here.”
Aline’s eyes lit up. “I’m impressed, Maeve.”
