‘Lowri …’ Amma says. ‘Lowri, it’s time.’
Lowri reels, her senses spinning as she comes back to the library and her own form. When she looks down at Amma with her own eyes, she finds her translucent, flickering in and out of focus, losing whatever form Elena created with her dying will. Lowri sinks to her knees beside her, letting go of Inesh and Dreska’s hands. They blink slowly, as though they too were both far away, veins limned in inky magic, and step towards the window.
‘I’m here,’ Lowri says, taking both Amma’s hands, which feel at once like a whisper, like silk, like fog on an autumn morning.
‘Release me,’ Amma gasps softly, smiling at the witch. ‘Only a Tresillian witch can do so. And I have done what Elena intended: I have safeguarded Ennor for her boy. But now there is you, and you are ready to take up the mantle. I feel it. I see it.’
‘She’s right,’ a voice says from near the door, and Lowri straightens, not turning round. She would recognise that voice anywhere. ‘You are the truest Tresillian witch since Elena’s passing. Truer than me.You are the rightful heir to the Tresillian magic and grimoires. The next guardian of Ennor.’
‘Mother,’ Lowri murmurs, heart twisting, despite herself. ‘You’re late.’
‘I am sorry.’
Lowri’s heart skips a beat and she turns round then, taking in the Malefant. Regal as ever, neat and seemingly unremarkable. But Lowri knows that looks can be deceptive and Hillary Tresillian, the leader of Coven Septern, the strongest witch she’s ever known, is like steel. A melding of metals. Unbreakable. Unbendable.
‘Sorry for what?’ she asks. ‘Being late to the party? Or not pledging your help sooner?’
The Malefant’s features soften. ‘Sorry for not being the mother that you, Caden and Brielle needed. Or wanted. Sorry for being a Malefant first, even before –’ she swallows – ‘even before being a good sister to Elena.’
Lowri regards her for a moment. There is much she could say, accusations she could hurl. She could even walk away or ask her to leave. But in the end, she realises, the bitterness would set in. Sorrow over not having the mother she wanted or needed hardening and souring. She doesn’t want that for herself. The best thing is to accept her mother for who she is and know to expect nothing more. That path would only lead to disappointment. And, right now, Lowri needs to be strong. She needs the Malefant of Coven Septern to stand beside her. ‘Thank you,’ she breathes. ‘Now tell me you’re here to help and not hinder.’
‘I’ve brought my best witches and hunters. We stand with House Tresillian as it has always been.’
‘Against the ruling council?’
Hillary’s mouth twists. ‘Against the usurpers, yes.’
Before Lowri can ask her what she means, there’s a clap as magic displaces the air in the room and Brielle comes in with a bleeding form in her arms. Tanith.
Brielle’s gaze snaps to Hillary, then Amma, before finally resting on Lowri. ‘She needs to be healed. She fought in her drake form so valiantly. She’s wounded. I’ve done my best.’
‘We will help her,’ Hillary says firmly, summoning two witches into the library with a commanding witch word. She nods to them. ‘Get that table. Bring it into the light. The drake needs to be healed.’
The table is shifted next to Amma, and Brielle lays Tanith’s broken body on to it. She’s a mass of wounds still and Lowri holds in her shock as Brielle steps back beside her. For the first time since they were little, Brielle reaches out a hand and Lowri squeezes her fingers, comforting her sister as the Septern witches begin their work. Brielle is always the strong one, her emotions in check, her decisions built of stone. But now Lowri feels the tremble in her fingers, senses the way in which she’s keeping it all inside. She draws her other hand round their clasped ones, wanting Brielle to know she is here.
The walls shake again, dust shivering from the ceiling, and Lowri senses something hard slamming intothe wards. She glances to the window, finding the sea a churn of flotsam, flame and bodies. The armada has thinned, several vessels limping away from the isles, but Eli’s fleet has suffered far greater losses. The few still holding back the might of the armada are smoking or surrounded. Her heart creeps up her throat, and all she can do is feed more of herself into the wards, thickening them like a second skin.
Amma reaches out a hand to Tanith, wrapping her feeble grip round Tanith’s fingers. She is almost nothing, a wisp, a cloud, a memory. ‘You saved me. And now it is my joy to save you. Live long, love longer.’ And, with that, the last of Amma, the final piece of Elena Tresillian, flows into the drake and she dies.
Lowri stifles a sob as her mother sucks in a breath, a single tear tracking down her cheek. Where Amma lay, there is nothing. And Lowri senses a shift, a reweaving of the wards as the role of guardian, of the last of the line of Tresillian witches, passes fully to her.
Then Tanith draws in a breath. Brielle stiffens as Tanith’s eyes open. The two healer witches pause as the drake regards them, then her gaze travels to Brielle and Lowri. She smiles, and it’s oddly reminiscent of the creature wrapped inside her. ‘It seems I was mistaken,’ she says in her melodious voice. ‘Perhaps I have nine lives, like a familiar.’
There’s a sudden boom like thunder, then the entire wall of windows shatters. Lowri throws up her hands, crying the witch word for shield, as glass scatters acrossthe floor. Hillary waves a hand, forming another word, and the glass reforms, intact once more.
They all stride to the windows and Brielle hisses. ‘The wards have been breached. An enemy ship approaches the isle …’
‘It’s Coven Mereen,’ Hillary says. ‘The wily serpents.’
‘Inesh, Dreska,’ Lowri says, looking to them, trembling with fury that her work, all her careful work of extending the wards, has already been cracked by this rival coven. ‘Stay with Tanith and guard this library. It holds too much to fall into enemy hands. Nova?’
I will guard the grimoires and the fledglings.
Lowri nods and turns to Brielle and Hillary, who nod in return. ‘Please stay and work on the librarian,’ Hillary says to the fledglings. ‘This drake is precious.’
The three of them traverse down to the town.
When they land on the quay, Caden greets them, eyes flaring wide when he sees his mother. ‘Decided to do the right thing, have you?’ he says, frowning. ‘Or come to argue a point and insist your coven stays outside any politics while my people die?’
