Isobelle managed to find her voice, her hand still curled around Gwen’s arm – though who was supporting who now, Gwen wasn’t sure. ‘But we were yourfriends,’ she whispered. ‘We wanted to help you – we saved you from those brigands on the road—’
Tabitha gave little sign that Isobelle’s words had moved her at all. ‘The surest way of deflecting suspicion is to need rescuing.’
‘Everything was a lie, from the very start? Why?’
Tabitha’s gaze sharpened. ‘Don’t ask foolish questions,’ she retorted. ‘You know why. You know what happened to my mother.’
Isobelle swallowed hard. She looked sick. Gwen’s sword hand had fallen to her side, and she found she couldnot move it; when she tried, a wave of terror wrapped around her like none she’d experienced yet.
‘So it was revenge,’ Isobelle breathed. ‘But not of a man for his beloved – it was that of a daughter for her mother.’
Tabitha’s lips twisted, but the expression could hardly be called a smile. ‘I was four when they came for her. I was shipped off to live with my aunts, who told me she died of an illness, but I remember the night they came for her. The things she summoned to fight them, the screams of beast and men, the way the house shook when they burst through the door. The people of this town … they let those monsters take her.’
‘And so you visited upon them the same fear they made her feel,’ Isobelle whispered. Her tone was a wrenching mix of sympathy and horror. ‘But … why not just tell us what was happening? It was wrong, what happened to the witches here. We would have … Why lie, why … why this whole deception?’
Tabitha raised her eyebrows. ‘Tell a monster-slaying knight that I was the daughter of a monster-summoning witch? I thought, at first, that if I let you think you’d killed the sea monster, you’d leave. The last thing I needed was anyone with sense poking their nose into my business.’
Isobelle’s face hardened. ‘All this, torturing Gwen … just so you could make a town suffer for being powerless to help your mother?’
‘The town wasn’t the point,’ Tabitha replied. ‘But what would happen if those who built this tower heard tell of a dark power rising here? One that threatened to resurrect that horrible evil they slew all those years ago?’ Her voice was bitter, angry.
Gwen managed to speak, though her voice was tense and seemed to come from far away. ‘The Order of the Evening Star. That was your real target. Why you summoned the monster in the first place.’
Isobelle gasped. ‘Youwere the one who searched my room … you were the one who broke my owl talisman!’
‘I thought then that one or both of you must be members of the Order, or one of their spies. So if I could convince you there was some unspeakable evil here, you would summon reinforcements. Or, at the very least, tell me where to find them.’
‘Your spell,’ Gwen said through gritted teeth. ‘The ritual we did in the woods, where we had to spill all our secrets for it to work … you were hoping we’d confess that we were members of the Order.’
‘It seemed worth a shot. But when you went off and started shouting about all your relationship woes, I realised you knew nothing and couldn’t help me. So I did the one thing I knew would send Sir Gwen here screaming for safety, anywhere other than here.’
‘I told you about my nightmares.’ Gwen felt the slow, serpentine slide of a tear slithering down her cheek. ‘I toldyou I dreamed that the dragon came back, again and again, that I could never kill it …’
‘I admit, it didn’t occur to me that you would stick around when you realised you were facing an unkillable sea monster.’ Tabitha’s eyes were on Gwen, her expression thoughtful, even admiring. And somewhere, deep within those hazel eyes, flashed the tiniest hint of regret. ‘You’re quite the catch, aren’t you? What a lucky girl our Lady Isobelle is.’ Her eyes slid back to Isobelle, who was shaking with rage at Gwen’s side.
When neither of them spoke, Tabitha straightened, both feet on the ground once more, and leaned her elbows on her knees.
‘Who was the woman who arrived the other night?’ she demanded, glancing between them. ‘I had to watch from quite a distance, but it wasn’t one of your friends – it was someone new who fished Gwen out of the sea.’
A wave of fear swept through Gwen. If Tabitha was after the Order, then they couldn’t tell her about Olivia. Olivia, who had no magic of her own, no way to defend herself against a power like this – Tabitha would use her, torture her with terror, until she got the information she wanted about how to find the people Olivia worked for.
Unable to stifle the fearful groan that escaped her lips, Gwen tried to lift her sword. Her arm still wouldn’t move.
Isobelle’s hand came up to cup Gwen’s cheek, turning her head, her blue eyes searching, alarmed. ‘Gwen? What’s wrong?’
Gwen tried to speak, tried to shout, but it was as though she’d been banishing every little thread of shadowy fear to that dark pit within her for so long that they’d all grown teeth. And now someone had burst the gate holding them back, and every one of them was coming straight for her throat.
Isobelle’s gaze snapped back to meet Tabitha’s. ‘Let her go.’ Gwen had never heard her voice sound like that before – each word like an iron blade, hard and cold and biting.
Tabitha eyed the floor between them, which glittered with broken glass and water. ‘Agrimony,’ she murmured, inspecting the ruins of their spell jar. ‘Clever. You know, if what I taught you that night of the ritual had been a real spell, it might have worked.’
Isobelle wrenched off the gauntlet and glove on Gwen’s free hand and thrust her fingers through Gwen’s, squeezing tightly as she angled her body, putting herself between Gwen and Tabitha. ‘Do what you want to the Order,’ she snapped, ‘but let Gwen go. She never did anything but try to help.’
Gwen could feel the warmth of Isobelle’s hand creeping through her, thawing her like the heated stones that brought her back from the icy grip of the sea. Shetightened her fingers around Isobelle’s. ‘And let this town go, too. These people didn’t kill your mother.’
Tabitha glanced between them, her easy manner dissipating. She rose to her feet, eyes snapping. ‘I am the last of the witches of Galanty-Uponne-the-Sea.’ As she spoke, the shadows seemed to gather and swell, rushing in around her like the wings of a thousand black birds. ‘And I will not rest until I have delivered death to the man who killed my sisters, my mother, my very heart. He will pay with his soul.’
‘He?’ echoed Isobelle.
