Page 12 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

This was the fourth Cauldron location she had found. The first was inside a cellar and an experience she’d tried hard to forget; the second was held in another set of stables closer to the edge of the moors. And this castle, where she had caught them once before. She knew they were attempting to find a more permanent location, something they could hide or at least defend from the Order of the Iron Nail, who kept the laws between witches.

But Sorcha had no intention of letting that happen.

These stables were in reasonable condition, given the circumstances. The rain gathered in murky puddles, and the smell of wet hay and sweat and bodily functions was thick. Nearly as thick as the smell of despair and rage. She had never known, before the fighting pits, that such emotions carried a scent, but they were palpable. There was a barn swallow trapped as well, flitting around the ceiling. She could hear it whimpering in the back of her head.

While the swallow ignored her, the others did not.

The otherworldly green eye belonged to a hippogriff. It had an eagle’s head and wings, and the body of a horse. The green eyes were mournful and there was blood in its fur. In the far stall was a Pegasus with its wings pinned with rope and iron thorns. There were three wolf shifters, bound by bewitched silver chains so they could not shift back into their human form.

The Collector was starting to favor wolves for his fighters.

“Right,” she said briskly, because the other options were weeping or screaming, and neither would do anyone any good. The rain would let up soon or the stable master would run into someone who would think to check on the captives when the wasps stopped swarming.

There was also a cage with three goblins who spat at her when she drew closer. “None of that,” she snapped. “I’m trying to help.” Boggart spit burned through clothing and sometimes skin. Goblin saliva hardened like iron. Another glob landed near her boot. “No, thank you,” she added sternly, with a glower.

The closest goblin blinked and then grinned at her. His teeth were as sharp as a shark’s. “Begging your pardon, my lady. These two are still three sheets to the wind. They plucked us out of the alley behind a tavern.”

She did not ask what they had been doing. Goblin activities were not for the faint of heart. “I promise to let you go as soon as the others are free.”

“Why not let us go now, lovely?”

“Because you are not the first goblin I have met.”

The goblin sighed, grumbling. “That’s fair.”

She already knew the ropes were not ordinary ropes and the chains were not ordinary chains. The burning of fennel seeds and salt seared the air, magic layered upon magic. These were simple, brutal spells, but effective.

There was a bear shifter in his human form, wearing the iron collar of the Order of the Iron Nail. It had definitely been stolen—the Keepers were strict about their use. He wilted, exhausted, but still bared his teeth when she approached. “I’m not going to hurt you,” Sorcha said. “I’m here to get you out.”

“No one gets out,” he said hoarsely. “You fight, you die.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Not tonight.”

He tilted his head at something he saw in her expression and nodded once. She might be too feral for Mayfair, but she was just feral enough for this. “I’m Fergus,” he said.

“Fergus, when the chains break, head for that hole in the roof.”

“You can’t break these chains. We’ve all tried.”

She lifted her chin. “Watch me.”

She had paid dearly for this spell. It had cost her a pile of coins, three strands of her hair, and the memory of her first kiss. She had a hazy concept of a garden behind a ballroom but nothing else. Not who, or even if it had been any good. Was it with her friend Allegra? An earl’s son she fancied? A footman?

Her kiss with Aidan she remembered.

Vividly.

If this spell did not work, she would hunt down the Iron Crow who had sold it to her and shove her into the ocean. Preferably into a herd of kelpies, who enjoyed a watery murder as much as a Shellycoat.

The spell looked innocuous, easily carried, easily hidden. It was a simple knotted cord, soaked in water gathered under lightning, buried for three days and three nights under a sword driven into the earth. The real magic was in the flint knife taken from a cove off the Cornish coast that only the Iron Crows knew how to find. Sorcha used it to sever the cord.

A burst of light.

The smell of salt and fennel and lightning.

It was a bigger burst than she had expected.

The chains snapped. All at once. Including the lock to the goblin cage, which she had also not expected. And they were exactly as helpful as she would have expected.