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The Witch’s Blood
Katharine Corr
Elizabeth Corr
Just who can you trust…?The final spell-binding book in THE WITCH’S KISS trilogy by authors and sisters, Katharine and Elizabeth Corr.Life as a teenage witch just got harder for Merry when her brother, Leo is captured and taken into an alternative reality by evil witch Ronan. Determined to get him back, Merry needs to use blood magic to outwit her arch-rival and get Leo back. Merry is more powerful than ever now, but she is also more dangerous and within the coven, loyalties are split on her use of the magic. In trying to save Leo, Merry will have to confront evil from her past and present and risk the lives of everyone she’s ever loved. Given the chaos she’s created, just what will she sacrifice to make things right?
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2018
Published in this ebook edition in 2018
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Text copyright © Katharine and Elizabeth Corr 2018
Cover thorns © Josef Mohyla & Andrew Unangst
Cover design © blacksheep-uk.com (http://blacksheep-uk.com) 2018
Katharine and Elizabeth Corr assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008264789
Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008264796
Version: 2018-03-23
For Rebecca and Sam, the two brightest stars in my universe
E.C.
For Neill, Georgina and Victoria, with all my love
K.C.
Contents
Cover (#u96104d35-9c3d-5834-906d-894874529e40)
Title Page (#u07bd8e48-8956-5ba8-acab-044df1a6f3ad)
Copyright (#u6b230113-0608-52a3-bc0a-0342f44ecd82)
Dedication (#udea93a91-b8f4-507d-b85e-75923a18c599)
Prologue (#uf13f9d95-b65b-52ab-a276-7b70e6cc3b51)
Chapter One (#u0415ecdc-ff97-5167-baba-7722101f574a)
Chapter Two (#ua76e0af5-9137-5788-93f9-3cabc7575efc)
Chapter Three (#ub4a9f4e2-8345-5a66-ad42-71f2f6e77086)
Chapter Four (#u02a2d497-7a0c-58b3-b3ae-ffd7f1a7e529)
Chapter Five (#ua22e847a-c0a3-5766-a46b-e24af1a8fd8f)
Chapter Six (#u9c732e46-2d4d-5ede-a3dd-705db3d9eb0d)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Books by Katharine and Elizabeth Corr (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
(#ulink_67db079f-f7b9-5e37-8f74-5770447001f3)
EO? LEO, WAKE up.’
A man’s voice. Leo could feel the weight of someone’s hand on his shoulder. But he stayed where he was, curled into a ball on his side, trying to remember. The pain in his chest was fading, but he was cold. Cold to the bone. And his mind was full of shadows, as if every minute of his life before this present moment had been walled off by a thick screen of smoked glass.
There was the sound of wood against stone, and sunlight hit his face. He blinked, half-opening his eyes.
‘Ronan?’ Leo reached up to touch his boyfriend’s face. They’d been at Ronan’s campsite together, and then they’d walked to the lake, and Ronan had lit a fire, and then …
And then.
Leo gasped and scrambled backwards, away from Ronan, to the edge of the room. ‘What did you do to me?’ He clawed at the pattern burnt into the skin of his chest, making it bleed.
‘Leo, don’t—’ Ronan took a step nearer.
‘No! Stay away!’ Leo remembered now. The figure of the King of Hearts, emerging from the water. The unbearable, suffocating pain as it took control of his body. And then his sister –
Merry. He’d tried to warn her. To scream at her to run. But the thing inside him had laughed. And Ronan had laughed. And then his sister and Ronan had started fighting, hurling spells at each other. ‘Merry?’
‘She’s alive. Safe.’
‘You tried to kill her.’
‘I didn’t—’ Ronan broke off and dropped into a wooden chair, crossing his legs. ‘I just couldn’t let her stop me, Leo. I had to get away. Even in our world, I’m not,’ his mouth twisted, ‘not normal.’ He meant the world of witches, and wizards, and half-remembered magic. ‘I needed the power that was trapped under the lake.’ Ronan looked up again, and Leo could see the hunger blazing in his eyes. ‘I still need it. And I needed you to act as,’ he waved a hand through the air, ‘a vessel, to transport that power. But even if I hadn’t, I would never have left you behind. I love you. I thought you loved me.’
‘Love?’ Leo shivered and took a deep breath, wincing as the skin across his chest stretched. ‘How can you even use that word after what you’ve done?’ He glanced around, taking in his surroundings for the first time: a stone room, like the inside of a castle; rushes on the floor; a low bed with furs strewn across it. Nowhere he recognised. Panic twisted his gut. ‘Where are we?’
Ronan shrugged slightly. ‘Somewhere safe. Another time. Another reality. Somewhere I can properly exist.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I couldn’t stay in our time, Leo. D’you think I liked stealing from other witches and wizards? Living on the dregs of their power? Knowing that I would always be despised, always hunted?’ He laughed; it was a hard, bitter sound. ‘I was a parasite! At least, that’s how they saw me. The King of Hearts has taken us to a place where I can use its power and the power of the shadow realm. Permanently. No more stealing. But there’s no way back, for either of us now.’
Leo swallowed hard. ‘The King of Hearts …’
Ronan leant forward, steepling his fingers. ‘It’s not inside you any more. I promise.’
Was he telling the truth? The King of Hearts was a creature of the shadow realm created by the evil wizard Gwydion – a malevolent, bodiless entity that needed a human host to exist. Leo remembered being sealed inside his own head at the lake, remembered the suffocating presence that had taken his limbs and mouth for its own. He felt as if he was in control of his body again. But was he truly free of the creature?
His abductor was watching him. ‘We can be together now, Leo, and no one can—’
‘She’ll come for me.’ Leo hugged his knees to his chest, digging his nails into the flesh of his arms, focusing on the pain to keep from screaming. ‘Merry will find me.’
Ronan shook his head.
‘No, she won’t. They won’t let her. The coven, I mean. Besides, she has Finn now.’
Finn, the wizard who’d shown up in Tillingham just after Gran had gone missing? It was true that he and Merry had been spending a lot of time together, but Leo couldn’t quite remember whether his sister had actually been dating the guy. Finn had been there too, hadn’t he? At the lake, that night. Ronan was still talking.
‘Finn will take her back to Ireland and she’ll forget all about her big brother. He’ll make sure of that.’ Ronan stood up, dragged one of the furs off the bed and tossed it to Leo. ‘That’s what you never understood about witches and wizards. We’re selfish. We might try to hide it with oaths about helping plebs and so on, but that’s just a veneer. Even for your precious sister. She has her power. And now she’s with Finn, she’ll have position and wealth as well – everything she could possibly want. To be sure, she’ll grieve for you, for a while. But then she’ll move on.’
‘No. You’re lying, you’re—’ Leo tried to force himself back through the wall as Ronan walked towards him. ‘Merry wouldn’t leave me here with you. She wouldn’t.’
Ronan crouched down in front of him. ‘We’ll see. But in the meantime, you need to trust me, Leo. You belong to me now, and I’m going to take care of you …’
(#ulink_cfafb5b0-372f-5268-b310-23d3bf23a8a6)
ACK.
Nearly five months had passed since they’d last stood face to face. But Merry would have known him anywhere. Sure, his hair was shorter. And his clothes were different. Gone were the princely garments with the rich embroidery and fur trimming. Instead, he was wearing coarse woollen trousers, a cloth shirt and a ragged leather tunic. His forearms were painted with patterns and symbols, dark blue lines swirling and interlocking. The only hint of luxury was a gold belt buckle, which gleamed with hints of red and green, despite the dull grey light. And he looked older. Wearier.
Still, she knew him.
He was the same boy she’d fallen in love with. The same cursed prince who had been put into an enchanted sleep fifteen hundred years ago and had woken in her own time, still possessed by a creature summoned from the shadow realm. Of course, he’d been a corpse the last time she’d seen him. Actually seen him, not just dreamt about him. His dead body had been lying on the floor of the wizard Gwydion’s chambers, beneath the Black Lake. She’d knelt by him, wept over him, kissed him –
The temptation to run to him now, to throw her arms round his neck, was almost too strong to resist.
But Jack – this Jack – was holding a long, angular knife to Finn’s throat. Finn was on his knees in the snow, panting, his face pale and rigid. Jack had hold of Finn’s hair, and as Merry stepped forward he yanked the wizard’s head further back, making the other boy cry out in pain. The blade was hard against Finn’s skin now, and Merry could see a bead of blood welling up against the dark metal.
Jack frowned at her. There was no recognition.
‘Who are you? And how do you know my name?’
She tried to read his feelings, to use that ability to pick up emotions that she’d gained a few months ago. But there was nothing. Either the people were different here – wherever here was – or the passage through the point of intersection had done something to her. She could sense her magic clearly, running like a current beneath her skin. But nothing else.
Finn whimpered as Jack pressed the knife further into his flesh.
‘Answer me!’
Jack had forgotten her. Or …
Or maybe, in this place, he and I have never actually met.
‘Jack, please—’ She stopped short, felt her eyes widen. The unfamiliar syllables of Old English felt strange in her mouth, just as they had done under the lake all those months ago when she’d confronted Gwydion. Her magic must have just taken over, and her brain switched language automatically. She didn’t know how it had happened, any more than she knew where she was, or why Finn – a powerful wizard himself – hadn’t disarmed Jack with a spell, or why Jack seemed so different from the gentle, sad prince that she remembered. Any more than she knew what to do next.
