Devil's Frost, Spellspinners Series #3 (The Spellspinners of Melas County) (5 page)

“I shot a bolt of magic at him with my—” Dagger. Crap. “My dagger is there on the dirt! If they find it, they’ll know it was me!”

Mom looked even more worried. She wasn’t meeting my eyes. “I’ll go back and look for the dagger.”

A thick, bitter fog surrounded us. My eyes burned in its chill. The frozen air in front of us shattered into ice crystals and fell onto our feet like shards of hail. “And find out about Logan, too? I had to let Jacob take him to the infirmary.” I shuddered at the thought.

“Logan will be okay,” Mom said.

Logan. Now I felt even guiltier for having that stupid moment in the forest with Jude. What was wrong with me? How could I have let him kiss me, especially after I was pretty sure he helped—maybe even masterminded—Orchid to poison me? No more. No more Jude. The next time I talked to him would be never, and that’s when I’d let him around my face again. And my lips. Especially my lips. “All of this will blow over, honey,” she said, though her worry lines weren’t convincing me.

I almost dreaded hearing the answer to my next question: “What happened with Congression?”

Mom’s frown deepened. Her eyes got misty, then shifted into angry, then back to sad again. “I don’t know how to say this gently—”

“Then just say it.”

“Orchid’s being charged with four counts of crimes against the Sacred Rules of Congression: conspiracy to commit murder, practicing dark magic with the end goal of infiltrating a fellow Spellspinner, infiltrating a fellow Spellspinner, and”—she gulped when she said this—“attempted murder of a warlock.”

“Four counts.”

“Four counts.”

One count was a warning. Two counts, probation. Three counts you were stripped of your magic and exiled. But four counts was…

“Death sentence.”

I grabbed Mom’s arm for support. “She’s only sixteen! She didn’t know what she was doing…She—”

“I argued that, but the evidence is pretty clear, and there were so many witnesses.”

“Is it…final?”

She shook her head. “I left before the verdict was given, when I heard the news about Chance. I ran to find you. I fear the worst for you, too, my darling.”

My stomach jumped into my throat. “When they find my dagger, they’ll know it was me. I’ll be next.”

“Listen to me. I will not let any harm come to you. I will go back and find the dagger and hide it from them. You will run. Run from Melas. Run and hide.”

“Run and hide? That’s what Jude suggested, too. But Logan is in the infirmary, and Orchid…” Oh God. This was horrific. “Jude says…maybe I should blame what happened with Chance on Orchid. That I should say she masterminded it the way she did everything else—”

“Lily, Jude is not an ally. You need to stop talking to him.”

“It’s not like I want to talk to him!” My fists clenched. My nails dug into my palms so hard, I drew blood. “He just keeps showing up.”

Mom looked out over the cliffs again, breathing deeply before turning back to me. “There’s something…There’s something else you need to know, honey. Something huge.”

“What?”

“There’s a second part to the prophecy,” Iris said wistfully, her words catching on the foggy ocean breeze.

I studied her face, waiting.

“I couldn’t tell you before. It had to be now. After your first Gleaning.” She glanced over at the sun’s position in the sky; then, reaching into her knapsack, she handed me a folded piece of paper. The paper was old. Yellowed at the edges. I carefully unwrapped it. “I kept this with me all day to give to you. I was hoping the circumstances would be happier ones, but sometimes the universe throws us a curved fireball and this is what we get.”

She sounded so cryptic. My hands shook a little as I braced myself to read:

Under the strawberry moon

Stands a flower girl

With the mark of a blue rose moon.

“What does this mean?”

The sky above us shifted, inviting in the red of sunset, painting the fog pink.

“What do you think it means?”

“I have no idea except that it sounds like the clue you gave me to look for Logan’s mark.”

“The full moon of June has many nicknames. When people are blessed to live, like we do, in an area where wild berries grow, they call it the Strawberry Moon. A Blue Moon is when the moon is full for the second time in one month.”

“What’s the flower girl?”

Iris looked at me, light dancing in her eyes. I blinked, reading the antique message again.

I heard Logan’s voice in my head.
“Your scent, you smell of flowers.”

A flower girl.

I glanced up at the sky, where the full, round moon would rise, pink and bright.

Not broken.

“The flower girl is…me?”

As if by a feather dipped in hot wax, a burning, tingling sensation tickled the skin on my left hip bone. Without hesitation, I peeled down the waistband of my pants. As I did, the wind picked up. The waves below us leapt and crashed high against the cliff.

I never ignored signs from nature.

My mom gasped as the skin covering my left hip bone glowed where the tangerine sun reflected off it. My eyes burned as a shadowed circle suddenly appeared on the knuckle-white bump there.

A mark exactly like Logan’s!

The sun beamed directly into the mark, coloring in half the moon shape. Nature’s tattoo burned, but in a spine-melting way, like hot salt water filling up a dry, begging sponge.

I fell to my knees. Iris dropped to meet me. She smiled proudly like she was right all along. “You and Logan
both
carry the mark of the Chosen. Of the Roghnaithe.”

Bravado gone, a tear slipped down my cheek from the mark’s strange burn, from hearing his name and mine together.

From everything.

Iris faced me, her voice soft as petals. “The mark showed up on Logan only because of your love for him. And now your mark is showing up because of his love for you.”

“Once he finds out what I did to Chance, he won’t love me anymore.”

“Remember, Lily, the opposite of love is nothingness—indifference. Hate and love are two sides of the same magic stone. What to worry about in this life is lack of feeling. Feeling nothing. And Logan feels so much for you, sweetie. He will be in a lot of pain, but remember, what he did almost killed Orchid, and you still love him, right?”

“Of course.” I nodded. “Orchid attacked him the way Chance attacked me.”

“He’ll know by now what happened, but the mark appeared. He loves you. Your dedication to each other is obviously real. The same way you aren’t able to see the ink in Grandma Rose’s journal until you’re ready for that part of the story, your ink couldn’t be revealed until you had everything to lose and risked it for the other.”

“Logan didn’t save me from the stone, though. Jude did.”

And what had Jude said?
Everyone thinks Logan is the special one, the Chosen One.

Did Jude think
he
was the Roghnaithe? My Chosen One? Is that what all of this had been about? Seducing me in the dungeon, following me, saving me? Did he think I was his magical equal and that once he’d gotten both Logan and Orchid out of the way, we’d leave town together?

Jude’s motives fell into place:
Blame Orchid. Blame Orchid for all of it.

We’d both be left unscathed, with scars hidden beneath our skin. Scars only the two of us knew about.

Iris shook her head. “How would Orchid know Jude? None of you girls had ever been exposed to a warlock before you met Logan up on Black Mountain.”

My heart sank. “Was that set up too?”

“Not by the witches. The ancients could have led you up there, but that is just nature’s push; it’s not a design.”

“Well, Jude pretty much admitted that he and Orchid were in on it together. I think they wanted to be the leaders of the Young Spinners. That’s why she tried to kill Logan.”

Matching her newly aged skin, Iris’s eyes looked so tired, so old. “I’m sorry, Lily.”

I bit my lip. “So am I. If I hadn’t saved Logan, he would have died tonight.”

Weariness washed over Iris’s face. “It has happened before. When things got out of control.” She was referring back to the event that led to the Hundred-Year Curse, when witches and warlocks first turned on one another.

“And if we aren’t careful, it could happen again.”

“Lily!”

Iris was prophesizing about our future when Logan’s tall frame burst from the forest, his shoulder smeared with dried blood, his clothes filthy and torn. He’d never looked more wrecked, or more beautiful. “Logan!” All I wanted was to throw my arms around his broad shoulders, curl into his arms, and press my face into his beautiful strong chest. But I couldn’t move. Was he angry? Did he hate me? Or was Iris right…? Did he—
could he
—still love me?

“Are you okay? I’m so sorry I let Jacob drag you off…and I’m so sorry. Everything was so crazy. Orchid was the doppelganger, and they hauled her off after I saved you and then something happened to Chance, and I did it. Something terrible.” My voice was so small, and with all the emotional cracks in the words, I could barely make it out on the gentle breeze blowing off the sea. I scanned Logan’s face, searched his emotions.

His eyes were so full of loving urgency that the darkness I felt moments ago seemingly evaporated. “Jacob brought Chance’s body”—he avoided my eyes for a split second—“to the infirmary while I was there. They thought I was still unconscious, but I heard everything. They matched the wound on his back to a witch’s dagger. I recognized it as yours, but they haven’t yet. After I paid my respects to Chance, I ran straight here to find you.”

I felt sick. “He wasn’t himself. He was coming at me and wouldn’t give up. Jacob cursed him with the red poison again. I wasn’t trying to kill him, Logan. I wasn’t.”

“I know.” He stepped forward and gently stroked my cheekbone with his thumb. “I know you would never hurt Chance unless it was absolutely impossible not to.”

My body flooded with relief. He believed me. He believed
in me
. Logan was the most perfect person on this planet. How could I be so lucky for him to have chosen me?

“But there’s another thing I ran down here to tell you. Chance might not be dead.”

“What? How? I saw his internal injuries. He didn’t have a pulse.”

“His wound was caused by your magical dagger. Not a physical cut to the heart, but a bolt of energy, right?”

I nodded guiltily.

“According to warlock lore, once a body injured in that way has gone to rest, we have seven days to find a cure that can bring him back to life.”

“A cure?” Hope. “Where?”

Mom interjected. “The Isle of the Seven Sisters.”

“Where the key to the breaking the Hundred-Year Curse is?”

“Exactly. You need to come with me to find it.”

I glanced past Logan into the forest, heart soaring at this newfound information that could save Chance’s life. Now, if we could only figure out a way to help Orchid…

Logan scratched the back of his head and opened his lips to speak, but Iris crossed in front of me, stepping between us. “Sweet Logan,” she said, her eyes inexplicably misty. “It’s so nice to see you. I’m Iris.”

He blinked once, a little surprised, almost like he recognized her.

She wrapped his hands in hers and gave them a warm squeeze. “Lovely to see you,” she repeated.

“Likewise,” said Logan. He smiled kindly at Mom and then looked at me. I drowned in his open, bright eyes. Two deep pools and I was lost in them. So grateful to have him back, I couldn’t ruin this second chance. As if he could sense my desperation, Logan reached out, grabbed my arm, steadied me.

I threw my arms around his neck and buried my face in the heat of his shoulder.

“I am sorry I wasn’t there. The thought of Chance attacking you like that…”

“It was a pretty crazy turn of events,” I mumbled into him.

“I agree it’s best that Lily leaves town for now,” Iris interjected, bringing us back to Logan’s plan. “This cure is something I’ve heard about in legends, but I’m not entirely convinced it’s real. Do you know where it is, exactly?”

“I think so. A map appeared on Chance’s fallen body.”

“A map? The Sisters are leading you, then! They do that. You can trust a sign from the Seven Sisters.”

“That’s what I was hoping,” Logan said. “Happy you’re confirming it.”

Iris flashed me an excited look that I could only interpret as,
Wow, you weren’t kidding; this guy is a keeper
.

Nestling against his beating heart, I breathed him in—his oaky male smell, so foreign, yet so familiar, like I’d always known the scent but had finally found the source. He was here. He was mine. And it was time to tell him about the mark. I gestured to Mom to give us a moment alone.

“I’ll go keep watch,” she said obligingly. “Will let you know if I hear anyone coming.”

“Thank you,” Logan said.

Mom and I locked eyes and grinned.

I turned, facing the sea. He kept his arms around my waist. Once I wiggled into a comfortable position, I rested my hands on his forearms, watching his ink rise under my palms. Leaning back in to his familiar chest, I said in a soft voice, “What I wanted to tell you in the forest was that my coven suspected you were carrying a mark. This mark like mine.” Inching a bit away from him, I folded down my waistband.

His hand reached out tentatively. “May I?” he asked in a voice so sweet, so soft, I almost cried.

I nodded, shivers racing as he stroked the outline of the moon.

“You have the same markings,” he whispered. I quivered under his touch.

Gently, I turned, ran my fingers down his chest to his waistband, then folded the edge of his pants and pulled it down on his hip. The mark was there. First a rising shadow, a clean palliate, and then filling up with the Rose Moon’s magic.

Just like mine.

“What does this mean?” he asked, eyes wide.

“It means we both wear the mark of—”

“The Chosen? Aw, how very romantic indeed.”

Recognizing his voice immediately, we spun around and saw our skeletal enemy, his cracked lips upturned in a sardonic smile, eyes like bloody meat.