The Underground Witch (Incenaga Trilogy) (32 page)

“You may remove your hands,” she said. “
Tell me what you feel.”

“Gah!” Blood rushed to her hands, turning the
m from white to pink. “Like a thousand needles are stabbing me!”

“M
ove your hands toward the fire and take in a bit of heat. What do you feel?”

“I still feel
a sting, but it is warmer now.”

“Do you recognize this feeling?
Close your eyes.”

Emmeline closed her eyes and
was immediately taken to the night Mahlon had won control over her. She didn’t see it like the visions of her mother, but as a memory that had haunted her ever since. She had been too weak to give Mahlon much of a fight and he had only needed one small flame to take her. With her hands bound, the heat had nowhere to go, no way to be released. Hot, tingling heat traveled up and down her arms in waves, increasing with every breath. It consumed her, filling her with power until it exploded behind her eyes. And then he’d claimed her. Just one look into her eyes when they shone and he owned her.

Emmeline dropped to her knees and buried her face in her hands.
The same sensation had happened when Erick and Prince Weldon fought over her. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? She hated the feeling. And Flora had recreated it for her, bringing with it all the horrible memories she had tried so hard to forget. She never wanted to feel it again.

“Stand up, child.” Flora’s voice cracked.
“Move back to the fire.”

Emmeline
pulled herself to her feet. The tingling rush of blood sickened her.

“
You needed to remember this feeling,” Flora said. “You cannot forget it, nor can you shy away from it. Use your mind to push that feeling up your arms. Push it up your neck and into your head and then gather it behind your eyes. And then I want you to press it into the very center of your mind.”

Emmeline’s fingers
had almost returned to their normal color with only random sparks of tingling remaining. She pushed what little sensation was left up her arms and imagined it flowing to her head, but nothing came.

“It’s gone.
I don’t feel it anymore,” she said.

“Go sit on the table again with
your hands underneath.”

Emmeline
tucked her hands underneath her skirt and sat with her head down. Flora’s methods seemed strange, but she didn’t have enough experience with magic to protest. For all she knew, every Incenaga had tried these very same exercises. It didn’t escape her attention that none of them had survived and even the woman teaching her never succeeded.

When she figured it had been long enough, Emmeline removed her hands and
sucked in a breath between her teeth. She stood by the fire as stinging pain radiated from her hands and up her arms.

“Try to move that feeling before you lose it,” Flora instructed.

Emmeline closed her eyes and imagined the tingles traveling up her arm. She imagined it crawling to her elbows and then to her shoulders. She pushed it from her hands until her hands were once again numb. Her body trembled as it reached her neck and clawed at her flesh. Her throat burned as if on fire and she choked, losing her concentration. Suddenly her hands prickled again and she turned them over to watch the color return.

“Again,” Flora said.

Emmeline shuffled to the table and sat on her hands. It seemed such a ridiculous thing to do, but she had made progress the time before and she couldn’t help but be curious about what might happen if she managed to push the tingling heat all the way to her mind.

Time and time again, Emmeline succeeded as far as her throat and then
choked her way back to square one. Flora wandered in and out of the room, giving pointers here and there, but the night passed with little improvement. An hour before sunrise, and about two hours after Emmeline’s arms had turned to mush, Flora told Emmeline to finish for the night.

“One more time,” Emmeline said through gritted teeth. She refused to waste another night sitting on her hands.

“As you wish,” Flora said with a shrug.

Emmeline sat on her hands
and waited for the precise moment when they would be deprived of blood. She rolled her eyes. The exercise was ridiculous. And yet she couldn’t give up on it. Her determination to return to Erick fueled her. When she’d left with Tiergan, she never thought she’d get another chance to be with him and she wasn’t going to ruin it by giving up before she’d begun. Erick deserved more than that. She knew he would willingly offer his protection for the rest of their lives, but she couldn’t live in constant fear of the next person coming for her. Nor should she expect him to live with the burden. Flora offered a solution – albeit a strange one – and Emmeline hoped with her whole soul that it would work.

Desperate to be done with the
task and move on to the next, Emmeline rushed to the fire the moment her hands lost feeling. The flames warmed her skin, fusing to the tingling burn in her hands. She closed her eyes and blocked every sense but the feeling in her hands. The sounds in the room hushed, the lights faded, and the draft at her feet settled. She had created a void around her, in her mind, and used it to devote her full attention to the pin-like pricks shooting across her palms.

Gritting her teeth, she pushed the feeling up her arms, into her neck, and
finally, into her head. It burst into an eruption of pain – hot, stabbing pain. Emmeline brought her hands to the sides of her head and gripped her hair. It hurt like nothing she’d ever felt before.

Flora called to her but her voice sounded
far away, as if she were on the other end of a long tunnel, or at the bottom of a deep ravine. Her words echoed in Emmeline’s mind, swirling with the hot mass of lava she had pushed there. Finally, Flora’s voice broke through to her senses and she shot her eyes open. Her eyes burst with a sharp pain and then everything went black.

“I said
don’t
open your eyes!” Flora shouted. She rushed to Emmeline and took her face into her hands.

“What happened?
” Emmeline said. “I can’t see!”

“Oh dear.”

“What does that mean? I’m blind! Is this permanent?” Her voice had gone up an octave.

Flora took her hand and led her to a chair.
“It shouldn’t last. I had this happen to me once.”

“How long will I be like this
?”

Nothing.

“Flora?”

“
Oh….A day or two, I suppose,” she said, her voice sounding distracted.

Emmeline slumped in her chair. A day or two lost.

“I’ll go get O’fin to walk you home.”

Emmeline rubbed her eyes and opened them. Still black. A minute later, O’fin shuffled into the room, no doubt still sleepy from his shortened night.

“Flora says you need me to take you back to the pit,” O’fin said. Emmeline noted the tone of pride in his voice.

“I do. I’m sorry to wake you.”

“Nah. I don’t need much sleep anymore.”

“Off you go,” Flora said.

Emmeline ruffled O’fin’s hair and turned toward Flora’s voice. “Tomorrow?”

“Give yourself a day to recover,” Flora said.

“I want to keep going. Can I move on without my sight?”

“I suppose.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow night. O’fin, you’ll come for me, won’t you?”

“You bet I will!” O’fin said.

Flora laughed. “You funny boy. You’ll do anything to be with Emmeline, even endure that blasted Pit.”

O’fin took hold of Emmeline’s hand and squeezed.

“You have made wonderful progress tonight, my dear,” Flora said. “I never expected you to be able to come this far.”

Emmeline sighed.
“I’m not sure I’ve done anything more than torture myself.”

“Yes w
ell…” She cleared her throat. “There will be more of that, I’m afraid.”

Emmeline
bit her lip and let O’fin pull her into the night.

Emmeline spent the day in darkness, rubbing her eyes now and then to catch glimpses of lightening behind her eyelids. She figured as long as she could see flashes of light, then she wouldn’t be blind forever. O’fin came for her not long after the guard change and helped her through the tunnel and across the field. Without knocking, he opened Flora’s door and led Emmeline inside.

“I’m supposed to go straight to bed now,” O’fin whispered.

“Oh, alright. Thank you for helping me.”

O’fin padded off to his room and
Emmeline closed her blind eyes, trying to get a sense of her surroundings. A pot whistled in the kitchen and, from the smell of it, overdone cakes still baked in the oven. A roaring fire warmed the main room and the creak of wood told her O’fin had crawled into bed. She took a step forward and stumbled into a piece of furniture.

“Flora?” she called.

“I’m right here.”

Emmeline jumped
back. “You startled me! Have you been standing next to me this whole time?”

“
Perhaps. I thought I would make you a dessert tonight. Something to nibble on. Take your bath and come enjoy a few bites when you are clean.” She walked away.

Emmeline stumbled through the house, knocking over chairs and bumping into walls.
When she found the tub room, she washed her hair and scrubbed herself as best as she could. The feeling of being clean again never seemed to grow old. She hopped out and plunged her dress into the tub, setting to work on the filth. The least she could do was clean her own clothing. Satisfied the dress had been scrubbed and wrung well enough, she threw a robe around her shoulders and ventured to the kitchen.

“Eat as much as you
’d like,” Flora said.

A plate slid across the table
and Emmeline sat where she thought it had stopped. “Thank you,” she said.

“When you are done, come
sit in the front room.”

Emmeline
stuffed a handful of pastries into her mouth and rose from the table, making her way to the front room. She bumped her shin on the leg of a couch and a moan escaped her lips.

“I’ll sit here,” she said, rubbing her leg.

The wood floor creaked and a chair scraped closer to her.

“I don’
t want to do this,” Flora said in a voice almost too quiet for Emmeline to hear.

“I don’t mind not being
able to see. Didn’t you say I could still do the next exercise without my sight?”

Flora said nothing. The chair slid back and
her steps traveled across the room.

“Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll give it a try.”

Silence.

“Flora?”

Cold metal slapped around Emmeline’s wrists, binding them together. She jumped from her seat and her head collided with Flora’s

“What are you doing?” Emmeline cried. But she already knew. The fire was calling to her, pulling her in.

“I’m sorry, Emmeline. I didn’t want to have to do this!”

“
You’re sorry? I trusted you!” The flame beckoned her and Emmeline obeyed. She pulled in heat and let it twist and turn inside her. Her eyesight returned and her body strengthened from the inside out. Why hadn’t she thought to use the fire to repair her eyesight? It had been the obvious answer. So obvious, in fact, that Flora should have suggested it.

Flora dragged her down
a set of stairs into the cellar. They entered a cold room and Flora swung the heavy door shut. Turning to face Emmeline, her lip caught between her teeth.

“O
’fin shouldn’t hear you down here,” she said.

Emmeline cringed as the stove flared to life at Flora’s touch.

“It was luck you were blinded last night,” Flora said. “I knew you’d never let me put the bindings on you if you could see.”

“You’re
right; I never would have let you. I can’t believe you are doing this to me. Why would you stay here all these years just to control me?”

Flora’s eyes widened and then she shook her head and rushed forward. “No, no. I don’t want to control you.”

Emmeline held up her bound hands. “Then take these things off me!” The fire surged and heat poured into her, drowning her.

“I need you to resist me, child.”

The flames called to her and Emmeline obeyed with another long pull. Hot energy bit into her skin and seared her organs. It was growing and if she didn’t shut her eyes soon, they would shine for Flora.

“Resist the pull,” Flora said.

“I can’t.”

“Go to the same place
you went to when you froze the needle, the same place that moved the prickly feeling up your arms.”

Emmeline dropped her head back and screamed
in frustration. Heat swirled around her and she let every spark of it inside her. She couldn’t stop it. Not with Flora’s need to control her.