Page 191 of The Witch Queen

“And if I fail?”

She brushes one of her ice-cold fingers down the curve of my cheek. “Then at least you will have tried. That is all any of us can do.”

With a trembling hand, I take the knife Millicent offers. The tower groans again, listing dangerously to one side.

Come on,I hear beneath the whine of the wind.I know you’re still there.

The room blurs and I have to fight the next wave of dizziness.

“Hurry,” Millicent urges. “Here—like this. The same mark I made: past, present, future. A promise to honor the magic within. In all its forms.”

She extends her hand, palm up. There, just below her left ring finger, three faint lines cross in a triangle.

You can’t leave us yet,that voice again.

My heart beats harder, the tower swaying. I look out into the night. Moonlight gleams against the fresh-fallen snow. And then, just as Millicent did, I drag the blade against the skin of my palm, carving the triangle. Calling the magic.

Three drops of my blood fall into the snow, crimson against white.

And then the tower crumbles around me.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Ayleth

A deafening crack splits the cloister.

The ground trembles. I shield Blodwyn as logs roll out of the fire and broken bits of the Sanctum rain down on top of us. When everything finally settles, I lift my head, taking in the wreckage. Shards of glass and fractured pieces of stone litter the ground. Sindony and the other witches are sprawled where they fell. But Mother and Shade are missing. They must have fled.

“What’s happened?”

My breath catches, instantly recognizing the voice. It’s Blodwyn’s.

“You’re…alive,” I say, overwhelmed by shock and relief.

And she’s better than alive. By some miracle, the purple veins that were showing through Blodwyn’s skin have vanished. Healthy color blooms in her cheeks. But Blodwyn doesn’t seem to notice any of that. She pushes herself up to sit and studies her hand. The three crossed lines on her palm glisten red against her white skin. Is that what brought her back? Rhea’s magic? I press my thumb into my own mark, sending silent gratitude to my sister.

“I’m sorry for that,” I tell Blodwyn, indicating the triangle. “It was the only thing I could think to try to wake you. I wasn’t even sure it would work.”

She looks at me, a crease digging between her brows. “What are you talking about?”

“The triangle,” I clarify. “It’s the same rune my sister gave me and I hoped—”

“You didn’t do this,” she tells me. “I did.”

I just shake my head. “Blodwyn, you couldn’t have. You were unconscious.”

“I know that,” she replies. “But I made the mark. It’s Millicent’s.”

“Millicent?” I repeat, bewildered.

“The Ancient,” she says, her dark gaze holding mine. “She showed me what to do. And then she gave me her power.”

—

If possible, Blodwyn’s announcement causesmoreof a stir than Mother and the shadows. After an initial storm of questions and threats being shouted at one another from across the cloister, we reach a temporary—and tenuous—truce with Sindony and the other witches. We, along with Roland, Joan, and Blodwyn, gather in what remains of Stonehaven’s Great Hall, our astonished attention pinned to the princess as she recounts her story.

It’s even more fantastical than one of Willa’s tales. Blodwyn describes stumbling upon the lost princess in the abandoned tower.Millicent.The Ancient’s journey to become one of the Five who forged the Veil. Queen Sybil’s past and the ritual she completed, one that tied Blodwyn to the Ancient herself. Silence descends when the princess is finished, filled only with the howl of the wind outside.