Page 32 of Tanglewood Magic (The Three Sisters 2)
“They’ll notice she’s gone.” Rhys’s voice cracked. “There’s nothing you can do. She’s already dead.”
Isis pinned him with a dark and dangerous stare. “Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do, Rhys Bloodgood.” She strode toward the exit, the shadows trailing behind her. The darkness seemed to whisper to her sister in a way that sent a chill through Circe. Isis checked the hall then looked back at them over her shoulder. “The way is clear. Bring Medea. Quickly. I have a plan.”
ChapterSixteen
Rhys scooped Medea into his arms at Circe’s urging. A sense of doom lingered in his gut, and the hair on his arms stood on end. He hadn’t been this close to death since he’d lost June. Did Circe feel the same way he’d felt then? Disbelief. Anger. The temptation to undo what had been done. Dark thoughts such as those had stolen his breath in the early days.
Oddly, he did not see grief on Isis’s or Circe’s faces. Instead, he saw vicious resolve. Whatever Isis was planning, it sounded dark and probably dangerous. The moment she’d seen Medea’s body, she’d visibly changed. Death seemed to cling to her. She wore it like a royal mantle.
Unnerving as it was, he followed Isis out the way they’d come, Circe at his side. The halls were empty aside from the echoes of Eleanor and Brynhoff bickering about the charge Rhys had set off in the hall on the other side of the ballroom. As fast as he could move with Medea’s dead weight in his arms, he rushed after Isis and Circe, anxious to put distance between them and the palace. If the king and queen discovered Medea was missing…
“There, the forest.” Isis pointed into a dense wood to the southwest, in the direction of the Sanguine River. Rhys followed after her until they were deep within a thicket of trees.
“Isis, I think we’re beyond the palace wards,” Circe said. “I can’t feel them any longer.”
Rhys halted. “The wards are built to keep trespassers out, not in.” He rested Medea’s body on a bed of moss. “We’re not safe, though. When Eleanor notices her body is gone—”
“Medea will be back from the dead and able to take her revenge,” Isis said darkly. The shadows tangled around her like vipers.
“Back from the dead?” Rhys looked to Circe, his head spinning. “What are you saying?”
But Circe did not assuage his fears. Her face was grim as she asked, “Can you do it, sister?”
“I can,” Isis said. “I’ve done it before.”
“With birds and sheep. Never people.” Circe placed a hand on her heart. “Are you sure?”
Isis scoffed. “You were born with a talent for transfiguration. Medea for enchantments. I was born with power over life and death. I am certain, sister. I feel her clinging to the space in between here and the next world. I must pull her back now, or she’ll move on.”
“Do it,” Circe said.
A chill prickled Rhys’s skin. Oh, how he remembered wanting to resurrect June! He’d considered it in his grief. What few magical texts he could find on the subject all warned against it. Every wizard he’d approached denied him help. He’d heard horrific stories. “It’s unnatural. It’s forbidden to raise the dead.”
Isis ignored him. She felt along the neck of Medea’s gown until she fisted the queen’s diamond pendant and pulled it over her head. According to Circe, that gem held the golden grimoire—Hera’s grimoire—the one Circe claimed could flatten Paragon to dust.
Rhys tried again, raising his hands. “Listen to me. I know you want her back. I know. When my wife died, I found the spells. I thought about trying it. But there’s a reason it’s forbidden. There is always a price to such magic. Always.”
Isis’s pupils were abnormally large and black as night. “Then let Eleanor pay it.”
Circe drew her wand. “Stand back, Rhys. We’re doing this.”
Magic thickened the air around him, and Rhys backed away. What they were doing was wrong, but no potion or tonic in his basket could change the sisters’ minds, and the power they were putting off was well beyond his abilities. He might be able to stop Circe, simply by overpowering her physically, but those shadows Isis was stirring held a menace he didn’t even understand. Rhys was a man who knew how to pick his battles, and this was not one he could win.
Isis held the stone up to the light and turned it, gazing into its depths. Clouds rolled in overhead, and mist formed around their ankles. The air smelled earthy and dank, like the inside of a cave.
“I have it.” Isis handed the stone to Circe, who held it up toward the moon. When she lowered it again, she gave him a hard look.
“Don’t interfere, Rhys.”
He shook his head. He loved her. It was done. There was no choice, really. He didn’t agree with what she was doing, but he wouldn’t undermine her.
She picked up a stick and used it to carve a symbol in the earth around her sister, drawing intricate patterns inside it.
“We need her wand,” Isis said.
Circe dug in Medea’s sleeve. “It’s still here. Fates, she never even had a chance to draw it.”
Trumpets sounded behind him. Rhys whirled. He pulled his enchanted glasses from his basket and looked toward the Dark Mountains. Black-robed witches floated on their brooms in formation along the border to Paragon, the tips of their wands glowing like stars.
