Page 24 of A Circle of Uncommon Witches

TWENTY-TWO

Doreen did not feel strong. She felt broken and exhausted, but if she knew a single thing, it was that she could not stop. The only way out was through. They had one trial left: cunning. She found it laughable because all she had left was courage. She had not been clever enough to save Margot—how could she be clever enough to free her now, to free them all? Maybe she was never as clever as she had thought.

“I hate this,” she said, as she and Ambrose walked down the hill. She looked over her shoulder every few feet. The form of Margot stood whole, a perfectly beautiful stone statue.

“She won’t stay that way,” he said. “We will free her, and we will get out of here.”

“How?” She bit back a sob. Stopped. Turned again. “I can’t leave her there.”

“We can’t stay,” he said, his hand catching hers, his touch gentle.

Doreen looked to the horizon, her feet heavy, her heart aching.

“If we don’t move on, we will lose the light and the path,” Ambrose said, as night grew darker under a thick cloud cover. “Without it, I do not know that we will find our way. There will be an obstacle Ada sets for us—we should be ready, and the light is at least one way for us to see.”

Doreen forced herself to walk, one foot after the other. It was a trudge, and as she moved, her heart hardened. At being stuck in this world she never asked for, at how her fingers itched to touch Ambrose, at how she had failed Margot, at how she was failing herself. She didn’t know what she was doing. They were trapped, and she was exhausted.

The road was winding and twisted. It was a long journey, and when they paused and attempted to sleep, they slept fitfully, Ambrose shifting to her and holding her in the night. Then it was another day and another night of dreamless sleep and a breaking heart. Following the path and not knowing if it would lead them to the final trial, or if it would lead them into a trap. Finally, the following afternoon, they made it to the edge of a forest.

A forest Doreen knew.

“Sinclair showed me this,” she said, looking for the lights of the souls but not finding any. They walked alongside it, down to its edge. “When she pushed me into seeing the truth, I saw this forest. I think this is the end of this realm.”

Ambrose nodded. “Lenora showed me as well.”

Doreen turned and looked at him. “What? When?”

“When she kissed me goodbye,” he said.

Doreen lifted her brows. “What are you talking about?”

“She showed me what had been and could be,” he said, his hands shifting to his pockets. “In the chapel, before it came down. She showed me herself, Eleanor and Lenora.”

“What all did you see?”

Ambrose looked up, to where the stars were starting to dot the sky. “I was wrong about so many things.” He didn’t meet her eyes, and his own were misting.

“You’re scaring me,” she said.

“It’s a Mobius strip of repeating folly,” he said. “Our families, the curse, the losses. I had it so wrong. Doreen, I never loved her. I never really loved Lenora, didn’t understand what love was, and she never loved me.”

Doreen stepped closer, forcing him to meet her eyes. He was shaking. “I don’t understand.”

“When her lips met mine, she took me back. To before. To when I met her, and how lonely she was. You have strong magic, Margot does, everyone in the MacKinnon line does. Not because you’re the thirteenth generation of witches or because Lenora was the ninth. You are all powerful because of who you are, and Lenora was no exception; she was simply untrained. She learned how to spell by accident, and she cast one of her most complex spells when she was lonely. She wove a love spell around me, an enchantment. One where I would fall so completely under her thrall, I lost myself.”

“She bespelled you.” Doreen swallowed around the lump building in her throat.

His nod was slow and measured. “ She cast the curse I unleashed upon you all. It was what Ada gave back to me. She plucked the spell I was under and cast the net wide. It doesn’t matter.” He took a breath, looked at her. “It’s broken now. You are free.”

“Free?”

“Of the curse.”

“I don’t understand.” Her eyes locked in on his form, checking for harm. “Are you dying?”

“No.” He let out a low laugh, both warm and devastated. “I broke the curse the moment I stopped being able not to care about you. Lenora simply freed me to see it, to know the truth.” He stared into her eyes, his filled with pain and something so bright it stole her breath. “I don’t know what love is. I couldn’t. I don’t know if Ada knows, if the love she has for Margaret is real or is another compulsion. I can tell you I did not love Lenora, because I know what I felt for her was nothing like how I feel about you. Because as maddening as you are, I would do whatever it takes to help you, to support you.”

Doreen thought her heart might have stopped for a moment. It was painful, this kind of wanting. “Is this really the best time to confess your feelings?”

“You can’t deflect from this. Not here, when we are at the end of things. I am not under your spell,” he said, with a quirk of his lip. “Though you are bewitching. I think I may have fallen a little bit for you the moment you pulled me from my cage. If I am lucky, I will love you every day for the rest of my life. However short it is.”

“Ambrose…”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, shifting closer so they were nearly chest to chest. “You have saved me over and over. Margot sacrificed herself for us, because she knew you would need something deeper to keep going, because she understood.”

Doreen shook her head, fear lodging in her throat.

“The trials are a balance of the scales. Eleanor made it clear. Ada’s spirits are watching; she is waiting. Ada must be defeated and the souls released, so we may all rest.” He brought his forehead to hers. “You are the most cunning of us all; your magic is clever, inventive, and you are brave and strong.”

“I feel like you’re saying you love me when you really mean goodbye,” she said, a sob in her throat, her heart racing in her chest.

“I am saying you can do this. The sacrifices are worth it.”

He tilted her chin, and his lips met hers. As he kissed her, Doreen saw everything Eleanor had shown to him. She saw the future and what it might be. The curse lifted, Ambrose and Doreen happy, Margot in love, their world one of peace and joy. She tasted freedom: lavender tea, sweet apple cider, shortbread cookies.

They kissed for minutes, hours, days. His tongue met the seam of her lips, and she gasped as he nipped her mouth open. Then Doreen took over. She pressed into him harder, his hands gripping her hips as she tilted her head and took the kiss deeper. She fisted his hair tight in her hand, tugged him to her and moaned as she greedily drove the kiss. She writhed against him as he groaned and the thickness of him dug against her hip.

She cried his name, and thunder erupted into the night.

They broke apart, panting, their eyes drugged, their mouths ravished, both craving so much more.

Lightning splintered the sky. Rain fell. Mist rose up from the earth.

Doreen wiped her eyes clear of the rain, and she discovered she was standing at the edge of a cliff facing Ambrose… but he was no longer her Ambrose.

He wore the face of Hastings, and he was crying.

“How could you lie to me?” he said, his voice wrong.

“I didn’t lie,” she said, the words floating out before she recognized them—before she understood that they were not hers, but Margaret’s. Something had happened when she kissed Ambrose, when they admitted what they were feeling. The past was coming to life, and they were inside it. “I fell in love.”

“You said you loved me,” he said.

“I didn’t know better,” she said. “What I feel for her isn’t the warm kindling of the heart I feel for you.”

“Can you…” he asked, trailing off. “Is there any world where you might one day love me?”

“Not in this world, nor any other.”

Ambrose reached for Doreen then, his hand wrapping around her fingers, pleading in his eyes.

She didn’t hesitate; she jerked away and stumbled back a single step. Her arms flew out, her motions going wild. She spun in a single circle and smashed back into Ambrose. He lost his footing, his eyes crazed, his hair blown back from his face.

“Doreen,” he said, the word a strangled, anguished cry, as he went tumbling from her and over the cliff.

Doreen didn’t move. For a long, heart-wrenching moment, she couldn’t. She was stuck in the loop, playing it over and over, trying to break free. Then she screamed and the spell broke. She tore off running down the cliffside, her eyes tracking over the water. She thought of diving in but feared hitting the jagged rocks. If Ambrose hadn’t smashed into them, it would be a miracle.

She and he had relived the moment Ada lost them both. She understood that. Margaret had gone physically from her, and Hastings had instigated a tragedy of his own making—one she could not forgive him for.

A flash of red appeared ahead, and Eleanor stepped out from between the trees. She was there and not there, a faded version of herself.

“Don’t give up on him or us, Doreen,” she said, twitching back and forth from Technicolor to black-and-white before she fizzled out in a stream of smoke, her voice trailing off. “Don’t… give… up…”

Doreen raced on. She tore through a clearing and ran straight for the sea. As she crossed the boggy ground, the terrain bucked. The sandy shore shifted, and large stones—obsidian and imposing—rose from the depths.

Beyond, Doreen couldn’t see anything but a void. The skies darkened, the wind howled, and lightning flashed once again across the skies.

The obsidian stones continued to shift and break apart into single circular steps.

They spun out into a labyrinth, a beautiful and cruel maze leading to where Ambrose had dropped.

Doreen jumped onto the first step, and it shook and crumbled beneath her feet. She hurled herself from it, landing back on the shore.

She tracked the stones and realized each was inset with a carving. Doreen’s eyes couldn’t keep up with her mind. She studied each one, and it clicked—these had symbols etched into them that looked just like the ogham Eleanor had given her.

Doreen closed her eyes and took in a breath. One, then another. She replayed what Eleanor had told her about the ogham markings. One for her wise counsel, one for Ambrose, one for the sisterhood of her family.

Her heart was with Ambrose. Her holly king. She looked until she found the stone with the marking for the holly on it and jumped.

One after another she leapt onto the stones.

When she finally reached the middle, she found three stones waiting. Something was on top of the three stones. Not symbols from the ogham, but something bigger. As she drew closer, they came into focus—the frozen stone forms of Margot, Ambrose… and a grouping of her ancestors—the spirits of this world.

All were encased in stone, all waiting—a representation or the real thing, she did not know. It didn’t matter. She knew what would be asked of her before it was.

The wind howled up and a single word whistled down: Choose.

“Choose what?” she called.

Choose. One.

The forceful wind pushed her forward. She started to lose her footing. If she didn’t move soon, she would stumble off and down into whatever waited below, and all would be lost.

She had to fight to keep the tears back. She was failing. She didn’t want to give up, but she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t choose only one of them to save.

She refused.

Doreen looked up and the lightning struck again. She blinked and stared. Her aunt’s eyes flashed before her. They were in the night sky, the constellations drawing them out. The same flicker of a vision here again. Was she dying? Could this be it?

The lightning split the sky again, and she saw her aunt’s entire face carved there, calling something to her.

Was she saying “clever”? Was her mind forcing the illusion? Did she really think Stella would taunt her if she could see her, in the hour of her demise? The stars overhead shifted, and the words repeated across the sky.

Choose.

Doreen was always the clever witch, that was what Margot said. The cunning one by her very nature. She looked at her feet, at the stones beneath it. She thought of each trial. Courage, heart, strength, and cunning. She looked back to the constellation of her aunt. Mouthing a single word.

Not saying clever . No. Saying… Doreen focused on her aunt, reaching for the door between them. She cracked it open, and Stella’s voice rushed in. Forever.

Doreen looked back to the stones and beyond them to a small grouping of flat boulders in the center of the labyrinth. Beneath them was a clearing in the water. Doreen could see all the way down to the ocean floor where a single stone waited. This one was carved with a different symbol.

The Pictish Beast.

She knew as she stared what the outcomes would be. She could step on the holly stone, and it would free Ambrose: her heart’s desire. She could step on the stone with her family, and it would lead her to Eleanor and all the other souls trapped here. Or she could step on the one for her counsel, her wisest friend, and it would free Margot. The stone at the bottom, the forgotten one with the symbol of the beast, was the worst choice possible.

Forever. That’s how long Ada might remain in this world. It was certainly how long she would wait for her true love.

Doreen loved Ambrose. Perhaps she had been in love with him since the moment he first smiled at her, the twitch of a lip and the promise of an adventure and something real. She loved how he believed in her, showed her she could do anything she set her mind to. How he sacrificed himself for her, because he knew she could do this.

She would have searched for him forever too.

Which was why Doreen said the foulest curse word she could summon before she dove past the three stones representing each of her heart’s desires and plunged into the depths of the ocean. She swam

into the

lovely

into the

dark and deep

the dark and deep

the dark and deep

It was like diving through Jell-O, Doreen thought, for no matter how hard she swam, she barely inched forward. When she finally saw the stone waiting at the bottom of the ocean, her lungs burned so painfully she didn’t doubt they would implode at the pressure.

Until her hand slammed onto the surface of the stone.

Light flooded in and the doorway to Ada, the beast who was neither living nor dead but made of many bones and souls, burst wide open.