Page 216 of Bitten & Burned

“There has to be a way to stop it,” mused Cassian.

“If your blood didn’t help, I’m not sure what else we could—or should—try,” said Anton, his thumb stroking along my belly. “It’s blood magic. Your blood, especially, should help, at least a little. But it’s not.”

“That’s because Cassian’s blood is vampire blood,” Quil said. “Doesn’t matter if his blood heals normally. That brand on her is an anti-vampire sigil.”

“Anti-vampire sigil that’s keeping me from using my magic,” I reminded them, staring down at my hands.

“And you know as well as the rest of us that the anti-vampire part didn’t fucking work,” spat Anton. “Look at the one on your back and look at your fangs and tell me it worked.”

“Just because it isn’t stronger than the vampire curse in our blood doesn’t mean it doesn’t work at all,” countered Quil. “Her grasp on moon-magic’s gone.”

“Not entirely,” I admitted quietly. “But for all intents and purposes, yeah, it’s gone.”

“Wait… what do you mean ‘not entirely’?” Vael asked, sharp enough that all eyes shifted to me.

I swallowed. “I kind of…haven’t thought about it since it happened, but on the boat, when the Ashbornes first attacked, I felt something spark. Something pushed through. Half of magic is just intention anyway. My intention is still there. It’s the follow-through that I’m missing.”

The table went still. No one breathed for a moment, the weight of what I’d said settling over us.

“Do you think…” Vael began, but his voice was careful now, measured. “Do you think you might be able to get it back?”

“I mean, yeah. Maybe… but I’d rather just get the sigil removed, and I wouldn’t have to worry about accessing my magic,” I said. “Not the point I was trying to make, though. The point was, magic is just intention.”

Cassian leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “So what you’re saying is, half of magic is just intent. If you were able to makesparks happen because you wanted them to happen, think of what the Ashbornes’ sigil magic could do.”

“Exactly,” I said. “The Ashbornes act like it works. They truly believe it works, and so, it does…at least some of the way. I have no way of knowing if a deity grants them actual magic.”

Quil snorted. “Nope.”

“So they’re drug-addled hunters with no divine intervention, who bastardized several runes to brand what they view as theirs,” Anton snapped. “And you’re telling me their backwoods way of making magic is working because they believe it works?”

“I’m telling you that backwoods magic is often the kind that works the best. Because the practitioners aren’t muddied by science, research, and reality. In the world they live in, this magic works. And therefore all signs point to it working.”

“So what, we make them stop believing in the sigil, and it’ll go away?” Anton asked, clearly not in sincerity, but there was a kernel of truth in his cynicism.

“Or we make them think the one who activated it has no power over it,” Vael suggested.

“How do we do that?” asked Anton. “Kill him?” He looked a little too excited about that idea.

“He might know how to get rid of Rowena’s sigil,” Quil reminded everyone. “So if we kill him, it can’t be right away.”

“Remove him,” Dmitri stated. “Remove him from where he is, take him out of the picture, give them the thing they really want—the land—and they’ll cast him off like a burning coal.”

“So what, we go to Dun Drummond, waltz in through the front door, and just take him?” Anton asked, sounding more and more annoyed as we went on.

“If worst comes to worst, I could always be the bait,” I offered.

“Absolutely not,” Anton hissed, his arm tightening around me. “No way are you going back to that monster again.”

“I wouldn’t have to, necessarily,” I said. “I could just make it look like I am. Use me to get closer to him, and then overtake him. He’s a cursebreaker, not trained in hand-to-hand combat. Ifyou can get close enough, you can do it. Don’t kill him there, but take him. Once the Ashbornes get what they want and the sigil dies down, we get him to tell us how to get rid of it entirely.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment, and then Vael and Cassian hunched over the map in front of them, turning it this way and that.

“We could do this if we all split up,” Cassian mused. “I don’t relish the idea, but I believe with a strong enough plan, we’d be victorious that way. Keeping a group of six together is more difficult than keeping three groups of two.”

“Cassian, you and I could come in from this treeline, here,” Dmitri said, bending his massive frame over the map and pointing. “Draw them out of their hovels.”

Quil was peering at the map now. “Anton and I could take up each flank? Slashing and dicing them as we go? Thin out the ranks.”