Page 21 of Discord and Cinder (Fire Witches of Salem #7)

CINDER

“Y ou don’t understand. We’re linked.” I dragged myself through the bone curtain, my boot scraping across the obsidian floor with each step. I could no longer bend my knee.

“I understand clearly. Lie down.” She gestured to a bed in the back corner before stepping toward a cauldron hanging above a fire.

An enclave had been carved into the stone, making it look like the open fire ovens from way back when, and she used a rag to swing the pot toward her, away from the flames.

I would’ve loved to do as she asked. To just lie down, close my eyes, and sleep for a few centuries. But my frozen muscles wouldn’t allow it. “I can’t.”

She looked at me with sympathy in her good eye, and she padded barefoot toward me. “I do this in exchange for the kindness he has shown me.”

She chanted something in an ancient tongue.

My Latin was rusty at best, but this didn’t sound anything like it.

The gravelly half of her dual voice seemed to slither over me, wrapping around me like a snake, while the melodic half tingled on my skin, making me feel lighter and lighter until my feet literally left the floor.

With one hand on my shoulder and the other beneath my leg, she lifted me light as a feather, stiff as a board style and floated me onto the mattress. Holy Hecate on a bicycle. I needed to learn how to do that.

“Where is your payment?” she asked.

“In my bag out front. Take however much you need. Take it all.” I turned my head toward her, and my neck froze in place. “He’s in worse shape than I am. Please help him.”

“There is nothing I can do for him.” She pulled the bone curtain aside and stepped into the foyer, leaving me alone with my burning, frozen body and my thoughts.

The whole if-he-died-I-died thing aside, I felt horrible about his condition. Every slight twitch of my muscles was incredibly painful, so I could imagine the amount of agony he must’ve been in. I closed my eyes and pondered everything that had happened.

He was a demon, one of the three responsible for my family’s curse. He was the reason Ash’s life—everyone in the coven’s lives—were on the line. If we weren’t connected, if I could survive his death, would I be so desperate to save him?

The answer should have been a resounding no . I should have hated him. But I didn’t. Not even close.

It had to be the blood bond making me feel this way, but truth be told, I was growing kinda fond of the big oaf.

I know. I know. I was out of my mind, but of the creatures I’d met since I got to Hell, Discord was the most…

human. He had real emotions, and while he didn’t express them much, I got the feeling he might even be a little bit melancholy.

Handsome, brooding men were always hard for me to resist…

no matter what their species, it seemed.

The seer returned with a small vial and the stack of cash. She fanned it, smiling with the good side of her face as if she’d just won the lottery. Okay, maybe she was a little human too.

“How is he?” I rasped, my lips barely moving as I spoke.

“Oh, he’s almost gone.” She took a tin from a shelf and set the money inside.

“Please, can you help him first?”

“No.”

“Why not? You said he showed you kindness. You can’t let him die.”

“Death has a different meaning here. It’s much more final.” She waved her hand over the cauldron and whispered an incantation.

“I know. Discord told me, which is why you need to understand…if he dies, I’ll die too.” My throat thickened, and if my face wasn’t ninety percent frozen, tears might’ve gathered on my lower lids.

“If you live, he’ll live too.” She used a ladle to scoop liquid into a mug.

“But for me to live, he has to not die.” For being some all-knowing prophet, she sure was dense.

I attempted to elaborate on our predicament, but my mouth froze completely.

My eyelids followed mid-blink, leaving me looking at the half-witch, half-demon through slits as she worked whatever kind of magic on me she wanted.

That sounded like a fun time, didn’t it?

She lifted my torn sleeve and poured her potion into my wound.

It sizzled, and searing pain sliced through my shoulder as if she’d dug both hands into the cut and ripped it apart.

She hadn’t, of course, but she might as well have.

My sluggish heart beat excruciatingly hard, and the entire room cartwheeled around me.

My vision tunneled, and white sparkles danced around the periphery.

Even if she could get all the poison out of me, I might not survive her healing session.

My head throbbed, and as she chanted in that weird, ancient tongue, my blood turned to lava in my veins, hotter than any witch fire could ever dream to be.

My muscles seized, and my bones ached. My consciousness teetered on a razor’s edge, and a split second before I fell into oblivion, the poison poured from my wound, splattering onto the floor.

“For Hecate’s sake. Did you forget I’m not a demon?” Hey, look at that. I’d found my voice.

“Poison is poison.” She set the mug on the nightstand. “The removal process is the same no matter who you are.”

I pushed onto my elbows, squeezing my eyes shut against the spinning room. “Can you go remove it from Discord now? I don’t know where the arrow got him.”

She chuckled and padded to the cabinet. “He was never hit.”

“Yes, he was. I had to drag him here.” I sat up fully and swung my legs over the side of the bed, opening and closing my mouth to work out the soreness in my jaw.

“No, child.” She waved her hand over the cauldron again, whispering something before spooning the potion into another mug. “Your blood bond poisoned him. Drink this.”

I accepted the mug and sniffed the liquid inside. It smelled bitter like dandelion root, tinged with an unnatural sweetness that couldn’t have come from any earthly plant. I curled my lip. “What do you mean the bond poisoned him? How is that possible?”

She folded her hands over her stomach. “You asked for healing. Drink it if you want him to survive.”

Instinct told me never to drink a potion when I didn’t know what was in it, but seeing as how I needed him to live if I wanted to survive, I didn’t have much of a choice.

I chugged the contents, grimacing at the bitter-sweet bite of who-knew-what kinds of roots and smacking my lips, scraping my tongue against the roof of my mouth to get rid of the metallic after taste.

Discord groaned from the other room, and I shot to my feet. The sigil on my arm burned, the glowing red deepening to a blackish-crimson hue. A sudden strength surged through my muscles, and my vision sharpened, the colors of my surroundings growing more saturated and intense.

The bone curtain rattled, and my demon stepped into the room. Without thinking, I ran to him, throwing my arms around him and burying my face in his neck. “Oh, thank Hecate you’re okay.”

“Hmpf.” The seer blew a hard breath through her nose. “Hecate had nothing to do with it.”

Discord slid his arms around my waist, pulling me closer before cradling the back of my head in his hand. “That was a close call.”

Something between a sob and a laugh rolled up from my chest. “Ya think?”

“Thank you, seer.” His chest vibrated against mine. “I am in your debt.”

“I paid her.” I sniffled and pulled away, stepping out of his embrace. “The ashmarks you gave me.”

He nodded. “How many?”

“The whole stack.”

His brows shot up, and he blinked three times before sliding his gaze to the seer. “Then it seems you are in my debt.”

She shrugged one shoulder dismissively. “Hers, really. She paid me.”

“Indeed, she did.” He focused on me, and every nerve in my body hummed. He must’ve felt it too because he inhaled deeply, closing his eyes, a slight smile curving his lips as if he reveled in the sensation.

To be honest, I was reveling in it too.

He snapped his eyes open and cut his gaze to the seer, his brows slamming down as his smile slipped into a frown. “What did you do?”

“I saved you both, as she asked.” She carried the mugs to the sink and set them down. “It was the only way.”

His hands curled into fists at his sides, and he tightened them, staring daggers into her back as she washed the dishes. Neither of them spoke, but the tension between them grew thicker than my great-grandma’s infamous oatmeal.

I cleared my throat. “What exactly was in the potion you made me drink?”

She set the mugs on a shelf and turned around. “You’re a powerful witch. You tell me.”

“I tasted dandelion and maybe some myrrh. Then there was something sweet and something metallic that I can’t name.”

“Detoxification and antiseptic. Very good.” She nodded her appreciation. “The sweetness was from the berries of stygian bramble. They aid in psychic connections.”

“And the metallic?” Discord asked, his jaw tight.

She steepled her fingers. “Why do you ask questions to which you already know the answers?”

He closed his eyes for a long blink and sighed. “The metallic taste came from my blood. Our bond is now complete. We’re inseparable.”

My mouth dropped open. “What?”

“It was the only way,” she said again.

“You made me drink his blood? Demon blood?” My head shook of its own volition, as if every cell in my body refused to accept the information. “No. No, no, no. What do you mean inseparable? How am I…? Demon blood drives mortals insane.”

“Not when you’re already connected by a blood bond,” the seer said.

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, trying to wrap my mind around it. “So I’m not going to lose my mind?”

She laughed. “You summoned a prince through a blood ritual, only to vanquish him so you could get into Hell. That ship has sailed, child.”

“It isn’t funny.” I crossed my arms. Powerful ancient being or not, she didn’t get to mock me…even if she was right.

The seer sighed. “Sit down. Both of you.”

I looked at Discord, and he nodded before pulling out a chair for me. He dragged another around the table to sit catty-corner, and the seer took the cauldron from the fire and set it in the center before pulling up another chair.

“When the poison entered your bloodstream,” she said as she sprinkled dried herbs into the pot, “Discord attempted to heal you through the connection you forged when you summoned him.”

I nodded. “Like he has done before. Why didn’t it work this time?”

“The poison the archer used is lethal, even for royalty. The stronger the being, the faster it works. When Discord shared himself with you, it grabbed on to his essence and seeped into his psyche. The actual poison never made it into his bloodstream, but the effects were the same because of your bond.”

“So the whole frostbite thing, him not being able to move, was some kind of psychosomatic thing?” I backhanded him on the shoulder. “You made me drag you all the way here when it wasn’t even real?”

He narrowed his eyes. “It was very real.”

“It was indeed real to him.” She stirred the pot and tapped the spoon on the rim before setting it on the table. “So real, in fact, that had you not ingested his blood, it would have killed him. Then you would have died, and I would not have held up my end of the bargain.”

She leaned forward, folding her arms on the table. “So, I had to do everything within my power to save you, even if that meant completing your blood bond without your consent. I always deliver what I promise.”

I drummed my fingers on the table, contemplating what she’d said. We already had a blood bond, thanks to my accident. Surely another little blood exchange wasn’t that big of a deal, right? It didn’t mean I was doomed to be his beck and call girl for all eternity… I hoped. Wait…

“But according to Discord, I overpaid you, right? You still owe me a debt.”

She leaned back in her chair, gesturing to the cauldron. “Yes. What would you like to see?”

“Where can we find Hecate?” Discord asked.

The seer looked at me. “Is that what you would like to see?”

“Of course it is.” He leaned toward me, resting his palms on the table and giving me a warning look that shot straight to my bones. “If we have her location, we can find her, and you can use your silver tongue to convince her to return to Lucifer’s court.”

A haunting smile played on the seer’s lips, the perfect half of a bow on one side, a strained grimace on the other, both of them edged with way too much amusement for my liking.

She opened her mouth to speak, but I held up my hand, stopping her.

There was an important piece of information neither of them was sharing with me, and I refused to make another move blindly.

“What does completing the blood bond mean? What has changed?”

Her smile widened. Discord fumed.

“I could have you banished to the ninth level for this.” His eyes tightened, the green of his irises billowing like a storm.

She laced her fingers together. “You could have, were you still in good standing with your king. As an outlaw, you should be thankful I helped either of you at all.”

“When my blood touched his skull, that bound us. What’s different now?” I fisted my hands, my nails digging into my palms. If one of them didn’t answer me soon, I had a dagger ready for each of them.

“Your blood on his skull bound him to you ,” the seer said. “When you ingested his blood, it bound you to him , completing the most sacred of bonds known to demons. A bond even Lucifer himself has never dared forge.”

“I did not ask for this.” He slammed his hand onto the table. “Seer, you know me too well to believe I would approve…”

She waved him off. “I merely completed the task she began in order to save both your lives. Fate willed it, and I complied.”

I dropped my hands to my thighs, gripping my weapons. “What. Does it. Mean?”

The seer turned her gaze to me, both her eyes turning glassy white, her hair flowing in a nonexistent breeze. “It means, dear earthly witch, that you are now this demon’s soul bride.”