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Chapter Seven

R ather than answer, Tamsin cleared the dishes from the table.

Something had shifted during the meal, leaving her shaken.

Gawain had dropped his guard for an instant, letting her glimpse the man behind his iron facade.

Not that he had intentionally revealed much—they had talked mostly about other people—but she had been able to piece together the shape of his character.

Something in his background had driven him to Arthur.

She guessed Gawain didn’t bestow his loyalty lightly, but it was unshakable once he had. Tamsin found herself envying his king.

She finished her task and turned back to him, a flutter of nerves in her stomach. “This is going to be dangerous. If I do a spell, others will notice. Witches, the fae, and who knows what else.”

She’d said it briskly but still felt the prickle of nerves skitter over her skin.

“No one gets past me,” he said. “Now, how do we do this?”

“The setup is simple.” She spread a fresh white cloth on the table. Although she hadn’t said as much, the ritual had begun the moment he’d sat down to break bread with her. Eating together formed a bond that would strengthen their connection. “Sit where you were before.”

But Gawain remained standing, drawing the curtains while she went to her backpack and retrieved her father’s spell book. Then she opened the chest at the foot of her bed and removed candles, incense, a knife and a bowl of deep blue glass. She looked up to see that Gawain had turned chalky pale.

Tamsin tensed. “What’s wrong?”

“My mother had things just like that.” He swallowed hard. Whatever he was thinking, it didn’t look like happy memories.

Tamsin folded her hands to hide their shaking. “She was a witch?”

He nodded, retreating to a scowl. “She was Morgan LaFaye’s sister.”

That explained a lot. Tamsin rose, closing the chest and picking up her supplies. If he was spooked, she wasn’t doing much better. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

“Of course.” His gaze slid away. “I have seen magic performed before.”

Not willingly, from the sound of it. Tamsin shivered, grateful when he stepped back as she deposited the materials on the table.

But then he picked up the spell book and carefully examined its cover as if handling something poisonous.

The way he was frowning made Tamsin angry.

The book was precious to her, and she barely resisted the urge to snatch it from his hand.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t afford a show of temper.

The Elders had ordered her to find Merlin’s grimoires and Gawain was the only link she had to make this seeking spell work.

If it hadn’t been for that, she would have sent him on his way.

They didn’t trust each other, and that would make the ritual difficult to pull off.

Gawain was reading the yellowed pages of the grimoire, his brow furrowed. Even from a distance, Tamsin knew the book well enough to recognize the charm for removing rust. Maybe he was planning to clean his armor.

“Does the spell Merlin cast give you the ability to read the old languages in that book?” she asked.

“I had a tutor,” he said defensively, glancing up. “I learned Latin and some Greek. I can make out some of it.”

He’d been lucky. A good education had been far from universal in his day, even among the nobility.

He bent his head over the pages again, dark hair falling in his eyes.

For an instant, Tamsin forgot to do anything but stare.

Something about seeing him still for once made her notice more details.

His nose wasn’t quite straight, as if he’d broken it and set it by hand.

His long legs bent awkwardly as he sat down in the chair, reminding her of how tall he was.

There was a common belief that people were smaller in past centuries, but that wasn’t altogether true.

No average man had Gawain’s bearing, much less such heavily muscled shoulders.

Swallowing hard, Tamsin arranged the candles, finding it nearly impossible to concentrate.

Gawain radiated a wild, dark energy, as if his very presence sliced through rational thought.

Maybe it did, but it also tasted to Tamsin like passionate emotion—all that anger and desperate loyalty straining at the leash in response to danger.

Tamsin finally took the book from him. She turned from the rust removal charm, past the new page that had appeared last night and found the spell she wanted.

A moment’s rereading reminded her of the words she needed to speak.

Then she filled the bowl with water she’d infused with fresh herbs and set it in the middle of the table.

Finally, she lit the candles with a word.

Gawain did not flinch at the small display of power.

Not like Richard had. Judging by his set jaw, Gawain was braced for something far more dramatic.

He would get it. She dropped a small, red crystal in the center of the bowl.

It fell with a splash, sending ripples outward.

They shone silvery in the candlelight, ring upon ring.

The circle of the spell closed around them, drawing the shadows inward like a cloak.

The noise from the street faded, leaving behind a muted hush.

Tamsin let her vision lose focus and rode the silvery tides as she set her power free.

It prickled through her tattoo, amplified by the magic woven into the intricate lines. “Give me your hands,” she said.

Gawain obeyed, his grip warm and strong.

Immediately, she sensed his presence on the psychic plane.

Like most of mixed human and witch parentage, his power was uneven and, in his case, only partly developed.

She guessed he had buried that side of himself long ago.

Still, his aura was stronger than an ordinary human’s and different from any she’d sensed before.

Careful to keep her touch light, Tamsin searched for traces of Merlin’s spell for the stone sleep. When she found it, she opened her second sight and let her mind coast on the rippling water. “Where are you?” she whispered to Merlin’s magic. “Show me where you’ve been.”

Images flickered past too quickly to grasp, like a video on fast-forward.

She saw impressions of dank, cold stone and wild coastline.

Scenes of an ancient past. And then her mind slipped down another path, this time with more coherence.

There was a face, gone before she saw it clearly, though a name lingered behind: Angmar.

Wasn’t that the name of Gawain’s friend?

And then she was standing in a library, a solid being in a solid place—or so it seemed. It might have been real, or just a reflection out of time. It was hard to know when walking the web between worlds. Rarely was anything what it seemed there, and that made it all too dangerous.

Nevertheless, Tamsin’s pulse quickened as her mind-self hurried to the shelves.

There were many ancient books in a dozen languages—history, philosophy, books of music, and books of architecture.

But then she saw what she was after—tomes of magic so old she could smell the sorcery like an exotic spice wafting from the pages.

These were the books Merlin had left behind.

Tamsin whirled around, seeking any clue about the library’s location. By the fancy carving and ornate plaster ceiling, it was a building from the last century. The stained glass window was dark, but she could still make out the design of a peacock with its tail spread out in panes of azure glass.

“What are you doing here?” demanded a voice that was not a voice but a whisper from inside her own mind.

Tamsin spun in the direction of where the sound ought to have been, but she was too slow.

Every instinct shrieked trouble as the temperature around her mind-self plummeted.

She’d barely finished turning her head—hair flying in slow motion—when she glimpsed the dark shape of a man, his features obscure.

He seemed to move as if he was under water, the light bending so that he slid from one distortion to another, but he had locked his sights on her.

She felt his gaze like the point of a knife.

“Why are you in my house?” he asked.

Instinct warned her to be careful, but it was impossible to lie in this place. “I came for answers, not as a thief.”

“Try again.”

Ice frosted over the peacock window, hiding the bird under a carpet of sparkling white. Tamsin’s breath ghosted before her, the air so cold it seemed to shimmer and burn as she filled her lungs. She clutched her chest, suffocating with the pain. “You don’t need to do this.”

But the ice spilled down the walls to cover the shelves and the books. “But I do,” he said. “You’re my cousin’s spy. You came to find his fae snitch.”

Tamsin wasn’t about to point out that wasn’t the whole truth.

Even if she wanted to, there wasn’t time.

Ice flowed like a sinister carpet toward Tamsin’s feet.

She stepped away, trying to let go of the vision, to fly back to the safety of the real world, but her power had frozen along with the room.

The figure spun, a strange dance of triumph before he braced himself to strike.

Power such as she’d never felt before pounded into her. It wasn’t a blow. It was a detonation. With a shriek of unspeakable pain, Tamsin’s vision shattered into a thousand pinpoints of light.

Gawain sensed something had gone wrong, though he could not say how. Then, just at the edge of sensation, the magical energy of the spell grew cold against his skin. A moment later, Tamsin shuddered, her nails digging painfully into Gawain’s palms.