Page 89

Kierse chewed on her bottom lip as she walked forward on wobbly legs. Gen’s smile was reassuring, but Kierse felt like spider eggs had been laid in her stomach and they were all breaking open and crawling through her body. What if it didn’t work? What if she was stuck like this forever?

“Can I…even hold it?” Kierse glanced between them. “It’s iron.”

Graves considered. “Worth finding out.”

“It’s of the gods,” Gen said. “I don’t think it’s the same thing.”

Kierse nodded, searching for another reason to put it off but not finding one. She had to do this. She had to hold an iron cauldron and hope that it would fix what had happened to her. The fear that it wouldn’t be able to help her with anything she needed was overwhelming.

“Kierse?” Gen said softly.

“Right. Yeah. My turn.”

“Do you know what you’re going to ask for?”

Kierse nodded. “Sure.”

“We can do this later,” Gen told her.

“No,” she said on a sigh. “I just… I thought…”

She trailed off, unsure where she was even going with it.

She hadn’t been convinced that the cauldron could give her magic or make her wholly Fae before.

She didn’t know what it could do. Even seeing Gen’s increased magic and the potion it had made for Nate, she was still a skeptic. Despite all she’d seen.

“Trust me,” Gen said.

And in the end, Gen’s soothing voice was all she needed. She placed the cauldron in Kierse’s hands, and all the noise fell away, all the what ifs filtered out of her head, and in its place was silence.

Kierse closed her eyes, and she felt a presence. As if something was evaluating her. She didn’t even have time to ask anything of the cauldron. To figure out what it was that she wanted from it. The cauldron seemed to figure out what the answer to her problem was before it was even requested.

This was done to you , a voice said in her mind.

She shivered at the sound. So like the spear, and yet…nothing like it at all. This was feminine, almost gentle, and somehow more ferocious than the spear had ever been. A duality she could hardly grasp.

And you want it gone. I can see that.

She did. She wanted the bond gone desperately.

It was done correctly. It is part of you.

No. This wasn’t part of her. She didn’t want it to be a part of her. She wanted it gone. It didn’t matter to her if it had been done correctly. Surely there should be a way to unravel it when it had been done under those horrid circumstances.

There is another way .

Kierse held her breath. Hope still beating in her chest. She would do it. Anything to make it stop.

Anything? Are you sure?

Was she? Yes. Anything to make it stop.

Except.

Except… the voice prodded.

Her humanity. The part of her that was connected to her father. She couldn’t give that up. She didn’t want to be fully Fae. It was the first time that she had known. She was part wisp, part human. It was who she was. And it was who she wanted to remain.

It’s agreed, then.

Agreed?

This might hurt.

Kierse only had a moment before a rush of energy hit her like a freight train.

She screamed as it filled her from top to bottom.

Her hands remained glued to the cauldron.

She couldn’t have let go if she tried. Her body convulsed, and she thought that she was going to be broken in two at the force of the working.

This wasn’t healing. This was breaking. Deconstructing. Reshaping. This was tearing her down to her bones and rebuilding her from scraps.

Desolation.

Anguish.

Ruin.

She was going to die from the contact. There was no other way around it.

Her body could not hold up to whatever was happening.

Her insides were scooped out with a spoon.

Her body raw and tender and reeling from the onslaught.

Like she might at any moment unravel into thread on the floor.

Except it wouldn’t let her. It wouldn’t let her go.

She couldn’t hear her friends. She didn’t know if they were trying to stop what was happening or trying to pry her hands free. If Graves was regretting his decision. If all of them were terrified for her.

All she could do was scream until she thought her vocal cords would shatter and hope for survival. Hope to come out on the other side. Hope against hope.

Then it was over. Just as quickly as it had started.

She dropped the cauldron, and it rattled noisily on the floor. Kierse sank to her knees against the plush Persian rug. Her hands dug into the carpet as she trembled uncontrollably.

“Kierse,” Gen gasped, falling before her with Ethan immediately at her side. “Are you okay?”

Graves was there, pulling her into him, cradling her against his firm body. “Wren?”

She clung to Graves like he was a lifeline. Like he might pull her back from the abyss, past the point of being broken. It took several long minutes before her body solidified into a semblance of a person. Her parts all fit together again. Only her nerves tingled like she’d been electrocuted.

“What happened?” Graves asked.

She tumbled out of his arms and rose unsteadily to her feet. “I don’t know.”

“Did the cauldron break the binding?” Ethan asked hopefully.

Her hand went to her chest. It was still there. Humming. Lorcan just over the bridge.

“No,” she said regretfully.

“Oh, Kierse, I’m sorry,” Gen said.

Ethan looked confused. “What did it do instead?”

She held her hand out. She didn’t feel different. Except that she had been scooped out like ice cream, beat to within an inch of her life, and then set on a cone for consumption.

“Magic,” Graves said.

She frowned at that statement—and then it rushed her fingertips. The scent of Irish wildflowers. The gold-blue glow all around her. The touch of magic that lingered in her veins. She reached down deep and found her empty well was now…full again. The same as it had always been.

She laughed in wonder and reached for her glamour. The easiest spell she had to cover her ears. It fizzed and fizzled and then did nothing. Dissolving into thin air. She tried her slow motion. Nothing. She switched her absorption off. Nothing. She conjured the ability to phase. Nothing.

“I don’t understand. It isn’t working.”

“It could just take time to get used to it,” Ethan added.

Gen frowned. “Maybe it’s different with the new powers.”

Graves tilted his head. “What exactly did the cauldron say to you?”

“It couldn’t break the binding, because it had been done properly. Even if it was done to me. It said that there was another way. I…told it that I didn’t want to give up my humanity. It agreed and then said this might hurt,” she told them. “Then I guess it gave me magic I can’t access?”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Graves said. “It’s a loophole. You’re a wisp, but you only have half the powers of a full-blooded Fae, and those powers are bound. Which means that to the cauldron, your magic was empty.”

“Right?”

“If I had to guess, it gave you the other half.”

“But I’m still human,” she said. She knew that for a fact. She was still only half wisp. The cauldron had agreed.

“That’s right. Since your magic is bound, that made it possible to give the powers to you without interfering with your humanity. We’d have to test it. But I think the cauldron got around Lorcan’s binding by giving you powers he didn’t bind.”

Kierse’s eyes widened as her magic came swiftly to her fingertips. New powers were better than no powers. New powers meant that she had a fighting chance. And the best part—Lorcan had no idea.