“More blood,” I gasped, and Ginevra cut me again, just as deeply. This time all I did was drink, filling my mouth over and over until the healing wounds robbed me of my source. For a moment, the temptation to bite and chew and keep the blood flowing was almost too strong to ignore, but I could feel the increasing weakness in my legs, and I knew I couldn’t lose much more blood, not when I was already damaging myself against the wall of this seemingly endless spell.
The next time the blood ran out, I stopped pulling, letting the broken threads fall away, and opened my eyes as I turned to Ginevra. “I need more blood,” I informed her. “I can’t lose any more of my own. Either you or Grianne is going to have to bleed for me.”
“Can you use our blood without riding it?” she asked, already rolling up her own sleeve.
“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
Ginevra paused. “If you ride my blood, you may see some things you won’t be very happy about.”
Meaning she was afraid I’d find out Tybalt was supposedly my husband. I looked at her calmly. “Look, my knees are starting to buckle, and I can’t feel my fingers,” I said. “I think I can tear this thing down, but if I bleed any more, there’s going to be consequences. Since none of us brought along a hamper or anything, I can’t replenish what I’m losing, and I’d rather not pass out. If Grianne wants to volunteer, I’ll take it, but you keep going on about how powerful and special royal cats are. It seems like I might only have to bleed you once, where I’d have to bleed her several times, and we don’t need to incapacitate our only light source.”
Grianne was watching us calmly, Merry Dancers still circling her head. If our discussion of who was going to bleed to fuel my magic bothered her at all, she didn’t show it.
“Have to be careful, you go drinking cat blood,” she said.
Ginevra blinked, looking stung. “Oh, not you too,” she said.
“Not me too, what?” asked Grianne.
“Acting like we’re animals. I’m as fae as you are. Titania just doesn’t like shapeshifters, and she’s always done her best to minimize our role in Faerie. As soon as she saw her chance to change things so we were all gone, she did it. My blood is as good for powering someone else’s magic as yours is.”
“True enough,” allowed Grianne. “Your blood also knows how to change shapes.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Grianne turned to look at me calmly, waiting for me to catch up.
I frowned, then blinked as her meaning hit home. “Father brews draughts and tinctures using blood brought to him by his patron, so he can borrow or recreate the inherent magic of other descendant lines,” I said. “I’ve seen him do incredible things with borrowed blood.”
“How much’s he trained, to do that?” asked Grianne.
“I don’t know. A lot. I know that he and Uncle Sylvester both had a tutor when they were young, and Father was the more talented with blood magic and alchemy.”
“Yeah.” Grianne stopped there, clearly expecting me to put the pieces together.
I frowned at her again. “Grianne, they’ve never given me any training in how my magic works, not where blood’s concerned. I can cast minor illusions and power a marshwater charm, but if it needs to be fueled by blood, I don’t really know what I’m doing. And since it sounds like August can’t see spells the way I can, I wouldn’t have any training at this part either. So please. I know you don’t like to use three words when one will do, but right now, be as verbose as the rest of us. Please.”
Grianne sighed and walked over to join us, her long legs turning the motion into a lope. “You use blood for magic.”
“Yes.”
“Your blood, you either watch your own memories or you power something up.”
“Yes?”
“Someone else’s blood, you can watch their memories, or you can power something up, or you can borrow their magic, take it for a spin. Do the things they can do, that normally aren’t yours to do.” She looked at me solemnly. “Me, you might get a brief access to a really limited form of travel through shadows. Have to drain me dry to call your own Merry Dancers. Might not work even then. Her, you could sneeze and turn into a cat.”
The image was amusing and alarming at the same time. Eyes wide, I inched away from Ginevra. “Right, good point. Grianne, are you willing to bleed for me?”
Grianne extended her arm in answer.
“Ginevra, will you cut her? Carefully, she doesn’t heal like I do.”
“Appreciate the caution,” said Grianne, with a flicker of dry amusement. Her expression didn’t change as Ginevra reached over and raked her claws down the outside of Grianne’s forearm, slicing it open in three deep furrows.
Grianne wordlessly extended her arm toward me. Her blood smelled like California buckwheat and pepperberry, like her magic, and what I was about to do should have been horrifying, and instead, it was the most natural thing in the world. I filled my mouth with her blood, and swallowed, and saw flickers of memory, all distant, all protected by that gleaming shell I’d encountered when I first tasted my own blood. She was still wrapped tight in the enchantment, even though she was helping us.
Then I was past the memory and into the power. It was a cool power, not cold but cool, like water rushing in a shallow forest stream, warmed by the sunlight that had been shining on it all day long. It was sweet and clear and pure, with no traces of mortality, and as I considered it, I could see the ways I’d need to twist it if I wanted to borrow her line’s gifts for my own. They were right there, ready to be taken, and it felt almost as if the blood was sorry when I turned those gifts aside. I took another mouthful and let go, leaving Grianne free to bind her wounds as I turned my attention back to the tree.
My own power, exhausted as it was, mingled with Grianne’s, all of it bent to the goal of fueling my natural abilities. I reached out again, snarling the fingers of my mind through the remaining threads of the tree, and I pulled, ripping them loose one by one. They tried to tangle around my hands, chilling me to the bone, and still I kept on pulling, fighting against my natural desire to recoil from the pain. I yanked even harder, trying to pull apart knots and sunder connections, and was pulling so hard when the last strand finally snapped that I felt it, physically, as that tether broke. The impact shook me down to the soles of my feet, pain like nothing I’d ever felt before lancing through my head.
With nothing to hold on to, I fell down, of course, the conquering hero landing ignominiously on her ass among the litter on the clearing floor.
SEVENTEEN
AT LEAST I DIDN’T black out, which seemed like a real accomplishment after the day I’d had. I groaned, rubbing my face with my less-bloody hand, and pushed myself back into a sitting position. “Everyone okay?”
No one answered me. That wasn’t a good sign. I dropped my hand, opened my eyes, and stood, scrabbling in the slippery leaf-litter until I managed to get my feet under me. Both Grianne and Ginevra were standing where I’d left them, their faces lit by the shifting light from Grianne’s Merry Dancers. The tree, however, was gone. They were both staring at the place where it had been.