“Witchfire,” said Rhiannon. “’Tis—”
“Oh, I know,” he said, perhaps hoping to spare her the explanation. “Of course, I did not witness it myself, but I’m told your sister cast the same blaze at the Battle of the Tower.”
Rhiannon furrowed her brow.
“Battle… of the Tower?”
Averting his gaze, Jack sucked in a breath, perhaps realizing how little she’d been told. He then proceeded to explain: After the fire, Wilhelm escorted Jack and Seren as far as Neasham, leaving Jack there, in the care of the nuns. He was thirteen, he said, and neither Wilhelm nor Seren had relished the thought of exposing him to danger. In those days, he’d had no knowledge of witches, and he’d begged them not to leave. Turning a deaf ear to his pleas, they left him anyway, and neither did they tell him the truth, not until they returned to collect him many months later. By then, Jack had already heard the news.
Apparently, after leaving him at Neasham, Wilhelm and Seren continued on to Warkworth, taking a familiar route. It was in Holystone Wood that they’d encountered Rose and Elspeth at some ruin called the Widow’s Tower…
Of course, Rhiannon knew none of this, because all of it took place after they’d placed her in shackles, effectively blocking her magik. Naturally, nobody ever bothered to inform her—yet another reason for her to be furious with Cael.
Evidently, having been summoned by Morwen, her sisters arrived to retrieve Elspeth’s son. Surrounded by Morwen’s army, and far outnumbered, they’d feared the worst.
“She took Ellie’s son?” interrupted Rhiannon. “I don’t understand… how was she able to enter Aldergh castle? After Eustace and Morwen’s attack, I helped Elspeth fortify a warding spell.”
Jack shrugged.
“Because your mother’s a canny old witch, that’s why,” announced Marcella, tugging on her reins and falling back to ride alongside them. Her green eyes glittered fiercely. “She gave herself a glamour to resemble Elspeth.”
Rhiannon peered around Jack to better see Marcella, and asked, “So you were there?”
“Nay, I was not,” said the witch-paladin. “’Tis simply my business to know.”
“Did my husband know as well?”
The witch-paladin eyed Rhiannon shrewdly. “I cannot say what your husband did, or did not know.” She lifted her chin. “Would you like to feed your angry wolf, or would you like to hear the rest of the tale?”
Rhiannon’s changing emotions returned to annoyance over Marcella’s officious tone, and nevertheless, she swallowed her ire and said, “I’d like to hear the rest, please.”
Marcella smiled victoriously. “Deceived by Morwen’s glamour, your sister’s guards invited Morwen into the castle; there, she stole the elder boy, and took him to the Widow’s Tower, threatening to murder him if they did not return her grimoire.”
Rhiannon pressed a hand to her breast. Even all these years later, prickles of fear sidled down her spine in anticipation of hearing the rest. “What then?”
“Seren—”
“Nay,” Marcella interrupted Jack. “Seren did not cast the witchfire. Rather, she was the one to put it out. It was Morwen who summoned witchfire, and demanded that Seren pass through it to trade the Book for the child.”
“And did she?” Rhiannon swallowed convulsively.
Marcella shook her head. “Nay, she did not. For love of her, and in fear for her life, Wilhelm Fitz Richard seized the grimoire before Seren could comply, intending to sacrifice himself to save the child. So it seemed, the battle would be lost, but Seren saved the day, dousing Morwen’s witchfire with her witchwater, even as your mother fled, taking the grimoire with her.”
So many questions sprang to Rhiannon’s lips. “What of the child?”
“Fine.”
“And Wilhelm?”
“Fine.”
“My sister did that?”
“Aye,” said the paladin very smugly.
“My Seren?”
Marcella lifted her brows. “Perhaps you know another?” When Rhiannon shook her head, she said with a sniff, “Seren will be Regnant, so I’m told.”
Rhiannon was too stunned by the revelation to take offense over Marcella’s high-minded tone.
Witchwater?
Seren had cast witchwater?
Seren?
With the power to heal, and cast away demons, the Church had once used witchwater for their sacraments. However, since the break between the Papacy and the doom of Avalon, they’d been using plain old well water, blessed by a priest. There were only three sacred elements in the world—witchwater, witchwind and witchfire. Supposedly, if a dewine grew strong enough, and her affinity allowed it, she could find within her ability to cast one sacred element. However, no witch in modernity had ever had the power to summon them all… not even her grandmother.
None of her sisters were skilled enough for that.
Elspeth was aligned to earth. All her magik—what little she’d dared perform—always hearkened this alignment. Rosalynde’s affinity was water; from the time she was young she could cover a windowpane with frost in the middle of summer. But Seren?
And yet, somehow, it did make sense…
Someone had to be the Regnant, and her sister’s magik had always been odd—as though it were bound. Her middle sister had displayed a very strange combination of affinities. Although Rhiannon had always supposed she was aligned to air, she was also gifted with the skill to charm, much like Ellie, only better. However, charm was a skillset aligned to earth, and earth was not compatible with air. Therefore, the only logical explanation should be that Seren, too, was aligned to aether. Rhiannon had never seriously considered this, mostly because she herself was aligned to aether, and the alignment to aether was so incredibly rare it was far more likely that all her sisters would be aligned to a single affinity, rather than to have even one aligned to aether… much less two… or three.
“Art certain?” Rhiannon asked, casting another dubious glance at Marcella.
Marcella lifted a black brow. “Quite,” she said. “Your sister will be Regnant—Goddess willing.”
“But… I… am aligned to aether,” Rhiannon said. “’Tis highly improbable to have three dewines all in one family aligned to aether…”
“Nay, not three,” Marcella countered, and Rhiannon tilted the paladin a questioning look. “Your mother is not aligned to aether,” she said, and then she averted her gaze, staring straight ahead with her chin raised belligerently. “God’s blood! You look exactly like her,” she interjected, and it sounded like a complaint.
By now, Rhiannon had had enough of Marcella’s icy demeanor. Ever since leaving Blackwood, she’d been moody and argumentative. She didn’t know what was wrong with the woman, but why in the name of the Mother Goddess would she deign to help Rhiannon if she loathed Rhiannon so much?
“I look like her because she is my mother,” Rhiannon said icily. “And because she is my mother, don’t you suppose I should know best if my mother is aligned to aether?”
Marcella lifted her brow a little higher, as she slid Rhiannon a triumphant glare. “Oh, how ignorant you are!”