Rosemary Thorne's Arc

Chapter 10 of 24

Damien held Rosemary's hand until the fire burned low. Then he let go and stood. "She's still out there," he said. "Bleeding into moss. That doesn't kill a witch." Rosemary knew he was right. The wards would hold Morgana off the threshold. They would not stop her forever. And while Morgana lived, Damien would keep one ear on the trees. He would not stay. He would not sleep here past dawn. She had pulled the curse out of him and still could not keep him. "We finish it tonight," Rosemary said. She pulled the green book from the shelf and turned to the pages she had marked. There was a working there she had skipped past twice. A binding. It needed the witch's blood, which she still had a smear of in the jar, and it needed a thing the witch had touched with intent. The iron trap. The claw was still buried under the salt at the door. Damien dug it up while she boiled water and crushed rosemary and salt in a bowl. The three cats sat in a row on the table and watched her hands. The purple alligator dozed by the hearth. She worked fast. She did not let herself think about the price the gnome had warned her of — what she would pay in what she kept. The amethyst pendant lay on the table where Damien had set it back. She picked it up. Her mother's stone. The chain warm from his pocket. She dropped it into the bowl. Damien watched her. "That was your mother's." "It's a thing I keep," she said. "That's the price." She carried the bowl to the threshold. She poured the witch's blood over the stone and the iron claw. She said the words from the book, plain, the way you'd read a recipe. The amethyst cracked down the middle with a sound like a walnut. A thin dark line went out from the doorstep into the garden, along the flagstones, into the trees. Somewhere in the forest, something screamed once and stopped. Rosemary stayed on her knees at the door a long time. The three cats came and pressed against her side. Damien crouched behind her and put a hand on the back of her neck. He kept it there. "She's done," he said. "She's done," Rosemary said. She lifted the two halves of the pendant out of the bowl and wiped them on her skirt. They did not fit back together. Damien stood and pulled her up. He did not step back to the door. He did not look at the trees. He looked at her. "I can stay," he said. "Past morning. If you want that." Rosemary closed her hand around the broken stone. "I want that," she said. Outside, the blood trail had stopped moving.