CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The ride to Blackwater Bog was quicker than Kiva had anticipated, perhaps twenty minutes once she left the city’s walls and nudged her horse into an easy canter, with them skirting the Wildemeadow’s rolling hills until the land flattened and turned marshy, heralding the swamp up ahead.
Given how swift her travels were, Kiva remained confident she would return to Caldon long before he woke — and that she’d beat the looming rain clouds that were moving steadily closer. Her certainty only grew when she passed an elderly man walking his dog in the sleepy little village, and he happily provided directions to Murkwood Cottage, along with a warning that Delora valued her privacy. Because of that, Kiva had to travel much deeper into the Crewlling Swamplands than she’d hoped, but at least the path, while narrow and soggy, seemed safe enough.
“Easy, boy,” she told her nervous mount, patting his neck. “We’re nearly there.”
Rounding one final bend, she finally saw Murkwood Cottage up ahead, surrounded by thick vegetation and nestled beside a murky body of water.
Made of stone with a thatched roof and a smoking chimney, the dwelling was quaint — in a creepy, swampish way.
When Kiva came to a halt, she’d barely dismounted before the front door burst open and a white-haired woman hobbled out, a cane in her hand that she lifted into the air and brandished like a weapon.
“Private property!” she screeched from her porch. “This is private property! Can’t you read?”
She pointed to a sign on the path so covered in moss that Kiva could barely make out the two capitalized Ps, let alone the rest.
“I’m looking for Delora,” Kiva said, not leaving her horse’s side in case she needed to make a quick getaway. “Is that you?”
The elderly woman squinted at Kiva for a long minute, then thumped her cane on the ground, moving an angry step forward. “I told you never to come back here, girl! I won’t give you what you want — not now, not ever!”
Kiva stilled. Zuleeka and Torell had said they’d visited with their mother, but that had been years ago. Did Delora think Kiva was Tilda? Her daughter?
“I’m sorry,” Kiva said, her throat tight. “But we’ve never actually met.
I’m Kiva.”
Delora’s squint deepened, her familiar emerald eyes — Corentine eyes — mere slits, before she finally leaned back on her haunches. “Ah, so you’re not the she-devil.” Brandishing her cane again, she said, “But I’m guessing she sent you here. I won’t give it to you, either, so go back to where you came from. Shoo!”
“Please,” Kiva said, raising her hands. “I’m not here for anything.” She quickly corrected, “I mean, I am, but not —”
“I won’t give it to you!” Delora repeated, yelling now.
Kiva was at a loss, so she blurted, “I need your help controlling my magic.”
Delora’s mouth snapped shut. She pressed her lips together, looking Kiva over from head to toe. “You’re the one she left to rot in that prison, aren’t you? The one she said was better off there?”
Kiva’s face paled, but she reminded herself that Delora hadn’t seen her mother in nearly a decade, and there was no way Tilda would have thought Kiva was “better off” inside Zalindov.
“I was locked away for ten years,” Kiva said in answer. “I kept my magic hidden that whole time and didn’t use it until a few weeks ago when I healed someone who was dying. Now it’s bursting out of me at random.”
“So?” Delora said, raising two bushy white eyebrows.
“So,” Kiva said through gritted teeth, “I’m living at the royal palace.
With the Vallentis family.”
Delora threw back her head and laughed. Something in the murky water — something large — moved quickly at the sound, ducking beneath the surface before Kiva could see what it was.
She has a very unusual guard dog, Torell had warned.
Shuddering, Kiva waited for her grandmother’s humor to fade. Finally, she tapped her foot on the ground and said, “I’m glad you find this funny.”
“Give me a minute,” Delora said, still chuckling. “I’m just trying to imagine it. I assume they have no idea who you are?”
“No. And I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Let me guess,” the old woman drawled, leaning more of her weight onto her cane. “You plan to follow blindly in your family’s ill-fated footsteps,
seeking to steal a throne that you believe is yours for no other reason than a
diluted bloodline. Am I right?”
Kiva said nothing.
Delora snorted, then turned to hobble back through her front door. “I can’t help you, girl.”
“Can’t, or won’t?” Kiva asked, tying her reins around a low-hanging branch and hurrying up the porch steps.
“Won’t.” Looking over her shoulder, Delora added, “Go back to your palace and your vengeance, and leave me alone.”
“Please,” Kiva said, begging now. “I just want it to stop. That’s all I want. A way to control it. It just — It needs to stop.”
Delora paused at the threshold and turned back to look at Kiva. Her perusal lasted for a long moment, before she finally observed, “You really did only come here for that, didn’t you?”
Quietly, Kiva said, “They’ll kill me if they find out who I am.”
“Isn’t that what you plan to do to them?” Delora said without mercy.
Kiva flinched. “No. No I —” Her voice broke. “I don’t want them dead.”
Delora snorted again. “So you just want them destroyed, then.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Will you help me or not?” Kiva asked.
Another long moment passed, long enough for hope to well within Kiva,
but then — “Can’t,” Delora said.
Kiva deflated, but before she could try begging again, Delora nonsensically continued, “I’ve got book club.”
“You’ve — what?” Kiva stumbled over her words.
“Today’s Saturday,” Delora said, as if that should mean something to Kiva. “Book club is on Saturday. The ladies will be here any minute.” She pointed her cane toward the side of her cottage. “There’s a shelter around back. Settle your horse, then come inside. We should have just enough time to make scones. You’re whipping the cream.”
Before Kiva could respond, the old woman hobbled through the doorway and slammed it behind her.
“What just happened?” she whispered to no one, uncertain if her grandmother had agreed to help or not. But since Delora hadn’t sent her packing, Kiva quickly followed her instructions, praying book club would wrap up quickly.
Hours — and hours — later, Kiva sat surrounded by overflowing bookcases in Delora’s cozy living room, a crackling fireplace battling the chill of the storm that had unleashed outside, its intensity only slightly more ferocious than the five elderly women sitting in a circle and shouting at each other.
“I just think there’s a redemption arc in his future,” Clovis said, jabbing her page and nearly upsetting her tea.
Bretwalda, who was clumsy enough to have already spilled numerous cups, argued, “But we’re talking about this book. Gavon is much more swoonworthy.”
“I don’t care if Killian finds redemption,” Yinn stated around a mouth full of scone, the fourth batch of which had just come out of the oven. “He’s sexier as a villain.”
Merrilee nodded fervently, the rosy-cheeked woman having whispered barely five words since arriving. She was, for that reason, Kiva’s favorite, with the other four — including her grandmother — so passionate in their commentary about the bodice-ripping romance that Kiva feared her face would never return to its normal color.
For the thousandth time, she looked out Delora’s boxy windows, seeing the streaks of lightning and the pouring rain, along with the swift approach of twilight. She wouldn’t be leaving soon, even if book club did miraculously come to an end.
Anxiety slithered like a snake inside Kiva with every minute that passed.
Caldon would be awake by now, and even if he believed Tipp’s lie about her leaving him to rest, she would still have to explain where she’d been — the one thing she’d wanted to avoid. Her plan had failed, and upon returning to the palace, she would have to face the consequences.
The very thought made Kiva feel ill.
Another hour — and another batch of scones — later, the storm began to pass, the rain a mere drizzle outside, but night had well and truly fallen.
As desperate as Kiva was to return to Vallenia, she still needed her grandmother’s aid, so she waited impatiently as Delora’s four friends finally began to pack up their things.
“I say you give her what she wants, Delly,” Clovis declared out of the blue, rising slowly with the aid of her wooden walking frame. “She seems like a good egg.”
Delora sniffed. “What she wants and what she needs are two different
things.”
Kiva stilled, realizing they were talking about her.
Over the course of the day, she’d left the room only a handful of times, mostly to whip up more scones at her grandmother’s command. Delora must have used one of those opportunities to fill her friends in — and given how they were all now peering at Kiva, they clearly knew she had magic and wanted to stop it.
Did that mean they knew who she was? Who Delora was? Whose bloodline they both shared?
“Being Torvin’s descendant doesn’t automatically make her evil. You turned out all right,” Bretwalda said kindly, patting Delora’s wrinkly hand.
Well, that answered that question.
Though . . . Kiva didn’t understand why she’d associated Torvin with evil. He’d spent his life healing people. They’d loved him so much that Sarana had grown jealous enough to try and kill him — her own husband — forcing him to abandon the throne and flee to safety. If anyone was evil, it was Sarana, not Torvin.
“I turned out all right because I put all that behind me,” Delora told her friends. “She is related to the she-devil who wants only one thing.”
The present tense pulled at Kiva’s heart, reminding her that she still had to tell her grandmother that Tilda was dead.
“But she’s not her,” Yinn said, transferring the leftover scones into her fabric bag. “All she wants is help controlling her magic, not using it to hurt people.”
“So she says,” Delora said gruffly, spearing an angry look at Kiva. “But she wouldn’t be the first Corentine to lie. We’ve made an art out of it.”
“I swear,” Kiva jumped in to defend herself. “That’s all I came here for.
Nothing else.”
Delora waved a disbelieving hand. “Bah.”
Kiva opened her mouth to argue again, but at that moment, Bretwalda stood and swung her purse around, the solid weight of it smacking into Merrilee’s face, splitting her cheek open and sending her tumbling back into her chair.
At the sight of gushing blood, Kiva moved to inspect the cut. But her magic, simmering all day along with her impatience, had finally had enough of being stifled. It exploded out of her, stronger and brighter than ever before, and this time she didn’t try to repress it. These women already knew her
secret, so she might as well help the stunned Merrilee, even if it would leave her feeling drained for her ride home.
Focusing on the power at her fingertips, Kiva urged her magic to seal the wound, gently coaxing it as she’d started to learn as a child.
Magic is your friend, her father had shared when her mother refused to teach her. Treat it kindly, and it will return the favor.
Kiva hadn’t been treating her magic kindly, stuffing it away for so long.
No wonder it was angry.
Silence fell in the cottage when Kiva stepped back, the cut gone as if it had never existed.
“Did you mean to heal her? Was that deliberate?” Delora demanded after
Merrilee whispered her quiet gratitude.
Kiva shook her head.
Her grandmother sighed and scrubbed her weathered face, before she set her features and turned to her friends. “Take care on the path. Mr. Chomps likes to poke about on land after a storm. And you know he startles easily.”
An image of the large creature that had ducked beneath the water returned to Kiva’s mind, and she shuddered all over again.
“That beastie’s already taken a chunk out of me,” Clovis said, pulling up her skirt to reveal an aged scar. “He’s not getting another taste.”
“He’s friendly enough if you leave him alone,” Delora said without sympathy. “Now, go home before it starts raining again.”
Kiva didn’t know what alarmed her more: that four very old women, one who had a walker, were about to make their way through the swamp in the dark while there was a carnivorous beast “poking about,” or that she herself would be making the same trek soon. The four friends, however, were unconcerned, and merely said their goodbyes, disappearing into the night.
Delora turned to Kiva and loosed a long, resigned breath, before approaching the nearest bookcase and pulling out a black-spined book entitled 1,001 Pies and Pastries. The cover opened to reveal a hollowed middle, inside which rested a single dagger. Aside from the clear gemstone embedded into the hilt, it was unremarkable, and yet Delora watched Kiva with intense focus as she removed the weapon from its hiding place.
Kiva could only assume the blade was Torvin’s famed dagger, the family heirloom Tilda had tried to retrieve without success. Since Kiva didn’t want the door slammed in her face, she was careful to act as if she didn’t know what it was and simply asked, “Are you planning on stabbing me? Because
that’s what it’s going to take to get me to leave without your help.”
The tension left Delora’s shoulders, as if she’d feared Kiva would leap forward and wrest the blade from her. But the dagger held no value to Kiva, and she was careful to keep from looking at it for too long lest Delora think any differently.
“Come with me,” the old woman ordered, hobbling from the room.
Warily, Kiva followed her grandmother into her cramped kitchen.
Splashes of flour dusted the bench from her last baking attempt, but Delora ignored the mess and shuffled toward a set of mounted shelves that contained an array of rare plant cuttings, including fresh specimens in jars of water.
Struggling not to ask questions, Kiva watched Delora pull leaves, stems, and flowers from her collection, laying them out on a chopping board before lining up the dagger’s edge. Just before she made her first cut, she slitted her eyes at Kiva and demanded, “Turn around.”
Kiva balked, not wanting her back toward someone holding a lethal weapon. “Sorry?”
“Turn around,” Delora repeated, making a circling motion with the blade.
“It’s a secret recipe.”
“But I —” Kiva clenched her teeth against her protest, seeing the unyielding look on the woman’s face.
“If you want my help, turn around. Otherwise you’re on your own.” With that ultimatum, Kiva spun away from her grandmother, calling her every foul name she could think of under her breath.
“I’m old, but I’m not deaf,” Delora said. Remarkably, there was a hint of humor in her voice.
Kiva listened as the steady chopping sounds began, recalling what her brother had said about Delora being an apothecary.
My guess is that she’s spitting on our ancestors by using that dagger as her work blade.
Torell had been right. Instead of using any of her standard kitchen knives, Delora had chosen Torvin’s blade as her apothecary dagger, the weapon that was a symbol of his reign — of their reign, as his heirs.
Kiva shook her head, marveling at the woman’s nerve.
“All done,” Delora declared a few minutes later, and Kiva whirled to find the chopping board empty and a small stoppered vial resting beside the dagger.
Delora plucked up the offering, rolling it between her fingers. “You said
you want your magic gone. Did you mean forever?”
My magic is a part of me. Like an arm or a leg.
Jaren’s words came back to Kiva as she considered her grandmother’s question. While her present circumstances meant her power was more a burden than a blessing, the idea of never being able to access her magic again made her feel cold all over. Even if she’d forced it away for a decade, it had always been there, ready to come forth at her command. If it disappeared forever . . .
“No,” she replied. “I just want to be able to control it. To stop these magic bursts from happening. I just need time.”
When she no longer had to hide her magic, there was so much good she could do with it. So many people she could help, following in Torvin’s footsteps.
Delora didn’t look pleased with Kiva’s answer, but she still handed over the vial.
“This will dampen your magic, lulling it to sleep. Take one mouthful now, and then one every morning with breakfast.”
Kiva unstoppered the vial and gave it a whiff, recognizing hints of tilliflower, silverwheat, garrow, and mirkmoss. She’d also seen tumumin and hogweed on the bench before her grandmother had made her turn around. She didn’t, however, reveal her rudimentary knowledge of potions, instead saying, “There’s barely enough here for three days.”
“That’s because it’s not a permanent solution,” Delora said. “And even if it was, I don’t have enough ingredients on hand for more.”
Kiva looked at her in panic. “Then what am I supposed to —”
“Come back on Tuesday, and I’ll try to have some more waiting for you,”
Delora said. “You have enough to last you until that night. You’ll be fine.”
Kiva wasn’t as confident, especially given what she would face upon her return to the palace. She might never be allowed out again.
Though . . . there was always the secret tunnel exit, if she had no other option. But finding a horse would be a problem.
“I’m not sure if I can,” Kiva hedged. “It’s difficult for me to —”
“Come back, don’t come back, I don’t care,” Delora stated, wiping a cloth over her dagger.
With three days to figure it out, Kiva set it from her mind and raised the vial to her lips, grimacing at the bitter aftertaste. An uncomfortable sensation prickled beneath her skin within seconds, but just as she grew concerned, it
vanished, replaced by a sudden coldness that made her gasp aloud. Before she could get used to the feeling, it turned into a burning so intense that she nearly cried out. A moment later, ice flooded her veins all over again, and
then —
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Kiva felt the change, like part of her had simply disappeared. Her hand trembled as she held it out and called her magic to the surface, waiting for the tingling and the golden glow to appear. But there was nothing to summon.
My magic is a part of me. Like an arm or a leg.
Jaren’s words replayed again, and Kiva realized how right he was. This feeling of something missing, of something so vital to who she was now gone . . . It was enough to make her want to smash the rest of Delora’s vial on the
ground.
But she didn’t.
It wasn’t forever, Kiva reminded herself, almost desperately. She could put up with it for now, a small sacrifice for a larger goal.
Breathing deeply as she adjusted to the strange, hollow feeling inside her, Kiva looked to her grandmother and asked, “Is this what you take? To stop your magic?”
“I told you, it’s not a permanent solution,” Delora said. “You need to learn how to control your magic, not repress it. That’s the only way you’ll
stop your outbursts.”
“How did you do that?” Kiva asked.
“I didn’t.”
Kiva waited for Delora to expand, but she said no more.
“So . . . you do still practice?” Kiva said, recalling her siblings’ claim that Tilda hadn’t suffered because she’d never stopped using her power.
“No, I don’t.”
Kiva’s brow furrowed. “If you don’t take this” — she indicated the vial — “and you don’t use your magic, then how do you keep it from —”
“Question time is over,” Delora interrupted firmly enough that Kiva knew not to press.
Hobbling back into the living room, the old woman returned her dagger to its book and repeated, “Come back in three days.” Upon seeing the fear creep into Kiva’s expression, she sighed and added, “I’ll have a think about other ways that might help you. But I can’t make any promises.”
If Kiva hadn’t thought she’d end up with a cane slamming into her stomach, she might have hugged her crotchety grandmother.
“Thank you for this,” she said quietly, pocketing the vial and reaching for her travel cloak. She didn’t like how the potion made her feel, but there was no denying that her anxiety levels were already much improved.
Delora waved away her thanks. “Go on, get out of here. And keep your eyes open on the path back into town.”
The last thing Kiva wanted was a reminder about the unknown Mr.
Chomps being out on the prowl, so she nodded her agreement — while repressing a shiver. With a quiet but grateful goodbye, she left the cottage, eager to leave the swamp far, far behind her.
In three days, she would be back again.
She would find a way.
She always did.
