Page 139 of Hateful Prince
Both would have been correct.
I was going to call it ‘stained.’ There was a stain on this house that couldn’t be erased. If it wasn’t such an auspicious occasion, I would have broken out into my rendition of WAP by my girl Cardi B, but with new and, dare I say, slightly improved lyrics. There’s a stain on this house. There’s a stain on this house.
Anyway, moving on.
“Why did you drag me away from Dahlia, häxa? I promised her a dance, and I haven’t had the pleasure.” Tor, all 6’4” of him, now with fun accessories like horns and scales, frowned down at me.
“Don’t you go all Viking on me... Viking.” The way I had to crane my neck to meet his eyes would’ve intimidated a weaker woman. I was not that woman. I could turn him into a toad if I really wanted to.
Or maybe something cute and cuddly. Like a ferret.
Annnd now I was thinking about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Wow. Talk about random throwbacks. Didn’t expect to be standing here thinking about Kindergarten Cop, but some things are just core memories and cannot be helped.
It’s not a tumor.
Listen, when I’m stressed, I go off on tangents. It’s a coping skill, okay?
“I just don’t understand why we’re standing here staring at the wood panels surrounding this doorway. Do you need me to smash it? I can do that. Otherwise, let me return to my mate so I can make good on my promise to her.”
“I need you for two reasons. One, you’re the one who got mad at me for this ritual I have to perform. Two, I need you to lift me up because I am a short, and you, sir, are a very tall. I want to inspect the runes I’m refreshing. If you’re right about the spell, the last thing I want to do is contribute to it.”
He squinted at the wall. “What runes?”
I sighed. Men were so predictable. Rarely did they believe in things they couldn’t see. “These runes,” I said, drawing on my power and waving a hand so that the magically hidden symbols came into shimmering view. They pulsed a soft, dull pink. Once they were renewed by tonight’s ritual, they’d be a vibrant red. “Wait... that’s not... lift me up, Tor. Lift me up right now.”
Tor’s big hands went around my waist, and he hoisted me into the air. A little pang of disappointment stabbed me. This was the closest I would ever get to my very own Dirty Dancing moment, and I couldn’t even enjoy it.
“Your girl was fucking right. These aren’t wards. Oh shit. This is the strongest compulsion spell I’ve ever seen. Anyone bound to it is unable to resist the urge to return to Blackwood once they’ve been gone for more than five hours. It’s like a timer starts as soon as the gates are breached. This thing is so intricate, I doubt anyone even realizes the need to return isn’t their own.”
I ran my fingers over the pink runes and winced when, even in their weakened state, a faint electric current ran through my arm. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s beautiful.”
Tor growled in response. A warning reminding me that while it was a thing of beauty, this spell was a violation of the High Council’s code. Or at the very least, what started off as a way of ensuring those sent here couldn’t escape had been horribly corrupted.
I couldn’t imagine any Belladonna witch agreeing to help create this spell. Not without knowing there was a rip cord of some kind. Something to free a person from it once they were deemed safe enough to be released back into society. As far as I could tell, that ripcord didn’t exist. Runes existed as a sort of alphabet. When read together, they created a story, or intention, for the spell. They gave it shape. The way these runes were shaped made this compulsion indefinite. Unending. i.e., Blackwood had become a prison, and everyone here had been given a life sentence. Maybe that’s what it was intended to be all along, but it flew under the radar with the High Council’s help—because there’s no way this could have been going on this long otherwise.
Had my grandmother known what she was doing when she renewed the spell? Had she even thought to check? I wouldn’t have, not without Tor and Dahlia giving me the heads-up. How many other witches blindly followed orders without ever realizing what they’d done?
Our coven had been the High Council’s unwitting pawns all these years. Oh, that really burned my biscuits. No one played with me without my consent.
“What a fucking can of worms. Of course I get pulled in. I don’t even go looking for the drama, the drama finds me,” I grumbled before tapping Tor on the horn and indicating I needed to be put down.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well, I’m definitely not recharging this thing. Sure, there might be some baddies in here who shouldn’t ever return to society, but most of you don’t fit that bill. You, Dahlia, even Sorcha. This is a dark fucking secret, Tor. We could get in a lot of trouble for figuring it out.”
“How are you going to explain the ritual is off?”
Opening my velvet bag that was tied to the waistband of my most excellent dress, I rifled through the contents. A witch was always prepared, after all.
“Oh, the ritual is going ahead as planned, just with a few... tweaks.”
“Tweaks?”
“Give me your hand,” I said once I found my trusty dagger.
Tor gave me a healthy dose of side-eye.
“Tor Nordson, I’ve never given you a reason not to trust me. After everything we’ve been through together.”