Page 76 of Wicked Bonds
My second thought is: holy shit, she looks like my mom.
The resemblance is more than uncanny. It’s like someone took my mother’s face and ran it through a seventeenth-century Instagram filter. The eyes are darker, the cheekbones more severe, but the mouth is the same, down to the stubborn set of the lower lip. She’s taller, younger than my mom was when she died by at least a decade, and less… kind looking.
I’m immediately more on edge.
She stops a few feet away and stares at me. For a second, we just look at each other.
Then she speaks.
“Hello,” she says, and her voice is so much like my mother’s that my knees almost give out. Hers is more formal, with an accentI can’t place, while my mother’s had a hint of a Boston accent, but the tone is the same. My eyes well up, hearing it. I never imagined I’d hear my mother’s voice again.
This woman is not my mother, but it’s obvious she’s related. An ancestor.
She studies me. sizing me up and finding me wanting, if I’m reading her expression right. Her eyes scan my hands, my arms, the bloodmark just visible at the edge of my sleeve. Her gaze lingers there.
“You are not as I expected,” she says.
She’s taller than me by maybe an inch at best, but her presence makes it feel like two feet. The room is freezing cold, but she’s barefoot, doesn’t seem to notice.
“You were expecting someone else?” I manage.
She cocks her head, and for a moment I am certain she’s about to laugh at me. Instead, she takes another step closer. “I expected a witch,” she says. “A proper one.”
Ouch.
“You are marked. The line still runs in your veins.”
I rub the mark, more aware of it than ever, but I don’t know what to say.
“There’s something wrong with you.”
Rude. “I’m not the one using a hair rope as a belt.”
She circles around me then leans into my face. “Your magic was bound. The binding was clumsy, primitive.” She tsks.
“Look, lady. I don’t know how much time I have. Where’s the paper? The blood contract, I mean.”
“Abigail.”
“What?”
“My name is Abigail.” She stares at me. “There is no paper. There is only me.”
She waits, and I realize she’s expecting me to speak.
“There’s no document?” I repeat, because surely this is just poor communication. “Then where’s the Accord?”
She gives me a look that might be pity. “Blood magic is not merely ink and parchment. It is memory, intention, sacrifice.” She lifts her hand, palm-up. “It is carried in the body. In the soul.”
Oh, hell.
“Are you telling me the contract is… you?”
I want to throw up. Instead, I focus on her face, because it’s almost like looking at my mother’s, and I can’t decide if that makes me want to cry or not. “Then how do I break it?”
She smiles. It is not a nice smile. It’s the smile of someone who knows exactly how fucked you are and finds it entertaining.
“You cannot,” she says simply. “The Accord is written in flesh and breath. It breathes as I breathe. It exists as I exist.”
