Page 55 of The Last Wish of Bristol Keats
“Well?” Tyghan said.
“It’s from the Lumessa. She’s ready to see me. Now.”
CHAPTER 40
Celwyth Hall hadn’t heard so many voices since Kierus brought his little friends over to rollick through secret passages as they played their hiding games. Kayana liked those games. She sometimes played with them, but that was decades ago. Now these walls were accustomed to the quiet murmurs of ancient witches. Kayana sat alert, her nose sniffing the air, her haunches taut, ready to leap at any threat. She bared her sharp canines now and then, just as a reminder she was watching them. She didn’t like the visitors. Powerful fae. It wasn’t safe. The Sisters were usually more cautious. Kayana growled. The dozen knights congregated in the foyer glanced her way.
Jasmine snapped her fingers. “Kayana.”
The wolf lay down, but she was still ready to leap.
Jasmine eyed Tyghan and Bristol at the end of the hall, whispering their goodbyes, and looked back at Madame Chastain. “Can’t he move this along?”
“He’s afraid, Jasmine,” the High Witch answered. “Surely you can understand that? They’re in love.”
“Love. It never should have happened.”
“What?” Madame Chastain huffed. “Who can decide who they’ll fall in love with?”
“Obviously you can’t—it’s happened enough times—but I was referring to Kierus and Maire. That never should have happened. If he had pursued his art, he never would have met her.”
“I seem to recall he loved the knighthood too. No one forced him into it. Are you still blaming Cael for that?”
“He pushed Kierus into that role.His amazing mortal, he used to call him. Kierus was a feather in Cael’s insecure cap for a long time. How unfortunate that Cael is back. I didn’t think he’d survive. You must be disappointed too.”
It was not like Jasmine to speak so bluntly—bordering on traitorous. If she was fishing for agreement, she wouldn’t get it from Dahlia. “He was the queen’s son. Heir to the throne. I did the best I could with him, as was my duty.”
“Really, Dahlia, you think I don’t know whom you’d prefer to see ruling? WhomEriswould prefer to see on the throne permanently?”
Dahlia didn’t reply. She always wondered how much Jasmine knew, but wasn’t overly surprised by her comment. Jasmine was still the High Witch when Eris returned to Danu from the Elphame court, and hecomfortedthe queen in her sorrows. And Jasmine surely noted Tyghan’s early arrival into this world by a full month, though she had never said a word about it before. Discretion was part of the High Witch’s job too.
Jasmine sighed. “It seems we were both raising sons who weren’t our own at the same time. I discovered a new part of myself during that period, the lines I would cross and the lengths I would go to, to save that boy. But there comes a time when we can’t save them from themselves, no? Some things are out of our hands.”
Dread pooled in Dahlia’s chest. “What lines have you crossed, Jasmine?”
“I think you know. When Kierus went missing, I thought he was dead. And I blamed Cael.”
Dahlia remembered the turmoil that gripped them all during that time. It was right after Cael was snatched from a forest trail that Jasmine’s health took a sudden turn. An impossible thought gripped Dahlia. A High Witch crossing a line came with consequences. “What did you do?”
Jasmine looked down the hallway at Bristol, squinting like she was searching for a palatable answer. Instead, she avoided the question. “And this girl. I don’t know how to save her. Except by crossing a line again. Saving something that should never be.”
“That is why your health is failing?”
Jasmine shrugged. “A lifetime of crossing small lines. The trespasses, they add up. That’s the purpose of a High Witch’s blood vow, isn’t it? To ensure that we never skirt the laws of the gods or a nation? Sign that thick tome of Danu statutes and seal it with our own blood as proof that we believe in every word? That we’ll uphold every law within, even at peril to ourselves and those we love?” Her pale eyes locked onto Dahlia’s. “No one else is held to such a high standard. Not like you and me. It is both an honor and a burden, especially when our belief is tested. And with the role in my hands for over six centuries, I was tested more than most. And now I’ve burdened you with this, too, a truth you cannot unknow.”
Dahlia nodded. But it was a truth she didn’t want to know.Jasmine. It was the highly honored Lumessa who had betrayed Cael. And then a new dread crept into her, a dread that felt something like death. She studied her predecessor.The trespasses, they add up.
Jasmine glanced back at Bristol and Tyghan, still saying their goodbyes. “It’s time,” she said with finality, but had only taken a few steps down the hallway when she turned back to Dahlia. “My son tried to kill the one you and Eris so dutifully raised, and that is something I deeply regret.” She smiled, looking again like the beautiful, serene woman Dahlia had always known, the woman filled with centuries of wisdom. “Sometimes desperation makes villains of us all.”
CHAPTER 41
The ceiling loomed over Bristol in all its painted glory, sweeping scenes telling stories of the ages. Paintings of goddesses and gods arriving on a shore shrouded in mist were surrounded by scenes of them planting, harvesting, swimming in lakes, dancing in forests, making love beneath the stars, and fighting great battles. The scenes were vast and vivid, and reminded her of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, except these were painted in a more sensual style, with lush landscapes and innuendo in the shadows. Something Fragonard might have painted—and maybe he actually had, since other artists had visited Danu. She was absorbed by the scenes, and perhaps that was the point, a distraction for those about to receive treatment. This room was nothing like Madame Chastain’s plain stone-walled treatment rooms. The Sisters had already given her a potion to put her out, but her chest still thumped out of time, like drunken sprites had taken up residence.
Please don’t let me die, she thought. Harper and Cat needed her.
She blew out a steadying breath and turned her head to study another painting. Art had always been something that could transport her from her immediate circumstances. She imagined the artist creating it, mixing paints, pondering his or her own circumstances and the world that inspired the art. She imagined the whole story behind the painting—just as she wondered about her father’s paintings and his expressions as he worked on them. Some things he would share, but some things he kept locked inside. She knew what some of those hidden things were now.
The painting above her now was of a beautiful goddess with shimmering copper hair and a windswept gown that blended in with the sea and sky. Her beautifully rendered hand reached out to help a bedraggled woman cross a great expanse of water. At first Bristol thought it was a rescue scene, but then it hit her.Paradise. This is a death scene. The goddess was helping the woman cross the threshold to the otherworld.
