Eternity: Immortal Witches Book 1 (The Immortal Witches) (16 page)

“The wise thing to do,” he countered, “would be to marry.”

The mirth fled me and regret replaced it in my heart “Please stop asking. You know I cannot.”

“You will, eventually.” He came closer. “So, will you show me the finer points of combat with blades?”

“If I did, then how would I ever overpower you?” I asked.

“The same way you do now, my love, with a simple glance.”

I smiled as he came to me, wrapped me in his arms, and hugged me so tenderly I nearly cried.

“How did you find us, Duncan?” Arianna asked him, even now sliding her blade into its sheath. “We thought coming here the height of discretion.”

“Discretion is a fine idea,” he replied. “For if ‘twere someone besides me to see you both in breeches, fighting as if to the death, there would be scandal indeed in the streets of Sanctuary.” He lowered his head. “More so than there already is.” Then slowly he lifted it, met my eyes again. “Your aunt told me you’d gone walkin’ in the woods. Once I got near enough, I simply followed the sounds of battle.”

I smiled at that, but the smile he returned was a sad one.

“Something troubles you,” I said.

“Indeed. Elias Stanton suspects....” He slanted a worried glance toward Arianna, as if about to say something she shouldn’t overhear.

“Never fear,” she quipped. “I know exactly what that fool suspects. More than likely, he suspects me of the same things.”

“Aye, more than likely,” Duncan agreed. Then he gripped my hands in his. “You should leave this town, Raven. At once. I dinna believe ‘tis safe for you here.”

I sighed deeply.

“You knew this day would come, Raven. We’ve spoken of it,” Arianna said.

I nodded but met Duncan’s eyes. “I’ll not go. I’ll not pack up and move away from....” I bit my lip.

“From what?” he pressed, squeezing my hands.

Closing my eyes, I whispered, “From you, Duncan. I don’t want to leave you.”

He smiled, then seemed to catch his lip between his teeth as if to stop its trembling. “You love me, lass. You either dinna ken it yet, or canna admit it to me, but you do. You love me.”

“Stop it, please.”

“All right. All right.” But he pulled me tight, kissed me softly, before he let me go and spoke once more. “I thought...I thought to go with you, Raven. If you’d have me.”

My brows bent until they touched. “But all you have is here. Your home, your position, your friends in Boston.”

“All I have, nay, all I wish to have, ever,” he whispered, “is here, right here in my arms.”

Pressing my lips tight, I averted my eyes. “My aunt Eleanor is not a young woman,” I told him. “She’d never leave this place.”

“She isna the one in danger here, Raven. You are.”

Arianna spoke then, coming closer to the two of us. Though she disapproved of my relationship with Duncan, she seemed to understand it. And she would neither nag nor play the part of my judge. Witches didn’t work that way. She’d voiced her opinion. Now she would leave it at that.

“I have to agree with the pastor on this point, Raven,” she said, then she glanced at Duncan and lifted her brows. “Imagine that.”

I saw Duncan smile at her, a tentative smile, and one Arianna returned, just as hesitantly. They would become friends, in time. I felt certain of that.

“It does not matter that you both agree,” I said. “Eleanor’s husband built that house for the two of them. She clings to her husband’s memory by remaining there, and if she leaves...‘twould be like cutting the roots from some great tree. She would wither and die.’’

“How can you know that, Raven?” Duncan asked.

“Oh, she can. Believe me, she can.” Arianna lowered her head and shook it.

“She took me in when I had nowhere else to go, Duncan,” I told him. “And in the time I’ve been with her, I’ve come to love her very much. She...she is all I have left of my own mother. Can’t you see that?”

“Of course I can see it,” he said harshly. “What I canna see is you dyin’ because of it.”

Meeting his gaze, I whispered, “She has only a year left in her, Duncan.”

“She has...?” He looked at me sharply, then at Arianna, who only lifted her brows and shoulders, and then turned to study a tree as if it held great interest. “How can you be sure of that?”

I lowered my eyes. The truth was, I’d studied the lines of Aunt Eleanor’s palm, and I knew. I’d restored her health, she would enjoy what remained of her time on this plane, but when a person’s purpose was done, they moved on, and all the magic in existence couldn’t change that. “I simply know it.”

He nodded. “Another of those things about which you canna tell me?”

“I owe her so much,” I said, brushing past his question as if he hadn’t spoken it. “I’ll not ask her to give up the home she loves, leave the place where her dear husband lies buried, spend the last year of her life miserable. I cannot. ‘Tis only a year, Duncan. Perhaps less. Surely Elias Stanton and his suspicions can be put off that long.”

Duncan looked frustrated. He turned away from me, pushing a hand through his hair. But when he faced me once more, his jaw was set. “I’ll see to it you’re protected then. He willna harm you, Raven. I vow it on all I hold sacred.”

“You mustn’t do that,” I protested. “I won’t have it, Duncan. Understand that.”

“I love you more than my own soul, Raven, and because of it, I canna do otherwise. You understand that.” He kissed me once more, hard, and walked swiftly away in the direction of town.

I watched him go, then sent Arianna a helpless glance. “What am I to do?”

“Teach me,” Arianna said, “the spell that makes a man who looks like that one into your devoted servant.”

I only shook my head at her. “‘Tis no spell, and well you know it.”

“Perhaps not,” she said. “A shame, though. I could have used it once.”

I tilted my head. ‘Twas the first hint she’d ever given me as to her past. “You... loved a man who didn’t love you in return?’’

“I loved a man,” she said with a small, bitter smile, “who’d have been happy to see me dead.”

“Then he was a fool.”

She shook her head. “No, he was right. In the end I won his trust, if not his heart. And trusting me is what got him killed.”

She turned and started back toward the house. I hurried after her. “Arianna?”

“I don’t talk about that,” she said, false gaiety in her voice. “It is history. I can’t imagine what made me bring it up.”

“But–”

“Please,” she said, and there was a wealth of power in the word. “Let it be, Raven. And suffice to say that, having seen the way your Duncan looks at you, I am beginning to think I may have been wrong about him.”

I went still and felt my heart swell. “Thank you for that,” I whispered. “But as to this other–” She sent me a quelling look. “All right,” I murmured. But I wondered. What kind of man could break a heart as strong as hers?

* * *

Duncan didn’t come to me by day after that. Only by night. Nearly every night. We’d meet in the forests or on the cliffs above the angry sea. We’d love until we were spent and then lie naked in each other’s arms, just resting. Just being.

I loved him more each time he smiled at me, each time he whispered my name. I wanted him with me always. And he came to me whenever the sun went down.

Except on my sacred nights, when I would make an excuse. I think he knew I was hiding something, one more secret added to the many I kept from him, but he never pressed. Only hoped endlessly that I would come to trust him enough to tell him my truths. If only he knew that I did by now. ‘Twas for his own safety that he could not know the truth about me.

Once in the month, when the moon was full, Arianna and I slipped away from the cabin very late at night, while Aunt Eleanor lay sleeping. Deep into the woods we’d venture, there to set a small balefire alight, and to cast a magic circle, invoke the elements to aid us in our work, and feel the power of our Goddess growing strong within us. We burned fragrant herbs and special candles we’d made ourselves with loving care and magical energy. We left offerings of food and wine, or flowers we’d gathered for the occasion as a symbol of our love for the Divine.

I often pondered the nature of my religion and that of Duncan’s. I knew, as I’d always known, that his God and my Goddess were the same. Our beliefs about Them differed, as did our ways, but in the end, there was only One. I saw the Divine as every bit as much female as male, and addressed both aspects, by referring to them as my Goddess and my God, my Lord and my Lady. Followers of Duncan’s faith no longer recognized the feminine Divine, but still prayed to Mary in times of need.

Prayer was another way in which we were at once the same and different. When in need, we both turned to Divinity for help. Duncan’s way was to surrender his will to that of the Almighty, seeing it as a separate entity, and asking for assistance. My way was to connect to that same Supreme Being, only to do it believing it was not separate from me, just as the Earth and the Air and the very sunlight are not separate from me. I am but a small part of a very large being, and that being is the Creation Herself. When I make magic, I feel Her energy flowing through me and then direct that power to bring my will into being. For me, prayer is not a request, but a command, delivered with the very might and power and authority of the Almighty of which I am a part.

But the most important difference between Duncan’s faith and mine was that I believed the religions of the world were simply many spokes on a single wheel, all springing from and leading back to the same, singular Source. And his decreed that there was only one way to salvation, and that anyone who chose another path was damned. Guilty of the most vile sin. Deserving of torture and death.

I wondered sometimes if he truly believed that. And if he did, how could he love me and still live with himself?

By the heavens, his feelings for me had to be tearing him apart inside. Or were they? I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t very well begin a theological discussion with him and not reveal more than I wished to.

So I put my questions aside and lived in the moment. I was, for the first time in my life, truly happy. Knowing I’d see him each night made my days pass in a glow of pleasure. Holding him in my arms until the wee hours of dawn made my nights pass even more beautifully.

I suppose I should have known that it was too good to last.

Should have known. But didn’t.

Chapter 9

To the Most Esteemed Nathanial Dearborne,

Your name is known even here in the Colonies, sir, where tales of your skill and success in exposing the practice of witchery are passed from one man of God to another in tones of awe and admiration. Such dark practices must be uncovered, wherever they hide, and burned away by the light of righteousness. 'Tis for this reason I post you now. The shadow of the Devil has fallen upon my own beloved settlement of Sanctuary in the colony of Massachusetts Bay. A witch resides amongst us, of this I am certain. Her wiles and spells have placed the souls of the entire population in dire peril. The witch’s name is Raven St. James, and while I am convinced of her guilt, there remains doubt in the mind of our settlement’s pastor. I fear the Rev. Duncan Wallace has lost the ability to see beyond her charms and sorcery, and has perhaps himself fallen victim to her sinful enchantments.

I have heard, Reverend Dearborne, that you have, at times, traveled far in your quest to rid the God-fearing Christian world of the scourge of witchcraft, and ‘tis my fondest hope that you will do so now.

 I beg of you, sir, come to Sanctuary. You may well be our town’s only hope.

In God’s most holy name, I remain,

Elias Stanton,

Sanctuary, Massachusetts Bay Colony

Nathanial Dearborne received the letter three months after it was written to him. Amazing, he thought, how his fame had spread even to the New World. Amazing, and ironic, that an immortal High Witch, perhaps one of the oldest dark ones in the world, had become known far and wide as a witch-hunter of the highest order.

But what better way to take the power of other witches than to execute them and take their hearts before they revive?

He smiled to himself as he read the distraught words of this Elias Stanton. He’d found her. At last he’d found the young witch who’d so thoroughly wronged him.

Raven St. James.

With Duncan, still with Duncan. How? Why? Did it matter? She was a powerful witch, Nathanial had sensed that from the start. More powerful than most so young. ‘Twas the power of her ancestors, the power of a long and unbroken line of natural witches, all of it appearing collectively in the first High Witch ever to be born to her family. Even she hadn’t been aware of the full extent of her powers.

But Nathanial had.

He’d been weakening when he’d come upon the girl in the stocks that snowy morn. Barely functioning, and unsure how much longer he could go on. He’d needed an immortal heart, any immortal heart, to revive him, to restore his strength, his vigor. ‘Twould give him the power to seek out an older, more powerful one before he began to decline once more. So he’d touched the accused witches as they stood imprisoned and bent over in shameful display in the public square. He’d felt nothing when he’d touched the mother.

But a jolt surged through him when his hand brushed over the girl’s. And he’d known, young and inexperienced though she was, he would take her heart, just so that he might live to take others.

And then the rest of the knowledge had come to him, whispering through his sharp mind like a breeze before he took his hand away. She had a strong heart in her, Raven St. James did. A powerful heart. He would not gain longevity by taking it, but instead, power. Magical power. And he wanted it for his own. He wanted her young, tender heart beating endlessly, imprisoned in a tiny wooden box. With the others.

Now, though, there was more driving him than just that. Events had taken an unexpected twist that day at the gallows. A twist that burned in his gut, and one he would not, could not forgive.

Raven had cost him a young man who’d been almost a son to him. She’d turned Duncan Wallace against him, and the hurt he felt was more than he’d allowed himself to feel in centuries. Damn her. Damn her!