Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The floorboards groaned as I sprinted into the hearth room, nearly losing my balance on the braided rug in the center hallway when it slipped under my boots. Breathless, I dropped to the slate hearth stones, Sawyer skidding to a halt beside me.

"How is it lit?" he gasped. "There's no one here! And the pixies certainly aren't strong enough to lift those logs."

"I have no idea," I whispered.

My breath stilled as I leaned in to examine this miraculous anomaly, reaching out like I was introducing myself to a frightened woodland creature.

A single ember—the heart of this farmhouse hearth—had burned itself a cradle in the log of red cedar, a lemon-yellow flame flickering from the ashy surface. It flared when my hand neared, flashing a weak green as it evaluated the status of my magical core.

"Heh, I know," I murmured. "Thanks for confirming. You—"

A blue spark leapt from the flame against my hand, a second spark zapping Sawyer almost immediately after. But unlike me, he didn't cry out in pain. The maelstrom inside me convulsed, ejecting a slew of memories from behind its dark cloud.

They were fragments, but I remembered making apple butter cinnamon rolls in the kitchen, running through an orchard with Sawyer, feeding the pixies bone broth in a gravy boat, a golden-white wolf patrolling the fence line, a parasite ring made of rainbow tourmaline and blackberry brambles, a grimoire hidden under a mountain of wood ashes and rosemary sprigs in the crawlspace under this very house.

Something pricking my skin cleared my head of the onslaught, and I looked down to discover Sawyer had placed his paw on the back of my hand. Comfort radiated down my arm, pushing the pain away. "You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah." I sucked in a deep breath. "Just remembering more of what Grandmother had locked away."

"I remember this place too." He jerked his white chin up at the mantle. "I used to take naps up there. And study. I took classes at Grimalkin University. I was training to be a familiar."

I reached out to scratch him behind his ears. "I've always wanted a familiar, but Grandmother—"

"I'm not a familiar!" he said, batting my hand away. "And we're just… friends."

"Uh-huh."

"Okay, fine. We're family."

"If we're family, I wonder why you didn't want to bond with me."

He sniffed. "There must be something wrong with you. That I don't remember at the moment."

"Or you're just afraid of commitment."

"Nuh-uh! I'm a cat. Just because we value our independence doesn't mean we have commitment issues, thank you very much. And why are we picking on me? Aren't you here for your ember?" If his shoulders had been jointed differently, he would've crossed his arms over his chest. Petulantly, too.

"Right." I turned back to the little ember in the fireplace. "You look like you're struggling. How about some more wood?"

I reached around to the stack, selected the biggest piece I could grip with one hand, then laid it on an angle over the red cedar. Then I chanted the words of the first spell I had ever learned:

"Smoke of ash, the Mother's bones,

form protection 'round this home.

Cloud the sight of evil eyes,

grant us growth and keep us wise.

May goodness reign within these walls,

Our family strong when trouble calls."

Beneath me, the hearth stones shuddered and the farmhouse groaned. The tiny yellow flame of the farmhouse ember licked the underside of the log just once, then exploded into a full-fledged fire.

Sawyer and I yelped, falling back and away from the heat. The tomcat pawed frantically at his face, snuffing out his smoldering whiskers. In the fireplace, the fire had already devoured the log I'd given it, and I hastily added another, then another, and soon half the stack was gone and the fire had relaxed into a more normal consumption rate.

"Woah," I breathed.

"No kidding," Sawyer said, jumping up into the window to peer outside. "Look at that! The delphinium ward has been reactivated." A shimmering blue shield rose from the tips of the blooms in an arc above the house, becoming invisible upon its completion. "It's official. Meadow, this really is your farmhouse."

More importantly, this was my hearth.

I leaned in, spreading my chilled hands wide and letting them soak in the heat of real fire, not that strange blue fae fire Ossian had burning in the castle. Some past trauma or fear crippled him from ever permitting a fire he couldn't control burn inside its walls, but here, in this farmhouse, his rules didn't apply. I wiggled my fingers in the fire, the flames lapping against me like the tongues of excited hound dogs. "I think I missed you," I told them.

"No time to gawk," Sawyer told me from the windowsill. His tail had started to flick. "Someone might notice all the smoke coming out the chimney of an abandoned house."

The cat was a smart little thing.

The chain's hook released from my belt with a little snick , and I cupped the censer in my hand, easing open its lid with my thumbnail. The Hawthorne ember was pathetic, much more than the farmhouse ember had been.

Now what? The Hawthorne ember needed its own hearth, but Ame had told Sawyer I could revive it here. Since this was obviously my house from another life, and I was a Hawthorne by blood, maybe this hearth, and its own ember, would accept it?

"Here goes," I muttered, dropping the Hawthorne ember into the flames.

The fire blazed . The flames clawed at the chimney chute, and harsh yellow light filled the entirety of the room.

Sawyer crouched in the window still, making himself small, his eyes wide. "Is that a good thing?"

I'd lifted a hand to shield myself from the light and heat, and when I lowered it, I found both embers sitting side by side like old friends. "No way." It should be impossible and yet… I've done this before.

The farmhouse ember had scooched over on its log to give the Hawthorne ember room, and the two greedily devoured what wood remained on the grate; I hastily refilled it, then sent Sawyer outside to look for more.

"There's a pile over here by the fence," he called from the open back door, returning with a large stick that he spat out on the floor beside me.

I used that stick to poke the logs, which divided into two halves, one for each ember. In just a few moments, and an entire stack of wood later, the Hawthorne ember was a vibrant sunflower-yellow, healthy, whole, and brimming with power.

"Thank the Green Mother," I whispered, relief threatening to turn me into a puddle as all the tension I'd been carrying drained right out of me.

I tossed the stick into the fireplace and thrust my hands in after it. The twin flames turned pale green, registering my health, then emerald as I drew on their magic. Not to aid in potion-making, nor baking bread in a fraction of the time, nor anything a hearth witch normally did. I drew their power into myself, remembering the feeling of the Hawthorne ember's tidal wave that had unlocked the first part of my curse.

The twin embers leapt at the chance to help me.

Two strands of glittering light, like questing bean tendrils, rose from the flames and encircled me. It felt familiar, this orbital embrace. Fiery magic coursed down my arms and into my heart, far fiercer than the life energy of the rambler roses had ever been.

Deep in the center of my core, a blazing heart woke within the oak tree.

The embers' magic manifested as dual green comets circling the net-shrouded tree in opposite directions of each other. With each completed orbit, they seared through and shortened the hem of that cursed chain mail net. Row after row of leaf-like links flashed white and dissolved, the comets inching higher with each section they released. My own magic roused as it gained more freedom, channeling to my skin instead of aiding the embers. My hands were still stuck in a fire, after all, and I wasn't a fire witch.

When the pain grew too much, and I yanked my hands back, cradling the steaming flesh to my chest. They weren't burned, but they were definitely rosy. In the fireplace, the embers glowed mutely, the logs they had been using to sustain themselves almost spent.

"Hang on," I told them, surging to my feet on numb legs. Thistle thorns, how long had I been kneeling? As I staggered outside to the woodpile, I found the little tabby tomcat perched on the topmost log, eyeing the sky.

"Sawyer," I told him, wrenching the ax free of where it rusted in the chopping block. "I need your help."

"I am helping," he said distractedly. "I'm watching these birds circling. I think they're crows. Maybe turkey vultures? They're black, whatever they are."

Blackbirds? I shot a worried look to the cloudless expanse above us. They were too high up to discern their true identity, maybe so high that we were nothing more than pinpricks to their eyes.

"Get out of sight," I ordered, the tomcat flinching at the abruptness of the order. "You can't be seen! All beasts in Redbud bow to Ossian. What if they tell him about you?"

Sawyer gulped and streaked to the porch, not stopping until he was inside the farmhouse and crouched by the open back door like a forgotten boot.

I didn't linger outside, either, for the same reasons. I only split the wood I could carry, snatched it up, and hustled back into the farmhouse. Kneeling back on the slates, I hefted the logs onto the fire one after the other. Half the stack, I kept in reserve. The embers eagerly devoured the wood, replenishing themselves.

"I need you to tell me when the wood gets low in the fireplace," I told the cat. "It might look like I'm staring right at it, but I'm not. The fire can't die out, do you understand?"

Sawyer nodded, positioning himself where he could monitor both the fireplace and the open back door. "I'll let you know," he promised.

"Good kitty," I said with a smile, and then the embers and I returned to our work.

The more of the oak tree they freed, the longer I could keep my hands in their flames. My relief and delight grew with each row they destroyed—freeing myself of this curse felt truly possible now. I wasn't just eking by on the life energy of plants or my own weak magic. I had two forces determined to help me, and I wasn't imagining it when I felt their determination. I was their witch, and they were my hearth embers, and we took care of each other.

As the embers worked, I turned my thoughts to Ossian's teachings.

"Your core is alive, and everything that is alive has a rhythm. A pulse. Feel your magic like you would the plants here. Meld your rhythms together." That's what Ossian had said. "Its roots will become your feet, its trunk your body, its canopy your mind. Its heart—its true power—will be your heart."

And my oak tree had revealed its heart to me now. I listened for a pulse, strained after it, and heard nothing. Frustration tugged at me like one of my toddler cousins begging for a sweet before dinnertime, but I refused to cave. A lot of my core was still under the effects of the curse, so maybe I just needed to focus on some other part of the tree. Its roots, perhaps, which were entirely exposed.

Still entranced, I rose from my kneeling position and kicked off my boots, then my socks. Standing on the slate hearth stones wasn't the same as the grassy earth, but if a dandelion could grow in concrete, I could make do.

As the ember-comets whizzed, I concentrated on the freed roots of my oak tree. It was almost an imperceivable motion, but they were flexing, pulsing to an almost imperceivable rhythm. Ossian had been right!

Spreading out my toes, I wiggled them in time to the roots and matched my breathing to the same rhythm. It felt a little silly and childish, not to mention boring beyond belief, and more than once I caught myself wishing for a spell or a potion or a magical herb that would just fix everything that was wrong with me in one go.

Catching myself for what had to be the twelfth time getting distracted, I refocused on feeling my toes and found them already gripping the slate in time with the flexing roots. They did it again with hardly any direction from me, but then my magic-body connection shattered.

"Meadow!" Sawyer shouted.

I blinked, whirling around to find Sawyer sprinting down the hallway from the front door. His claws caught on the braided rug in the hall, and his momentum slid him and the rug clear across the kitchen tiles and into the hearth room beside me. He seemingly danced in place as he fought to release his claws. "Meadow, we have to go. I was out there checking on Daphne when Gerty showed up. The Brotherhood is coming this way! I knew someone was going to see all that smoke!"

The blackbirds!

I snarled an unintelligible curse and lurched for my socks and boots, almost putting them on in the opposite order in my haste. Then I grappled the stand of fireplace tools, wrestling the tongs free. The censer could only take one ember, and it had to be the Hawthorne one. The farmhouse ember had to stay here and keep the hearth burning until I could return. After all those logs, the Hawthorne ember would be far too hot to handle now, even for a hearth witch, but the censer could control its heat. With the open censer poised on the slate, I reached forward with the tongs to pluck out the ember. Perhaps, once back at the castle, it could release the rest of the curse once and for all.

Just as the tongs were about to pinch shut, the ember disappeared.

My heart stuttered, and before it could beat again, the farmhouse ember vanished from sight.

Nothing but a cold, flameless hearth lay before me, smoke coiling upwards from the charcoal like strands of wispy gray lace.

I blinked, refusing to believe my eyes, then my pulse roared in my ears.

Both embers were gone, as if they had never existed. I had sprung the last trap my grandmother had left for me.

" Thistle thorns! " I screamed.