So it had to be tonight.
By tomorrow she’d be sixteen years old. She’d been lucky to be granted a reprieve until her sixteenth birthday. Her friend Anna was married to an old man with few teeth the day she turned fourteen. And no amount of weeping and wailing had changed her fate. Nor would it change Viola’s future. But now the maidservants fretted over her pale cheeks and her lack of appetite. She slept for hours and hours, long after the sun rose, and still she felt tired.
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.
Only Tristan.
He was forbidden from being in her presence, and she was carefully guarded by soldiers and knights. Even the gatehouse keeper knew the color of her golden hair and would recognize her if she’d tried to sneak out to see him. She’d been reduced to bribing one of the kitchen maids with an enamel brooch to send word to the witch rumored to live in the woods.
“I thought witches were supposed to be old hags,” Viola said.
Gwyneth shrugged. “It’s naught but power and my nan taught me well.” She surveyed her dispassionately. “You’d be Viola then?”
“Lady Viola Drake,” Viola corrected, suddenly feeling vulnerable. Witches weren’t to be meddled with, after all. Her old nursemaid’s warnings prickled through her. “Can you help me?” she asked, picturing Tristan beside her to drive away her childish fears.
“That depends,” Gwyneth replied.
“There’s your payment.” Viola motioned wearily to a pouch lying on the crenellated top of the battlements. It was filled with several of her most valuable rings and bracelets.
“It’s not that,” Gwyneth said. “Magic can be fickle and the price is always more than any amount of gold you can hold in your hand. Are you willing to pay it?”
“Yes,” Viola said immediately. “For love, I’m willing to risk everything.”
“You don’t look well.”
Viola waved that aside. “I was told you can make demons dance. What’s a little love spell to that?”
“A great deal more.” She smiled smugly. “But I can do it.”
“Now? Here?”
She nodded. “Aye.”
Viola fell asleep as Gwyneth puttered around her. When she woke again, she was curled on the hard stone inside a circle of salt and herbs. Gwyneth had pulled her hood up over her hair and was muttering under her breath. Viola sat up.
“Don’t disturb the salt,” Gwyneth said sharply.
Viola froze, adjusting the hem of her dress. She stood slowly, noticing that the salt formed more than just a circle. There were designs as well, marching round the border in complicated patterns. The world tilted dizzily for a moment but she forced herself to stay standing.
“You brought it?” Gwyneth asked. She sounded different, powerful. “As I asked?”
Viola nodded and pulled a long chain out from under her dress. Gwyneth had requested an image of Viola and her lover; a drawing or painting. Viola chose her favorite pendant. It was simple wood in a gold frame. She’d discovered one of the stable boys whittling behind the stalls one summer morning. He had impressive talent and she’d paid him with apples from the orchard and extra mutton at supper to carve a relief of her and Tristan. She’d been wearing it around her neck ever since. She’d painted it so that it looked even more like Tristan, with his dark hair and violet-blue eyes.
Gwyneth circled around Viola. “You remember what I told your serving girl? A sacrifice is required, a gift for a gift.”
Viola pointed to an iron cage covered in cloth. Inside, a dove fluttered its wings as the covering slipped off and Gwyneth transferred it into the circle. “When the moon turns red,” she said. “You do what must be done. Anoint the pendant with the blood and speak your wish. Are you ready?”
Viola nodded, even though she could barely keep her eyelids open. She lowered to her knees next to the cage, feeling ancient. Everything was blurring. The torchlight hurt her eyes. The sound of Gwyneth’s hem dragging the ground felt like needles in her ears. Gwyneth spoke what sounded like a mixture of Saxon and Latin, throwing down handfuls of roses pierced with needles. Red thread bound them together in a garland.
Viola glanced at the moon, waiting for it to turn red. She felt as if she’d had too much mead, as if she were floating and the moon was close enough to touch. The magic must be working already. She chewed on her lip until it bled, staring at the moon. Just as she tasted the copper of her own blood on her tongue, the pale moon went faintly red, as if soaked in wine. Viola paused as she reached inside the cage. The bird flapped into the bars, panicking. Surely, this sacrifice was too small.
If she wanted to secure Tristan and her happiness, she had to be bolder. She had to be a knight on the field of battle, taking no quarter. She stood up, even though her feet were as heavy as a blacksmith’s anvils.
“I will be with my love,” she said. “Tristan Constantine and I will be together, nothing will keep us apart, not family, not treaties, not even death. We will always find each other, no matter the obstacle.”
“No,” Gwyneth snapped as Viola shuffled her feet through the salt boundary. “It’s not safe. Stay in the circle.”
If Viola had cared to look, she would have seen the energy whipping around the battlements, billowing under Gwyneth’s cloak and blowing out the torches. The shadows seemed to form into malevolent faces, turning into kind weeping girls, into snarling beasts. But she didn’t see them.