Garden of Dreams and Desires - Kristen Painter Page 0,54

She slipped on the shoes she kept by the French doors and headed for the garden.

Giselle and Ian followed. Two men lay on the stone path at the front edge of the pond, struggling as if bound with rope, but Ian had used magic so nothing physically held them, making their struggles oddly comical. If not for the terror in their eyes, they would have looked like Jackson Square mimes. “Ian, would you do the honors?”

“Of course.” He positioned himself by the two men, taking the spot that would also allow him to toss the men into the pond, since they obviously couldn’t walk in on their own power.

She and Zara moved around the opposite sides until they were as far from each other as they were from Ian. Zara yawned as she spread her arms, then began the incantation to open the mouth of the pit. As she worked, Giselle inhaled the morning air. Zara’s garden always had the most pleasurable aroma of earth and flowers. The sweet olives were in bud, adding to the honeyed perfume surrounding them. Something splashed near her feet. A frog, probably. She glanced down but all that remained were a few ripples.

She narrowed her focus. Something had dug into the dirt beside the pond. A chunk of soil was missing in a purposeful shape. Not like something left behind by an animal.

The sharp pull of magic brought her head back up. Faint lines of power danced blue and purple and green off Zara’s body, connecting her to Ian and Giselle. The pull increased as the lines flowed through both of them and connected, completing the circle.

At last, Zara’s attention shifted from the heavens to the water’s surface. “Ready,” she whispered, the strain of the spellwork evident in her thready tone.

“Hurry, Ian,” Giselle said. Zara needed to rest.

With a nod, he used one hand to raise the first bound man into the air. The man went still as he hovered in the air, then his struggling resumed with great force. Ian guided him to the pond’s center, then jerked his hand closed, breaking the link.

The man plunged into the pond. His head disappeared below and the now-familiar flash of light filled the water as though the sun had exploded in the depths of the pond.

Ian wasted no time in doing the same with the other man, who whimpered and moaned until he too vanished into the pond.

They held the spell as Zara uttered the final phrases to close the well of souls. As the last words left her mouth, her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed.

Giselle and Ian ran to her, meeting on their knees at Zara’s side. Ian scooped her into his arms. Her head lolled to one side. “I’ll carry her up to bed.”

Giselle ran ahead to open the door. “I wish there was something I could do.” Zara was as pale as ashes. Casting the ruina vox totem tonight might not be an option if she didn’t have the strength.

“You could smudge her room. Clear out any lingering stress from these past days. Other than that, she just needs to rest.” He started for the stairs.

“I’ll get some sage.” She followed him up but veered off into the altar room to collect her things. She bundled the sage, her thoughts returning to the divot by the pond. It was nothing to worry about. There were lots of explanations for a hole like that. Things like… nothing she could think of.

Maybe the stress of preparing for the chaos spell was getting to her, too. Or maybe it was the worrying over Zara.

“You okay?”

She jumped. “Ian, you startled me.”

He frowned. “You followed me up here.” He came to her side, taking the sage out of her fingers and holding her hands between his own calloused ones. There was comfort in the roughness of his skin, his familiar scent and willing spirit. “Hey, we’re all a little on edge. I know you’re worried about Zara, but she’s going to be okay.”

She wanted to agree, but that would be a lie. “You know our mother died performing chaos magic.”

Sympathy filled his gaze. “I had no idea. The coven was told… well, you know what the coven was told.”

She nodded. Her father had covered their mother’s death by telling everyone it had been suicide. “I don’t want to lose Zara the same way.”

He lifted one hand to cup her cheek. “You won’t. There are three of us and we are strong, powerful spell