Eleri Stone - Witch Bound

“Over here. I found one.” Lois squatted to brush the leaves off the first rune stone and Raquel turned away from the bloody patch of earth to do her part in protecting the clan.

Fen had done the heavy work of placing the stones precisely as she’d ordered them in a circle ringing the ward stones. Those stones contained the fault and kept it from spreading. They kept the portal from opening in town or worse, in an area populated by humans. They couldn’t prevent the portal from opening during the lunar surges, but they should prevent it from opening at other times. The fault should be at its most stable right now. Even without the ward stones in place, a portal shouldn’t have opened so near a quarter.

And yet, this one had done just that.

She could feel the wards buzzing along. A familiar sound, reassuring. These were weak, no doubt about that. A hundred years was the outer edge of their life expectancy. All magic dissipated eventually. Strange to think that the founding witch of Ragnarok had set these so very long ago. Kathy had replaced their own as her first order of business once she took over as clan witch. Apparently Aiden had expected Raquel to do the same. She wished she could. It was hard to be excited about the wedding when she was so hyperaware of how badly she was letting everyone down.

Christian... He hadn’t even spoken to her since her revelation.

Dry leaves crunched underfoot. Everything was painted in shades of brown except for a couple of tall pines and some stubborn tufts of grass poking through the leaves. It was quiet and very peaceful. But not safe, particularly not now.

She knelt on the ground when she came to the next stone and covered the rune with her hands. It was warm to the touch. All potential energy there, keyed to draw energy from the ley line. It wasn’t necessary to direct the flow to the ward. The power stones would soak it up, store it. When the wards were activated by a threat, they’d pull from the nearest available energy source. A simple design, but those were usually the best.

She closed her eyes and felt the magic along with the wall that blocked her from that pure, deep well. She wanted to dive in, let all that power flow into her body. She wanted to dismantle the failing wards while the fault was quiet and create blazing pillars of protection that would last for another century. She had the raw power to do it. But a gigantic wall stood between her and her birthright, with no way to breach it.

She’d tried. Heaven help her, she’d tried everything she could think of. Meditation, yoga, crystals, pain because her last idiot of a boyfriend had suggested that as a way to break the block. She still had the scars on her thigh to disprove that theory. She’d been so desperate and so stupid. Fen had promised to help her with the tattoos. Those would be permanent too, but at least he wouldn’t place them until she was ready. She was so fucking ready to break down that wall she hurt with it.

She found a tendril of power, a leak, the slenderest of threads, and she held onto that, drawing at it until she had just enough to burn the gap she’d left in the rune to complete the figure. She smiled as it powered up. She could feel it link to the ley line, feel it connect to the nearest ward stone as well. Standing, she brushed her hands off on her jeans and met Lois’s haughty stare.

Lois was just waiting for her to screw up. Only two stones left.

Christian walked down the front steps of the home he’d rented for Raquel’s family. It was his sister’s home, but she’d married into another clan last year, leaving it empty. It was the house they’d grown up in, small but well kept because his father believed in living simply. He’d been an Æsir purist and a warrior of the Spartan variety. Disciplined, stern, demanding.

Christian had put a second bathroom in for Wendy off the master bedroom, sparing no expense—a steam shower and heated towel rods, marble tile surrounding the big tub. It had given him great pleasure to put such a lavish room inside his father’s home. The kitchen was new too. They’d expanded it, adding an attached four-season room that overlooked the park. Now when he visited, he barely recognized the old place. Some of his father’s ideals were too deeply ingrained for him to question, others not so much. He hoped Raquel was comfortable here. He hadn’t had more than an hour alone with her since she’d arrived to find out.

She wasn’t home now and he was at a loss. Not that he expected her to sit on her hands and wait for him to show up, but why of all people would she go to Lois? He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and started walking toward the shop. He should have tried harder to draw her out after the mess the other night, should have taken the day off. But there’d been a problem at the grain elevator. Beth had called in sick, and Jim couldn’t find the records he needed on her computer. Before Christian knew it, he’d lost half his day. But he’d make it up to Raquel. He had his whole life to make it up to her.

This should be easy. He genuinely liked women and women had always liked him. Raquel had seemed nervous and excited but content with the match that first day. And within just a few short hours, she’d become wary. He didn’t know what he’d done to screw up, or even if it was something that he had done. This secret her parents had wanted her to carry had to have been an awful burden. There were the pressures of adjusting to a new town, Lois’s antagonism and her discovery of the problem with their portal. All of it had probably combined into a perfect shitstorm that made her doubt the wisdom of continuing with the wedding. He’d like to believe that she’d made her confession about her block because she trusted him, but he suspected she’d done it to test him—or worse, to cast him off. He wouldn’t abandon her like that. If she’d known him at all, she’d have known that.

But that was the problem wasn’t it? She understood him as little as he understood her.

The light was still on inside the florist’s shop but the closed sign was up. He stopped outside the door. It was nearly six and most of the shops along Main Street were already closed except for the diner two doors down. For the first time in years, there was a woman he wanted badly to seduce but he couldn’t think where to begin. By rights, she was already his.

He didn’t want to screw this up.

There was no movement in the shop. She might already be gone, out to eat with her sister, Grace or even Fen. He couldn’t make himself knock at the window and when his phone rang, he turned away to answer it with an uneasy sigh of relief mixed with guilt.

When Fen called to see if she and Audrey wanted to come over later to go over the plan for the runes, he mentioned that he was picking up supplies in town and Raquel jumped at the chance to hitch a ride. Fen’s awkward pause told her she’d overstepped.

“I can go with Audrey,” she said, backpedaling. “She just...really likes to shop.”

“And you don’t?”

“Not for shoes.” With Audrey they’d be gone all day, until the energy drain from being so far from the fault forced a retreat. The nearest town with decent shopping was an hour away. Two hours of drive time would mean Audrey could potentially have her trying on every shoe in town, all the while harassing her for not having taken care of it sooner.

When she started to explain this to Fen, he said, “Okay, yeah. That would be cruel. Will you be up by noon?”

By noon? “I told you I’m not a morning person, but I’m not that bad. Noon’s fine.”

Noon was actually great because Audrey had a meeting with the caterer to discuss table linens. When she’d heard Raquel tell the woman to pick whatever she liked, Audrey’s eyeballs had nearly exploded. She’d volunteered to go in her sister’s stead. Raquel didn’t see what the big deal was over napkin color but Audrey, she knew, would make sure everything was perfect. So the least Raquel could do was to take care of the damn shoes.