Page 77 of Hearts of Stone

“So that’s what I have to do to help Wulfstan?” Jade asked. “Bring down the First Families?”

“You can if you like—I certainly won’t stop you—but no. What you want to do is the hardest thing of all, and that’s to heal that gargoyle. Nature, ageing, entropy, they’re all natural forces that create disease and injury in a body.”

“But there’s nothing natural about what Wulfstan went through,” Jade insisted.

“No, and that will help you. Trying to cure someone of cancer? You need to remove all of the cancerous cells in someone’s body, otherwise it’ll just come back, but what might you be removing at the same time? Brain cells? Liver cells? You can kill someone by trying to help. But magical injuries are something different again. We use energy to create magic.”

She flicked her fingers and a small green glow appeared in her hand.

“It’s supposed to be used for good.” Agnes nodded to Jade. “Just like you said. If we can’t use it to make the world better, what’s the point? But some don’t.” The green ball grew darker, the healthy green turning to a vile poisonous shade. “Some use that energy to disrupt that which lies within another and that creates illness, sickness, even death.”

She leaned over and blew the green ball forward, and Jade’s friend, Daniel, skittered out of the way, but it wasn’t him that Agnes directed the ball at. It sailed through the air, zeroing in on a small plant in a brightly painted pot. The plant’s green foliage gleamed all the brighter for just a second, right before the ball hit it. The sphere of energy didn’t smash the plant to pieces. Rather the light shivered, then dived down into the soil, into the roots.

The effect was not instantaneous, but when the first brown spot appeared on a leaf, Jade and Daniel gasped. It was almost as though their reaction encouraged the spell, because soonanother formed, then another. The stalk of the plant started to wilt and all of the vitality left the leaves. It was dying.

“That plant is from a cutting,” Agnes told us with a wry smile. “A tricky one to get to strike as well. It’s a new plant, full of energy, but I’ve used that same energy to corrupt it. Energy helps it draw in oxygen through its leaves. Energy helps it to turn that sunlight into starch through photosynthesis. The circulatory system transports that energy around the plant to fuel it, but the poison I’ve exposed it to is transported around by the same system. I’ve expended some power to create the poison, but it would require much more power for me to kill it outright in one blow.” She turned to Jade, still smiling slightly. “Better to use an organism’s own system to do the job for me.”

“Like Wulfstan…” Jade’s brows drew down deeper the longer she stared at the plant. “It isn’t just the fact he was brutalised and forced to brutalise others. He’s kept within a cage that reinforces that initial abuse over and over until…” Her eyes suddenly flicked up to meet Agnes’ gaze. “Fix it.”

“What?!”

I took a step forward, as did my flockmates. One didn’t come into the abode of such a powerful witch as Mother Agnes and start ordering her around. The witch’s expression changed in an instant, all trace of gentleness gone. But my mate stared the older woman down with the kind of defiance that was both exhilarating and terrifying to see.

“Fix the plant,” Jade clarified. “You grew it from a cutting and—”

With a twist of Agnes’ wrist, the process of decay we’d watched was completely reversed. Well, almost. The stalk wasn’t quite as tall as it had been, and a leaf or two were still a little limp, but it had been brought back from the brink of death. However, that wasn’t my mate’s focus, I was sure of it. She got to her feet, walking over to the plant and studying it closely,reaching a hand out to touch it. A protest formed on my lips. It could still be poisonous. I never would’ve brought Jade here if I hadn’t thought Agnes was a trustworthy teacher, but I dreaded the thought that I might have put her in danger.

Could any of us trust the witches and warlocks of this world? They were powerful creatures, ruled only by their own moral codes. I moved quickly to Jade’s side, and Agnes laughed.

“I won’t harm your lady love, Graven, son of Merriam. There aren’t enough witches left in the world, with the way things have gone. And Jade…” She let out a sigh as my mate stroked the leaf of the plant. “Well, suffice to say that we’ve been waiting for her for some time. Almost as long as you have.”

“What does that mean?” Daniel hissed at me, having sidled up to me, careful to keep my body between him and Agnes. “If Jade is some kind of chosen one, we need to know what prophecy is in motion, what role she’s supposed to play.”

But before I could consider any of that, Jade turned to Agnes.

“Show me.”

Gods above, I needed to talk to her urgently about the appropriate etiquette to use when addressing a fellow witch. I turned to Agnes, ready to make the necessary apologies, to see that this time the older woman smiled wryly.

“No, Jade, daughter of Mandy, I cannot show you how to heal the Beast of Z Ward’s injuries.”

Chapter 44

Jade

“What?” I said, blinking with surprise at Agnes’ formal rejection.

“I’m not going to show you—” she began to repeat.

“No. Sorry, I heard that part but…” I blinked again, as the feeling of hope that’d started growing in me the moment I’d watched that plant begin to die, then come back to life, seemed to perish in the plant’s place. “Why not?”

“How badly do you want to free the Beast?” she asked.

“Call him Wulfstan,” I insisted.

“Uh… Jade, maybe tone that shit down a bit,” Daniel hissed, dodging around Graven and putting a warning hand on my arm. “The lady is like a walking bottle of Roundup and I’m fairly sure she could take us out with about as much effort as she did the plants.”

I shook him off.

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