The Witch’s Kiss
Can true love’s kiss save the day…?Electrifying dark magic debut by authors and sisters, Katharine and Elizabeth Corr.Sixteeen-year-old Meredith is fed-up with her feuding family and feeling invisible at school – not to mention the witch magic that shoots out of her fingernails when she’s stressed. Then sweet, sensitive Jack comes into her life and she falls for him hard. The only problem is that he is periodically possessed by a destructive centuries-old curse.Meredith has lost her heart, but will she also lose her life? Or in true fairytale tradition, can true love’s kiss save the day?
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2016
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk
Text © Katharine and Elizabeth Corr 2016
Cover thorns © Josef Mohyla & Andrew Unangst
Cover design © blacksheep-uk.com
Katharine and Elizabeth Corr assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of the work.
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Source ISBN: 9780008182984
Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008188504
Version: 2016-06-09
For Laurence, who was my inspiration.
E.C.
In memory of Nana Pat, who really did make our
childhood magical.
K.C.
Contents
THE KINGDOM OF THE SOUTH SAXONS, 522 AD
Witches do not kneel.
They do not grovel. They do not beg favours from any creature, mortal or immortal.
At the most, they bargain.
Meredith knew this; had known it for as long as she could remember. But, as she scrambled up the steep hillside, shredding her skirts and her skin on the long thorns of may trees, the things she had been certain of were no longer enough.
Finally, she reached the summit. This place was not holy, but it was old. Very, very old.
Meredith passed through the outer ring of pine trees, so tall and close growing they blocked out the sun and the wind, walking on until she got close to the single oak growing at the centre of the circle. The oak was twisted and split with age, green foliage flecked with cream. Not flowers, but bones: tied to the branches, littering the ground beneath.
Then, Meredith knelt.
She cleared a space in front of her, sweeping away the bones and dead leaves until the earth beneath was revealed, and pulled a knife out of her belt. She had no offering to bargain with. She had only herself.
‘This I pledge—’ Her voice was weak; she swallowed, ran her tongue over her cracked lips and tried again. ‘This I pledge: by the time the charmed sleep ends, one of my children’s children will be ready to face Gwydion, to defeat him and to remove all traces of his enchantments from the face of the earth. We shall have vengeance.’ An echo seemed to come from the encircling trees, throwing her words back to her:
… vengeance … vengeance …
Without hesitating, Meredith pressed the point of the knife into her palm, dragging the blade slowly downwards to split the skin, allowing blood to drip from her outstretched hand on to the ground.
‘I swear, not by the gods, nor by men, but by the bones and ancient soul of this land, to bind myself and my descendants to this fate.’
… fate … fate …
With one finger dipped in the blood, Meredith traced a shape on the ground: a binding rune. For a moment it glowed white against the dark earth, before burning away into smoke.
Merry was dreaming about blood.
Blood, running in scarlet rivulets across the black tarmac at her feet, pooling around her toes. So much blood that she could smell the coppery-tinny scent of it, like a palmful of coins warm from being clutched in her fist. She put her hand up to cover her nose and mouth, tried not to breathe too deeply. In the distance, someone was screaming.
She looked up. A boy was walking towards her across the flat, grey-lit landscape. Memory stirred in her mind. She knew this boy, and not just from her recent nightmares. She recognised his clothes: a cloak, pinned with a gold-coloured brooch, some sort of tunic and – trousers, she guessed they were, but not like anything she’d ever seen boys actually wearing. She recognised the evil-looking knife he carried. The boy was tall, with long, blond hair tied back – the same colour as her brother’s, but straight, not curly – and a handsome, angular face. As he came closer she saw for the first time, or maybe she just remembered, that his eyes were brown; brown, with little flecks of gold. And she gasped, not because his eyes were beautiful, but because they were hard and cold and full of cruelty.
Another memory floated to the surface of her mind. Somehow, she knew the boy’s name.
