The Witch’s Kiss Trilogy
THE WITCH’S KISS trilogy by authors and sisters, Katharine and Elizabeth Corr incorporating titles: The Witch’s Kiss, The Witch’s Tears and The Witch’s Blood.The Witch’s KissIt’s not easy being a teenage witch. Just ask Merry. Then Jack comes into her life and she can’t help falling under his spell. There’s just one problem – he’s part of an evil, centuries-old curse that Merry has to break.The Witch’s TearsBig brother Leo is falling apart and everything Merry does seems to push him further to the brink. So, when strangers offering friendship show them a different path, they’d be mad not to take it…The Witch's BloodWhen the coven forbids Merry to rescue Leo, she ignores them – with terrifying consequences. As Merry is forced to confront evil from her past and present, loyalties are challenged and friendships pushed to breaking point. How much is Merry really willing to give up to save the people she loves?The darkly magical The Witch’s Kiss Trilogy burns wickedly brightly.
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THE WITCH’S KISS TRILOGY
The Witch’s Kiss, The Witch’s Tears, The Witch’s Blood
3-Book Collection
Katharine and Elizabeth Corr
This ebook collection first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2018
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
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The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk
The Witch’s Kiss, text copyright © Katharine and Elizabeth Corr, 2016 The Witch’s Tears, text copyright © Katharine and Elizabeth Corr, 2017 The Witch’s Blood, text copyright © Katharine and Elizabeth Corr, 2018 Cover designs © blacksheep-uk.com Cover thorns, The Witch’s Kiss and The Witch’s Blood © Josef Mohyla and Andrew Unangst Cover ice, The Witch’s Tears © Shutterstock Ebook collection cover design © HarperCollins Children’s Books 2018
Katharine and Elizabeth Corr assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of the work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN:
The Witch’s Kiss 9780008188504
The Witch’s Tears 9780008188443
The Witch’s Blood 9780008264796
Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008282912
Version: 2018-02-06
Contents
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.
