A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [235]
“Are you afraid of me?” I asked, my body still hovering.
“No,” he said.
My third eye tingled. He was telling the truth. “Even though I have that inside me?” My glance flickered to the glowing, twitching mass in his hand.
Matthew’s face was guarded and careful. “I’ve seen powerful witches before. We still don’t know all that’s inside you, though. We have to find out.”
“I never wanted to know.”
“Why, Diana? Why wouldn’t you want these gifts?” He drew his hand tighter, as if my magic might be snatched away and destroyed before he understood its possibilities.
“Fear? Desire?” I said softly, touching his strong cheekbones with the tips of my fingers, shocked anew at the power of my love for him. Remembering what his daemon friend Bruno had written in the sixteenth century, I quoted it again. “‘Desire urges me on, as fear bridles me.’ Doesn’t that explain everything that happens in the world?”
“Everything but you,” he told me, his voice thick. “There’s no accounting for you.”
My feet touched the ground, and I pulled my fingers from his face, slowly unfurling them. My body seemed to know the smooth movement, though my mind was quick to register its strangeness. The piece of myself that I’d given to Matthew leaped from his hand into mine. My palm closed around it, the energy quickly reabsorbed. There was the tingle of a witch’s power, and I recognized it as my own. I hung my head, frightened by the creature I was becoming.
Matthew’s fingertip drew aside my curtain of hair. “Nothing will hide you from this magic—not science, not willpower, not concentration. It will always find you. And you can’t hide from me either.”
“That’s what my mother said in the oubliette. She knew about us.” Frightened by the memory of La Pierre, my mind’s eye closed protectively. I shivered, and Matthew drew me near. It was no warmer in his cold arms, but it felt far safer.
“Perhaps that made it easier for them, to know you wouldn’t be alone,” Matthew said softly. His lips were cool and firm, and my own parted to draw him closer. He buried his face in my neck, and I heard him take in my scent with a sharp inhalation. He pulled away with reluctance, smoothing my hair and tucking the parka more closely around me.
“Will you train me to fight, like one of your knights?”
Matthew’s hands stilled. “They knew how to defend themselves long before coming to me. But I’ve trained warriors in the past—humans, vampires, daemons. Even Marcus, and God knows he was a challenge. Never a witch, though.”
“Let’s go home.” My ankle was still throbbing, and I was ready to drop with fatigue. After a few halting steps, Matthew swung me onto his back like a child and walked through the twilight with my arms clasped around his neck. “Thank you again for finding me,” I whispered when the house came into view. He knew this time I wasn’t talking about La Pierre.
“I’d stopped looking long ago. But there you were in the Bodleian Library on Mabon. A historian. A witch, no less.” Matthew shook his head in disbelief.
“That’s what makes it magic,” I said, planting a soft kiss above his collar. He was still purring when he put me down on the back porch.
Matthew went to the woodshed to get more logs for the fire, leaving me to make peace with my aunts. Both of them looked uneasy.
“I understand why you kept it secret,” I explained, giving Em a hug that made her gasp with relief, “but Mom told me the time for secrets was over.”
“You’ve seen Rebecca?” Sarah said carefully, her face white.
“In La Pierre. When Satu tried to frighten me into cooperating with her.” I paused. “Daddy, too.”
“Was she . . . were they happy?” Sarah had to choke out the words. My grandmother was standing behind her, watching with concern.
“They were together,” I said simply, looking out the window to see if Matthew was headed back to the house.
“And they were with you,” Em said firmly,