Dark Witch by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

come and kiss me. Make me yours as I make you mine.”
    He pulled her hard against him, twisted her hair cruelly in his hand to drag her head back. And crushed his lips to hers.
    She opened those lips, and with death in her heart allowed his tongue to sweep into her mouth. Allowed the poison to do its work.
    He stumbled back, clutching at his throat. “What have you done?”
    “I have beaten you. I have destroyed you. And with my last breaths, I curse you. On this day and in this hour, I call upon what holds of my power. You will burn and die in pain, and know the Dark Witch has you slain. So my blood curses your blood for all eternity. As I will, so mote it be.”
    He threw his power at her, even as his skin began to smoke, to blacken. She fell, in blood, in agony, but clung to life. Clung only to watch his death.
    “All that come from you be damned,” she managed as flames burst from him, as his screams tore the world.
    “My death for his,” she whispered when the black ashes of the sorcerer smoldered on the ground. “It is right. It is just. It is done.”
    She let go, released her spirit and left her body by the cabin in the deep green woods.
    And as the fog swirled, something shifted in the black ashes.

3

    County Mayo, 2013
    T HE COLD CARVED BONE DEEP, FUELED BY THE LASH OF THE WIND , iced by the drowning rain gushing from a bruised, bloated sky.
    Such was Iona Sheehan’s welcome to Ireland.
    She loved it.
    How could she not? she asked herself as she hugged her arms to her chest and drank in the wild, soggy view from her window. She was standing in a castle. She’d sleep in a castle that night. An honest-to-God Irish castle in the heart of the west.
    Some of her ancestors had worked there, probably slept there. Everything she knew verified that her people, on her mother’s side in any case, had sprung from this gorgeous part of the world, this magical part of this magical country.
    She’d gambled, well, pretty much everything to come here, to find her roots, to—she hoped—connect with them. And most of all, to finally understand them.
    Burnt bridges, left them smoldering behind her in the hopes of building new ones, stronger ones. Ones that led somewhere she wanted to go.
    She’d left her mother mildly annoyed. But then her mother never rose to serious anger, or sorrow, or joy or passion. How difficult had it been to find herself saddled with a daughter who rode emotions like a wild stallion? Her father had just patted her head in his absent way, and wished her luck as casually as he might some passing acquaintance.
    She suspected she’d never been any more than that to him. Her paternal grandparents considered the trip a grand adventure, and had given her the very welcome gift of a check.
    She was grateful, even knowing they belonged to the out-of-sight-out-of-mind school and probably wouldn’t give her another thought.
    But her maternal grandmother, her treasured Nan, had given her a gift with so many questions.
    She was here in this lovely corner of Mayo, ringed by water, shadowed by ancient trees, to find the answers.
    She should wait until tomorrow, settle in, take a nap, as she’d barely slept on the flight from Baltimore. At least she should unpack. She had a week in Ashford Castle, a foolish expense on the practical scale. But she wanted, so wanted that connection, that once-in-a-lifetime treat.
    She opened her bags, began to take out clothes.
    She was a woman who’d once wished she’d grow taller than her scant five three, and curvier than the slim, teenage boy body the fates had granted her. Then she’d stopped wishing and compensated by using bright colors in her wardrobe, and wearing high, high heels whenever she could manage it.
    Illusion, Nan would say, was as good as reality.
    She’d once wished she could be beautiful, like her mother, but worked with what she had—cute. The only time she’d seen her mother close to genuinely horrified had been just the week before when Iona had