Velvet Haven

where I found you as a little girl, playing where you shouldn’t have been.”
    “I’ve never been here. I’ve never even heard that word.” The woman’s gaze narrowed. “A Tumulus is an underground chamber used as a ritual space. Can you guess, Mairi, what sort of rituals are carried out here?”
    The man screamed, and Mairi felt her stomach churn.
    “Death magick,” the woman said with what could only be excitement. “Sex magick.” Her eyes glowed. “Can you imagine who you will bring to this cairn?”
    She shook her head and stepped back, but came up against stone.
    “Stupid human,” the woman admonished. “ Bran . Bran is the one who you will bring to this chamber.”
    “No!”
    The woman laughed. “You have no choice, Mairi. You were born into my spell. I don’t know how it happened, but sometime after I cursed darling Bran to love a mortal who would betray and kill him, you were born.”
    Mairi kept shaking her head, trying to wake up, but the woman stepped closer until Mairi was looking into her ruthless eyes. “You have no choice. You will bring him to me. Do you understand? He’s mine.”
    “Morgan,” Mairi hissed.
    “Not entirely stupid, then. But not smart enough to disentangle yourself from my web. Tomorrow, on the night of the new moon, you will bring Bran to me.”
    “What do you want with him?”
    “What any woman wants, of course.”
    Mairi bit her lip at the thought of Bran with this . . . creature. “He won’t have you.”
    “I’ve found a way to have him ,” Morgan snapped.
    “His magic is powerful.”
    “And what makes you think mine isn’t?”
    True. How the hell did she know what Morgan was capable of? She only knew she had to wake up from this nightmare.
    Mairi looked around the chamber for a way out. She needed to keep talking, to try to distract Morgan, to have time to think. “Why do you hate Bran so much?”
    “The question is, why don’t you ?” Morgan asked as she walked around the altar. “He’s a parasite. He cares nothing for you. He’s using you, just as he’s used hundreds of other mortal women.”
    Mairi shoved aside the creeping jealousy she felt. Morgan was manipulating her. “He’s not using me.”
    “You fool! He lives under a mortal- needing curse! He fucks them because he’s compelled to, and that makes him hate mortals. He hates you .”
    “That’s not true!”
    “Such naïveté.” Morgan laughed. “I’ve been on the receiving end of his deceit, mortal. I know the pain. Don’t tell me it doesn’t hurt to think of him fucking those other women.”
    “Stop! Don’t,” Mairi pleaded, deciding to play along. Misery loved company, and she hoped Morgan would feel as though they were kindred spirits. How else was Mairi to outwit a sorceress?
    “Do you think he did anything different with you? Felt any different? He used you the same way he did all the others.”
    “I—I don’t believe you,” Mairi said, making her voice break.
    “In a hundred and seventy years of being cursed, how many do you think there were?” Morgan taunted. “Sometimes he had three a night—three at a time,” she continued, relishing the pained expression that crossed Mairi’s face. “You mean nothing to him, Mairi. He doesn’t care. All he cares about is his next meal. His next energy fix.”
    “He said he loved me!” Mairi let out a pained sob, and Morgan fell into her hands.
    “I know you’re in pain. I’ve been there. And Bran . . . he can be a bastard, can’t he?”
    Mairi nodded and pretended she was choking back tears. “I—I thought I mattered to him.”
    “Bran cares for no one. That’s the first thing you must know. The second is, he’ll never stay with you.”
    Mairi wrung her hands. “What should I do?”
    “Help me. I only want what is rightfully mine, what was promised to me. A husband, and a throne. You understand, don’t you?”
    “Of course,” she lied. “But I don’t know why you need me.”
    Her gaze flickered over Morgan’s shoulder, and Mairi saw the hooded figure move around the altar. “I have someone to help me once I get Bran. But I need you to bring him here.”
    “What are you going to do with him? Are you going to kill him?” Mairi didn’t know if it was the right thing to say, but she needed to know just what this witch had in store for Bran.
    Morgan smiled. “Only temporarily, sweetie. With no Bran, I can’t have the throne. But with death magick, my . . . friend and I can reanimate him,