To Bear an Iron Key Read Online Free

was for thick tresses to be sewn into her daughter’s wedding gown.
    “Witches are not supposed to marry,” Bromwyn said for the millionth time. By her feet, her mother continued working with the hem as her daughter complained. “Witches are supposed to have consorts.”
    “Witches,” said Jessamin, “are supposed to listen to their mothers.”
    Bromwyn felt her temper flare, and she attempted to catch and cage it before it flew away. When her rages came upon her, nothing good happened. Two years ago, she had gotten very angry over something either real or imagined—she did not recall what it was, which really didn’t matter; the result had been the same. Bromwyn had used her magic in anger.
    Worse, she had used her magic against her mother.
    Even now, Bromwyn could see the aftereffect of her rash deed. Her mother’s hands, which used to be so deft and certain, held a slight tremor as she carefully hemmed the white silk gown. And when Jessamin read her cards to the villagers, there were times she would tremble so badly, it was as if her hands had a stutter. Usually, she was able to use the impediment to her advantage; customers tended to believe that Mistress Cartomancer was overcome by the power of her reading, and they would lean closer to catch her words of wisdom and guidance as Bromwyn, unnoticed in the corner, would watch, half disgusted by their gullibility, half dismayed that her mother was forced to play such a demeaning role.
    It is your own fault, she told herself, staring at her mother’s shaking hands.
    Two years ago, Bromwyn had enchanted Jessamin’s looking glass. She had done so quickly and quietly, barely needing to whisper the words from her Way of Sight. Her mother, who had been so furious with her, hadn’t noticed. Or perhaps she had noticed, but had also assumed that her daughter would not do something so rash.
    And yet, Bromwyn had.
    When her mother had turned and caught her own reflection in the spelled glass, she had seen herself as a crone, old and bent. Held rapt by the image of her decaying body, Jessamin had frozen, transfixed by the illusion.
    Bromwyn remembered smiling at that moment. Her mother had always been a proud one, and seeing herself defeated by time would do her good. Bromwyn remembered thinking that too.
    And then the unthinkable had happened: Illusion transformed into something with substance. The magic, unsettled on the mirror, leeched onto and into her mother, and Bromwyn had watched in horror as Jessamin’s body began to age—slowly, at first, and then with alarming speed.
    With a defiant cry, Bromwyn had quickly unraveled the spell before it could take effect on Jessamin completely. But the magic, once cast, needed to go somewhere; in her panic, Bromwyn channeled it into her own body. That had been a mistake. She should have directed it into the dirt floor, or into the embers in the stone hearth, even into the air itself—any of the elements of Nature would have sufficed. But she’d reacted without thinking; all she had known at that urgent moment was that she had to do something .
    All of her grandmother’s lessons and warnings about the untamed strength of unraveled magic could not have prepared her for the wrenching pain she had felt as raw power racked her body—and that pain was nothing compared with the terror stitched onto Jessamin’s weathered face.
    Driven by equal parts fury and fear, Bromwyn had wrestled the wild magic and finally bested it, dispelling it into harmless wisps of smoke that soon evaporated. The mirror shattered, and Jessamin was restored to herself, unmarred … except for the tremor that possessed her hands even now, two years later.
    Her mother had long since forgiven her. Though Jessamin herself was no longer a witch, she had told Bromwyn that she remembered the temptations of youth. “The only things that mix more poorly than magic and youth,” Jessamin Moon liked to say with a knowing smile, “are oil and water.” But since