When it was time, I brought my blades. I had actually left the house, following Aiden out into the predawn, then turned back for them. I was tired of the games, tired of waiting. Either Cerise would untangle the working on Aiden and Kader, or I would hack through whatever stood in my way.
Experience also told me that whether or not Cerise lifted the spell on him, Kader wasn’t going to just walk away. And Isa’s and Khalid’s motivations were also unclear. Would they try to strike at their father in his weakened state? By that same measure, I didn’t completely understand Sky either — especially factoring in the secret relationship with Grosvenor.
It was fairly clear to me, and Kader, that Cerise was responsible for the strangeness I’d been feeling. The mood control. But maybe I was wrong. Isa or Khalid, or even one of Aiden’s sisters, could be playing a very long game. Pointing all the evidence toward Cerise for reasons that I couldn’t see yet.
As far as I could tell, Paisley wasn’t on the property. The demon dog rarely missed a chance to study magic, but I was hopeful that she’d stay away as I’d requested.
Cerise was waiting for us all, dressed head to toe in white lace. She stood, feet bare, in the orchard grass of the broad clearing, along the western curve of the large circle, facing east toward the rising sun. Her dress glowed softly — as did the eight smaller secondary rings set outside the main circle. As I drew nearer, the second-last to arrive, I realized that the smaller rings were actually large lace doilies, each one a different design. All of them pulsing with light.
Moon-fueled?
There was no way that Cerise had knit or knotted — or however lace was made — eight doilies big enough for an adult to stand on overnight. She’d been building the elements of this removal spell since she’d arrived. Perhaps even before that.
Except she couldn’t have known that eight Adepts, plus Kader, would be at the house before she’d arrived herself.
We’d each been assigned a doily — directed to our proper places with a nod from the elder witch — just as we’d been assigned seats at the first dinner. Mine was directly opposite Cerise’s. An empty spot sat to my right, then there was Aiden, then Sky. Grosvenor was on my left, then Isa, and then Ocean. Each of us just close enough that we could have touched fingertips, but too far to link hands.
Kader was standing within the main circle, but close enough to my assigned spot that I could have reached out to take his hand. He was wearing his tan-colored suit, but his feet were bare in the grass. I would have expected Cerise to have placed him in the center of the circle, not closer to one side, since he was the focus of the spell. But I had never seen a moon-fueled, dawn-triggered spell before, so I had no frame of reference.
Khalid was the last to arrive. Like the rest of us, he paused a step away from the lace doily that had been assigned to him. Its design was simple, with just two thick lines of lace slashed through it. My own doily was intricate — lace flowers and leaves adhered to a spiderweb of tiny stitches.
The flowers looked like apple blossoms. Though it was possible that my overactive brain was trying to sort through all the puzzle pieces that had led up to this point, and I was now reading into everything I saw and heard.
But if I was admitting that — even if just to myself — I could also admit that all the lace patterning reminded me of the game the witches and sorcerers had been playing in the kitchen.
“Join me, please,” Cerise said, opening her hands outward and then sweeping them in cupped toward her chest. Her voice was heavy with magic, nothing remotely childlike about it now. “It is time to end the discord between our families. Kader is right.” She nodded her chin toward the elder sorcerer benevolently. “The union between us resulted in Aiden, and he … is … cherished.”
I glanced at Aiden. He was watching his mother closely, but didn’t appear thrown by her abrupt change of heart. Presumably they had talked while setting up the spell. Perhaps he’d helped his mother sort through the situation?
Or whatever power Cerise was channeling prevented him from seeing the change, even as my immunity was deflecting it.
Though the tension in Kader’s shoulders informed me that I wasn’t the only wary one. Both Sky and Ocean looked even more serene than Aiden. Grosvenor was listening intently, scanning the layout and structure of the spell circles as if committing them to memory. Isa was expressionless, stone faced.
Beside me, Khalid’s eyes were narrowed on Cerise.
“Your place, please, Emma,” Cerise said. “Before the dawn breaks. And Khalid …” She gestured with her right hand, as if guiding us into place. Then she cried out, “No! Not the blades! Emma!”
My bare foot was hovering over the lace doily. I paused, just looking at the witch. She was going to have to explain herself if she wanted me to put down my weapons.
“The … spell …” She stumbled over the word. That was telling. “It is far too delicate to bring a sharp edge to it. Set them within reach if it gives you comfort …”
That was some sort of dig. Thankfully, I was also immune to stupidity.
Mostly.
“Aiden?” I asked.
The dark-haired sorcerer looked thoughtful. “All blades?” Aiden asked his mother. “Or just the ones that Emma is carrying?”
Frustration flashed across Cerise’s face before she smoothed her expression. “Emma is going to need her hands. If she raises the blades to the sides, she might compromise the spell. Hurry, please.”
I crouched to set the blades on either side of the lace doily when Cerise spoke up again.
“Behind you would be better, dear.”
I set the blades behind my feet, hilts toward the circle. I could pivot and grab them just as easily as dropping into a crouch.
I glanced over at Khalid, the two of us the last to step into our individual circles. “Anything you’d like to share with the rest of us?” I asked him, since he was the most sensitive to magic among us. I didn’t bother to be quiet about it.
He opened his mouth as if it took effort to do so. “The spell looks fine to me. I would have thought it to be overkill for a simple reversal.”
“If it were simple,” Sky snapped, “you’d have figured it out months ago.”
“Please,” Cerise murmured. “Breathe. Release the negativity. Just breathe. Breathe love in and breathe love out.”
I stepped onto my doily, feeling the dawn slowly creeping up behind me. Khalid took his place to my right. Grosvenor was already standing in place to my left. Now that I was a step closer to Kader in the main circle, my view of Cerise directly across from both of us was partially impeded.
“Feel the ground beneath your feet,” she intoned. “The strength of your physical body, rooted, solid. Breathe from deep within.”
Cerise’s directions were starting to sound like a few of the yoga classes I’d tried. Witch spells were generally more arcane. Or at least more poetically bent.
The sunrise was right behind me now. I wasn’t certain why I was feeling it so acutely.
Magic rustled around us, as if the trees and the earth were waking from a long slumber. All the hair rose on the back of my neck and across my arms. Something was coming. Stalking forward.
Something that had been stalking … me.
For days.
I’d been trying to figure out which one of Cerise or Aiden’s other family members had been trying to control me, to gently beguile us all. But this … feeling … this flare of pure instinct was something else. I looked to Aiden to see if he was sensing what I was, but his gaze was on his mother as he took deep, full breaths.
Ocean, Sky, and Grosvenor were doing the same. Isa and Khalid were watching Cerise, though the wariness had drained from their expressions.
The sunrise was creeping across the yard, hitting the back of my heels. Triggering the moon-fueled spell on which I stood. It flared across the intricate lacy webbing of the doily under my bare feet. Energy hummed up my legs. Then, as the dawn continued to slip forward, it ignited Grosvenor’s and Khalid’s circles, then the large central circle.
Bright-white magic, slightly tinged with blue, began to spiral around me as the spell gained power. It rose to my ankles, then my knees, then my thighs. Encasing me, but not touching.
The lace doilies under Isa and Aiden flared. Nearer to me, magic spiraled around Grosvenor’s and Khalid’s ankles and began to slowly rise.
The circles around Ocean and Sky flared.
Kader glanced around, turning just enough that I caught sight of Cerise’s lace doily flaring under her as well. The power in the doily appeared slightly dingy in contrast to Cerise’s pure-white dress.
Wait. A white lace dress.
Was Cerise dressed as a bride?
And white power, white magic. Was moon-fueled witch magic white? Shouldn’t it still be a shade of blue?
I turned to Khalid. “White? Does the spell look white to you? Khalid!”
The dark-eyed sorcerer blinked, shaking his head, then looking at me.
“Does it look white to you?” I asked again.
He nodded, then frowned.
The central circle flared, energy streaking upward into the ever-brightening sky. I had to blink to regain focus. When I did, I found myself staring at Kader. He was examining the circle that now contained him.
Except he didn’t appear to be tied to it in any way. Not yet.
The energy churning around me settled slightly, intensifying into a spiral around my knees.
“Now,” Cerise intoned, not sounding at all like herself. “Now.” She began muttering quiet and lilted words that didn’t sound like French to me. Witches often spoke their spells out loud, though usually not —
My arms rose of their own accord, reaching out to the sides. The arms of the others all did the same. My fingertips brushed Khalid’s fingers on my right and Grosvenor’s on my left. They in turn touched Aiden and Isa. Then Ocean and Sky. And finally Cerise.
Power shot out from each of the individual circles — thick strands of lace linking the eight of us. Then with another push of power from Cerise — a power I could now feel — more thin panels of lace connected each of the eight circles to the main circle.
I withdrew my arms, opening and closing my hands into fists. Had my limbs actually moved on their own? Was Cerise manipulating us all that effectively? Except I couldn’t feel anyone in my head — and I knew that feeling intimately.
Another push of power from Cerise radiated through both sides of the main circle. It touched the individual circles, feeding off each of us, then returned back to Cerise. She gathered the power siphoned from us and thrust her hands forward.
Dingy white magic slashed through the main circle, calling forth a web of diamond-patterned lace that hovered around ankle height. As the linking lace had spiraled out toward him, Kader shifted slightly to the side, standing between Khalid and me now. He was situated within one of the pattern’s large lace diamonds.
I had a clear view of Cerise. Her eyes were blazing blue, head thrown back, arms spread wide. I ran my gaze around the circle. Every single other person, including Aiden, matched Cerise’s posture.
Except me. And Kader.
All their blazing blue eyes were peering skyward.
White magic webbed all around us.
“Kader,” I whispered.
“I see it.” He glanced at me, then at each of the others. Then he looked down at himself, at his hands.
“It’s not connected to you,” I said.
“No.” But even as he said it, the web around him expanded, then contracted. Then another slow expansion and contraction.
As if it were …
Breathing.
Cerise started muttering again. As before, I didn’t recognize the language.
Magic shivered through the lace doily under my feet. My mind began to drift. Everything was so … pretty.
The power … the people … the dawn-lit sky above …
I smiled, feeling warm, blissful.
“Amp5!” Kader barked.
I flinched. I hated that name. That designation. I raised my head, not realizing that it had fallen back, already snarling at the sorcerer.
My maker.
The Collective incarnate.
He deserved everything coming to him. He deserved to die a slow, painful death, to feed —
“Emma!” the elder sorcerer shouted.
I blinked.
To feed … what?
Kader Azar came into focus before me. He was reaching toward me, offering me his hand.
Another pulse of energy rode Cerise’s muttered words. The desire to kneel flooded through me.
I didn’t.
Everyone else sank down onto their knees. Their hands were placed palm up on their thighs, their heads fallen back. Including Aiden.
But not Kader.
“Emma,” the elder sorcerer said urgently. He was gesturing toward the center of the circle.
A crystal vase filled with flowers had appeared on the grass, set within the diamond lace pattern. The flowers looked … familiar.
I blinked.
The vase turned into a mason jar, similar to the one Paisley had eaten.
I blinked again.
No. Not a vase.
It was … a statue of some sort? A shapely figure holding an urn above its head. Cast in a bronze-colored metal.
I blinked again and the crystal vase with familiar blossoms reappeared — the apple blossoms with the dark centers that had been set beside my bed. The flowers were a magical construct of some sort.
“Do you see it?” Kader hissed.
I nodded, though I wasn’t completely certain.
A whisper ran through the lace spell, then another, and another. Until it emanated from seven different throats. Cerise’s spell, picked up by the others.
Except they were all speaking in one voice now.
“What are they saying?” I asked.
“I’m not catching all of it,” Kader said. “But the chant is … ‘The Hallowed. The Hallowed.’ It could be an ancient Celtic dialect?”
My heart started racing, fear shivering down my spine. Which was good, because it washed away the last lingering traces of the compulsion.
Compulsion that Cerise had tried on me multiple times over the last two days.
No.
Not Cerise.
At least not just Cerise.
I looked at the vase that wasn’t a vase, at the center of the main circle. It was an idol of some sort. The kind that might have been worshiped by some cult hundreds or thousands of years ago.
My gaze snapped to Kader. “I think we’re about to find out what Cerise Myers dug up in the coven archives.”
“Yes,” he said grimly. “And it’s been feeding off me, through Aiden, for well over a year now …” Magic shifted through the diamond lace of the main circle, calling Kader’s attention. But his point was clear.
Whatever being was contained in that idol wanted out. And it needed way more than just sips of Kader’s magic to get free. Would it take all of our deaths? Or just Kader’s? Was that why Cerise — or whatever was controlling Cerise — had put him in the main circle with the idol?
The chanting rose in intensity. The same foreign phrase that Kader had translated for me repeated over and over again. The Hallowed. The Hallowed.
Power pulsed through the spell again, highlighting the outer circles one at a time. Beginning with Cerise, then jumping between Sky and Ocean, then Aiden and Isa, then Khalid and Grosvenor.
The spell welled up under my feet, trying to draw magic from me. Not trying to drain me, though. More like it was sharing all the magic it had gathered, then adding mine to the mix.
I could feel the spell well enough that I knew I could attempt to thwart it at any time. But I understood that what was happening might well be what was necessary to remove the spell from Kader —
A cracking sound erupted from within the circle. The noise was so sharp and brutal that I thought it might have been Kader’s neck breaking. I might have missed the sudden death of the sorcerer while staring at my feet.
I raised my gaze to see that he was still standing before me, though. The elder sorcerer was staring at the vessel — which now had a lengthwise crack running through its widest section.
I’d been compromised. Again. Not completely incapacitated, but definitely slowed down. Except it wasn’t Cerise who’d been influencing our moods, making us more amenable. It was the Hallowed, manifesting through Cerise. It absolutely explained the shift in the witch’s power.
And it also made clear my own vulnerability, and the way the magic had initially been able to sway even me.
I had never faced … whatever I was about to face.
Kader shook his head as if trying to clear it. Then he turned and thrust his hand toward me again. Darkly tinted sorcerer magic had gathered around his other hand. Whatever was happening in Cerise’s circle, it didn’t appear to stop the sorcerer from casting. An oversight. Or Cerise didn’t think the spell could be torn down from within.
But then, Cerise really didn’t know me at all.
Which meant she’d have no idea why the only sorcerer still standing, still holding himself outside the enchantment of the spell, was offering his hand to me.
I glanced over Kader’s shoulder at Aiden. He was completely enthralled, kneeling, head thrown back. A dark-blue globe of power pooled in each of his hands, that same power gleaming from his eyes.
The others were all in identical positions, though Aiden’s magic glowed the brightest.
Emanating from Cerise’s connection point to the main circle, energy started licking down the diamond-patterned lacework that stretched from edge to edge. The chanting picked up in speed and power, becoming unnaturally loud now.
The Hallowed. The Hallowed.
“Stop thinking, Emma,” Kader shouted over the sound. “You know what needs to be done.” The sorcerer’s eyes were blazing with power. His face had thinned, appearing almost skeletal. Whatever was contained in Cerise’s idol was consuming him. Quickly.
“Amplifier!” he shouted again, demanding. Then he softened his tone. “Emma.”
“You have no right to my magic,” I snarled. “Or that name.” I had no idea why I was taking the time to protest. Except that … except that it might have been nice to stay in place, to greet the Hallowed … to open myself to the Hallowed …
Kader bared his teeth in a smile. “I’d like to save my sons. How would you prefer to go about it? Pick up your blades, then slaughter everyone between yourself and Cerise? If you wait long enough, that might be your only option. If she … if it … can turn them against you, that is exactly what’s going to happen.”
I curled my fingers into fists, looking at Aiden again. If I tore through Cerise’s spell on my own, and if she sent Aiden at me in response, I knew I would be able to quell him without harming him.
But if they all attacked me at once? I couldn’t guarantee anything.
“Can you turn the spell against her?” I shouted at Kader, straining to be heard over the chanting.
He shook his head. “It’s still witch magic, which I cannot wield. But I might be able to sever the connections. One at a time.”
“Without killing Cerise?”
The power seeping through the lace diamonds in the main circle was closing in on Kader, creeping forward from the sides as well now.
“I doubt it,” he said.
“What about … what about destroying the idol?”
He grinned at me. “Risky, amplifier,” he shouted back.
“Contain it, then? While I hold Cerise?”
The lace diamond that Kader was standing within brightened at its tip, energy slipping down its sides. As my own natural resistance became full immunity, I could feel the compulsion finally. A beguiling tendril of dirty white energy licked Kader’s cheek, drawing his attention away from me.
The grin slid from the elder sorcerer’s face.
He took a hesitant step forward.
The lace started to shift around him, the pattern blurring. The top section of the diamond opened, creating a passageway to the vessel, the idol.
Damn it.
I slammed my palm against the power that sealed the main circle between Kader and me, finding little resistance. I was tied to the spell, because my lace doily was tied to the spell, however lightly. And since I was part of it, I could pass through it.
I grabbed Kader’s hand before he could turn fully away, slamming my power through him. He stumbled to the side, then whirled back toward me. The fingers of his free hand clawed, crackling with the dark pulse of the spell he’d been calling forth. He was reacting as if I’d attacked him, not amplified him. As if he was about to wrench my heart from my chest.
Still standing in my individual circle, I pulled him closer, hitting him with another flood of power. His pupils dilated, spreading wide enough that only a hint of yellowed white edged his blackened eyes. A terrible grin stretched across his too-thin face — filled with pain.
Then his hand dropped to his side. His expression softened, and he laughed. A deep throaty laugh, head back, throat exposed.
For a moment, I thought he might have been fully taken by Cerise’s leeching spell. That by amplifying him, I had somehow increased the connection of the spell.
The chanting stopped. So abruptly that my ears continued to ring with its din.
Kader tugged me toward him, pulling me from my individual circle into the main circle. The spell allowed me to pass through with minimal resistance.
The diamond lace pattern shuddered, quivering. Then it started narrowing, as if to squeeze us.
Kader thrust his free hand toward the ground. A blackened pentagram seared itself across the grass, just big enough to encompass our feet without slicing through the main circle. Another spark of power from the elder sorcerer sealed it — and sealed us within it — the moment after it encompassed our feet.
He did it all without a word of power, nary a murmur of a spell.
Then he spun me. Placing his hand on my hip, he guided me back a step. The pentagram shifted with us.
No.
An echo of the pentagram hovered around our ankles. I could still see the seared lines across the grass a step behind us.
Kader shifted into me again, moving me through a more and more complicated series of steps. I stumbled, trying to keep my footing while still amplifying him.
He was dancing. Or trying to dance.
With me.
Trust was most definitely a missing component, though. Hence the stumbling.
More power exploded around us, filling the pentagram. The magic was dense but not suffocating.
We spiraled through the main circle, keeping to the outer edge but never breaking the seal. Somehow, we were collecting the diamond lace as we twirled around and around the idol.
Cerise and the others remained silent. The sounds of the still-cooped chickens started filtering in. Then a lone car on the main road. Though we should have been mostly concealed from the road, I seriously hoped Cerise had added a layer of obfuscation to her main circle.
Kader shifted his hands, switching which of my hands he clasped and which hip he held. Then he switched the direction of the dance, of our slow spin. Our bodies were close but not touching. When we’d met, eight years ago, he was taller than me. But the rapid aging of Cerise’s spell meant he stood slightly shorter now.
Magic gleamed in the elder sorcerer’s blackened eyes. And for the first time since he’d arrived, I felt the full depth of Kader Azar’s power, his magic. He couldn’t hide it while I was amplifying him.
He was beyond formidable.
If it came to it, I might not actually be able to kill him. Not on my own. Not even with Cerise’s hallowed spell eating him from within.
It was a good thing I didn’t believe in impossibilities.
Kader laughed, pulling me against him and murmuring, “My darling daughter …” His arms snapped out, spinning me. My hair was dancing in the ever-thickening magic of the pentagram — the unleashed and amplified sorcerer power. “Look at you. True beauty. Such power.”
We stopped, magic still churning around us. The echo of the pentagram sealed over the edges of the one burned into the grass. We’d completed three circuits — two counterclockwise and one clockwise — before returning to our origin point.
The lace of the main spell was twined around the pentagram, as if it had been gathered along its points and spokes.
Kader released my hand, only to touch my cheek. His blackened eyes blazed with power — his and mine combined.
He would have been unstoppable with me at his side.
His smile sharpened, as if he were reading my mind.
And maybe he was.
Then I realized I couldn’t read his emotions through our skin-to-skin contact. That was utterly disconcerting.
I gave him one last blast of amplification. His eyes narrowed into self-satisfied slits as he greedily absorbed the energy without flinching.
I leaned into him, whispering against his ear, “I might still kill you tomorrow.”
He laughed huskily. “Always a possibility with you … and everyone in your life. Emma.” His use of my name was pointed, claiming.
I stepped back.
Still smirking, and now radiating power, Kader turned to face the idol and Cerise. As he raised his hands to the sides, dark-blue tendrils of magic started slipping into and twining through the reams and reams of white lace he’d somehow coiled around the pentagram during our dance.
“Claiming the spell?” I whispered, standing tightly behind him.
“Testing the response …” He trailed off, fingers spreading as if feeling for something I couldn’t see.
I glanced back at my blades lying in the grass. “I could just take Cerise out of play.”
Kader hummed thoughtfully, still easing the threads of his magic through the white lace. “Might be too late for that. The entity might have taken too much control. We’d still need to bottle it.”
“And I’d be responsible for killing Aiden’s mother.”
“I gather that’s what has saved my neck for the last few days.”
I changed the subject. I didn’t go around simply murdering people, for a variety of reasons. I didn’t need to list them all for the sorcerer who had been largely responsible for the death toll I’d racked up prior to my twenty-second birthday.
If I thought about it too much, I might forget that Aiden still held some feelings for his father.
“And if you can’t claim it?” I said. “Can you at least block it?”
“Yes,” Kader murmured. “But only gradually. The key is to replace the anchor points without —”
Cerise raised her hands. The light-blue witch magic blazing in her eyes also welled in her palms. The third eye on her forehead winked open. Power shuddered through the main circle, as if the lace was trying to untangle itself from the spokes of Kader’s pentagram.
The elder sorcerer increased his own output, energy flowing out of him freely now as he outright attempted to claim the main circle.
Cerise reached to her sides, palms facing Ocean on her right and Sky on her left. The younger witches were still kneeling in their individual circles, heads thrown back.
Tendrils from the lace doily — I couldn’t tell whether it was the actual fabric or the yarn or rope from which Cerise had constructed them — lashed around Sky’s and Ocean’s wrists. They cinched so tightly that I could see them cutting into flesh, even through the magic churning and clashing within the main circle.
“Kader,” I whispered. “We’re going to have to switch to plan B.”
Power pulsed under Sky and Ocean.
They screamed.
Their eyes snapped open, faces etched in agony. Both of them were suddenly and completely aware of what was happening — as if Cerise had severed the connection to the primary spell that had held them in thrall. Now she was pulling power directly from them. Blood seeped from their wrists as they struggled to free themselves.
Another pulse of energy ran through their individual circles, and the younger witches screamed again. And again.
Kader grunted, then reestablished his footing as if he’d felt a push of power that I hadn’t.
“Plan B!” I shouted, pressing my hand against the magic that held me in the pentagram with the sorcerer.
“No,” he snarled. “Bringing the blades in would be too volatile. The point is to avoid releasing the entity.”
Ocean screamed again, then slumped to one side. I hoped she’d simply passed out — as opposed to suffering a stroke.
Sky was sobbing. She had gotten one of her hands free and was actively trying to tear through the lace that still bound her other wrist. She met my eyes through the maelstrom of power that the elder witch and the sorcerer were throwing at each other, sobbing. “Emma!”
Another strand of the lace beneath her unraveled. She noticed it a second before it struck, lashing around her neck. She got her hand under it, but was already struggling to breathe.
The lace doily under Isa started to pulse. With Ocean knocked out — or dead — Cerise was going to pull Isa into the act of repulsing Kader’s attempt to claim the circle. To contain whatever was in the cracked idol.
Aiden was next to Sky. The younger witch was still fighting, but her eyes were fluttering as she also fought to hold on to consciousness. When she went down, Aiden would be next.
“Let me out of here,” I snarled. “Or I’ll tear my way through.”
“Not advisable,” Kader said coolly, but I could hear the strain in his voice from the level of power he was wielding.
Isa’s eyes snapped open. He snarled. Power exploded around him, contained by his individual circle, as he fought the strands of lace that had latched onto his wrists.
Kader flinched.
“Can you hold against them all?” I asked, trying to be rational, not reactionary. We were dealing with magic I knew nothing about. That was how Cerise had played me so badly. “If she gets Isa and … Aiden … even with me amplifying you, can you hold?”
“I can.”
“And if she’s killing them?” I asked softly, my gaze on Aiden now. On the glowing lace doily under his knees, pulsing with power. “If she sacrifices each of them to the spell? Maybe even to the entity?”
Kader snarled something in that arcane language that belonged to the Azars. Dark-blue power exploded around us, scouring the last of the delicate lace pattern from the main circle.
Across from us, Cerise mewed in pain.
Then she shook her head, settled her shoulders, and tore more energy from the circle.
Sky slumped.
Isa screamed.
The lace doily under Aiden’s knees unfurled and latched on to him viciously, immediately cutting into his hands, wrists, and forearms. He grunted in pain, brow furrowing.
Cerise brought her hands together at her chest, her fervent, blazing, blue-eyed gaze locked to Kader.
And to me.
I caught the moment the elder witch saw me in the pentagram with the sorcerer. She frowned and tilted her head. But not as if she was thinking. More as if she was listening to someone.
Aiden started hissing in pain, twisting against the bindings that held him.
“Get me to Cerise,” I whispered to Kader. “Just get me to Cerise.”
“This is too much, amplifier. Even for you. If Cerise gains you, she will be too powerful for the rest of us. We need to step back —”
I grabbed the back of Kader’s neck.
He went rigid, presumably thinking I was about to snap it.
Instead, I turned his head toward Isa, who’d broken the first tendrils holding him but was now fighting at least a dozen others. And flagging.
Then I rotated Kader’s head toward Aiden.
The dark-haired sorcerer was also fighting. Tearing through the lace doily under his knees, chest heaving in pain, blood seeping from slashes across his arms, neck, and face.
My struggle to breathe was purely psychological, but knowing so didn’t reduce the terror at seeing Aiden hurting. A terror that threatened to overwhelm my senses, my rational mind.
Power thundered through the main circle, held at bay by Kader’s pentagram. A sharp sound drew my attention away from Aiden. The crack on the idol had widened.
And for just a breath, I swore I could see a shadow moving within it — an iridescent blackness.
A cool flood of adrenaline slid through me — hairline to neck to chest to stomach — then filtered down to my bare toes. “Get me to Cerise,” I said coolly. “I’ll contain her. Not kill her. While you get the idol secured.”
Completely without consent, I started pumping more power into the sorcerer. And as I did, I felt the first flicker of his emotions — a flood of willfulness, underpinned by a thread of uncertainty.
Kader reached up, wrapping his fingers around my wrist as he’d done eight years ago. I felt the shift in his emotions — resolution and pride.
“Listen to me carefully, amplifier,” he whispered, turning his head back as far as it would go. “If I’m putting this together well enough, I assume that Cerise needed the power of the others to break the containment spell on the idol. But for that entity to manifest fully into our dimension, our reality …” He trailed off.
Trying to be patient, even as Isa gave in and started screaming in earnest, I gave the elder sorcerer more and more of my power. Blood now speckled the grass around Aiden. “You think it needs a body,” I said, putting together the rest. “I thought she was going to sacrifice you to release it.”
“You can’t let it have me, Emma.” Kader squeezed my wrist almost painfully. “It’s one thing for it to control a witch such as Cerise. But if it could fully manifest through her, then it already would have. Cerise’s ties to the Myers coven most likely kept it in check. Otherwise, the coven would have sensed its intrusion and cleaned things up, as witches like to do.”
Even while watching his sons being magically consumed, Kader still managed to sneeringly maintain his ingrained sorcerer prejudices.
“I won’t let it have you, Kader. Let’s go.” I removed my hand from the back of his neck.
He held on to my wrist. “No. You’ll have to kill me. I’m dead already if it gets me, because those who will come then will slaughter me without mercy.”
“Those who will come?” I said mockingly, twisting out of his hold.
He let me go with a pained wince. I had probably been rougher than necessary.
Kader met my gaze. “The Collective made you powerful for a reason.” He jabbed a finger toward the idol. “Entities such as whatever is contained in that urn do not walk the earth unchecked.”
Behind the idol, Cerise was amassing more and more power. Whatever she hit us with next was going to hurt.
“Even the Five united —”
“We don’t have time for a lesson,” I snarled. “I’ll kill you if it gets hold of you.”
“Instantly,” he said. “You can’t hesitate.”
Isa slumped.
Aiden screamed, over and over.
The magic beneath Grosvenor started pulsing.
I spun, unleashing my power, fingers clawed toward the edge of the pentagram.
But before I could dig in and try to tear through it, Kader placed his hand on my back, pushing me forward.
I took a step.
The pentagram shifted with me.
Another step and I was beside Khalid. His head was still thrown back in an expression of ecstasy.
Two more quick steps and I was beside Aiden.
He’d been watching our progress, half-slumped to the ground. Ribbons of his blue sorcerer power still twined around him, as if he’d tried to shield himself and had only been partially successful.
He slammed his free hand to the magic between us as I stepped by him.
I met his pained gaze, brushing my fingertips across his palm, even though I couldn’t actually touch him. “I’ll be right back.”
He smiled, a fierce flash of teeth. “I’m right behind you.”
I turned and ran, pulling the pentagram and Kader with me.
I made it three steps before Cerise unleashed her spell. It slammed into Kader’s pentagram, shredding it so thoroughly that my momentum actually carried me through, tumbling into the onslaught of power.
I lost all sense of time and space, of up or down.
Then, my shoulders crashing into something metal, I hit the ground.
I pressed my palms into the grass, making it to my knees, blinking Kader into focus. He was still on his feet, nearer to Cerise than me. I must have taken the brunt of whatever the elder witch had hit us with. Power emanated from him, burning in a wide beam directed at Cerise.
The metal object behind me was warm. It hummed with its own power. There was something soothing about the warm vibration, something inviting —
I rolled away, coming up facing the idol. The center section of the urn was cracked completely in half now, yet somehow the top section remained still suspended above it.
Because more than just metal bound the entity inside.
The Hallowed.
I instinctively brushed away the whisper that crossed my mind — and then was suddenly uncertain as to whether it had simply been my own voice, my own thought.
“Emma!” Aiden shouted from somewhere far, far away. “Emma!”
I turned my head, tearing my eyes away from the urn with far more effort than was reasonable. I saw the dark-haired sorcerer as he drew a fistful of power, then punched it against the magic containing him, keeping him away from me.
He screamed, fighting his mother’s spell as it attempted to latch onto him even more viciously.
The Hallowed.
I was moving before the words finished echoing through my mind.
Not just words — a title.
A benediction. A belief.
I charged past Kader. He pulled back on his spell an instant before I would have hit it. He spun to the side, ducking. I lunged for Cerise, even as she turned the torrent of power that she’d been holding against Kader on me.
The torrent just … died.
Or rather, it opened up.
For me.
My hands slid through the edge of the main circle, crossing through the power that pulsed in the individual circle in which the elder witch stood. I latched onto Cerise’s wrists. I was already pulling power from her before her eyes widened in shock. I had moved faster than she could react.
That was fast.
Even for me.
My momentum slammed the witch back against the edge of her circle, which held her firmly enough that she didn’t fall.
Witch magic hammered against me as Cerise rallied to fight back. I drained her, pulling energy that felt oddly unfocused and feeble — especially for someone who had just been holding Kader Azar at bay, one-on-one.
Cerise slumped against me, her power diminishing under my hands rapidly. Too quickly. As if she were somehow already drained. Another trick perhaps? I kept pulling and pulling, pivoting with the witch in my arms as I turned to check on Kader.
The elder sorcerer was weaving his tattered mobile pentagram back together with the idol at its center.
Cerise mewed in pain against my chest. I turned my focus to the witch’s power, not wanting to take too much, too fast. I had promised that I wouldn’t kill her.
I could feel the magical bindings the witch held to the main circle. I slowly lowered Cerise to the ground as I gathered those ties for myself. There were more than I’d expected.
That was odd.
I tugged on the shortest tie, and suddenly I could feel Ocean on the other side of it. Acting on instinct, I let the tie go instead of claiming it. It snapped back to Ocean, and the younger witch simply vanished from my mind, my senses.
I glanced to my right. Ocean was still slumped in her circle, deathly pale. As I watched, her chest rose, then fell.
Cerise’s power sputtered under my palm. I turned my attention back to the other ties I’d collected from her. Would letting all of them go at once inadvertently release the entity at the same time?
Damn it.
I hated screwing around with magic I had no actual ability to cast.
I tugged the thickest tie, finding Sky on the other end. I released the binding.
I found Isa, releasing him.
I found Aiden —
Cerise started convulsing under my hand. There was a chance I was now killing her.
I met Aiden’s gaze. Everyone else was still down, excepting Kader. Even Khalid. But my sorcerer was watching me.
Looking at me as if he loved me.
Even as his mother died by my hand.
I released the tie binding Aiden to the main spell. Then Grosvenor and Khalid.
I still held three ties, and I could feel at least one more bound to Cerise that I hadn’t claimed.
The first tie bound Cerise to the individual circle in which we both stood.
The second stretched away from me without end. At a guess, it was bound to the individual circle that was supposed to be holding me.
The third tie led to the main circle.
The binding I hadn’t claimed yet was attached to the idol.
And I had no idea which of the four ties to release first.
If I released the connection to Cerise, I might collapse the entire spell. Thereby releasing the entity.
If I disengaged my own connection, I might not be able to hold on to the rest of the ties, which would then revert to Cerise. Or, worse, they might dissolve to release the entity, which would grab Kader in turn.
If I released the binding to the main circle, it was likely to dissolve all the others at the same time.
A conundrum.
Maybe even the first conundrum ever that I couldn’t just hack my way through, knowing I’d make it to the other side.
The wrong move, the wrong choice, and Aiden might lose his entire immediate family.
Release the wrong tie and I might lose Aiden.
So … I hesitated.
Cerise stilled, but I kept my hold on her wrist.
“Hurry up, boy,” Kader snapped, shooting a glance at his youngest son.
Aiden snarled something — some kind of arcane command that tore through the remnants of the spell binding him in place. Power quaked through the main circle, shuddering through the ties I still held.
Cerise gasped, her eyes snapping open.
Aiden stepped into the main circle, passing through the boundary as easily as I had. It was tuned to his magic, after all. It had to be in order to leech power from him.
Cerise grabbed at my arm — I was already holding her wrist — pulling me to her even as she rose up. She bit down, hard enough to actually pierce my skin.
I shook her off without effort, tossing her head back and forth a few times before she lost consciousness again.
Blood rose in tiny spots on my forearm.
“Emma?” Aiden asked.
I glanced up at him. He had joined his father, working to fortify what I assumed was a containment spell for the idol. Whatever they were doing had succeeded in thinning the connection that hovered just under my palm. The final tie, which I hadn’t taken from Cerise yet.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m holding the ties to the main circle, and —”
Something warm slid over my hand, twining up my wrist and licking the spots of blood on my arm.
“Emma?” Aiden asked again.
“Keep focused!” Kader snapped.
The fourth tie. The tie that bound the idol to Cerise. Somehow, without my actually claiming it, that tie burrowed into my skin, pulsing through the bite marks even though they were barely scratches.
I took the tie for myself, dropping the three others at the same time. The power of the main circle flickered, then died. The individual circles sputtered, then faded away.
Ocean and Sky collapsed fully onto the grass.
Isa moaned.
Aiden and Kader both barked words of power, fighting back against the entity.
Because they didn’t know.
It already had hold of me.
I rose, calling up my magic as if I could actually manipulate it, wield it. I visualized a barrier between myself and the binding cinched around my forearm.
Except …
It was already inside me. It had gained access by piercing my skin, sipping at the power in my blood.
It was in my bloodstream, flooding through me.
The Hallowed.
Magic exploded around me as I unleashed one last wild attempt to hold the threat at bay. The wave thundered through the orchard and across the grass.
Someone cried out. Sky, I thought.
Aiden pivoted toward me. Kader’s eyes grew wide as he followed his son’s gaze.
Warmth curled through my mind. “Yes,” I whispered. “The Hallowed.”
The Hallowed.
The Hallowed.
And it was …
We were …
Yes.
We.
We were …
So …
Powerful …