As we carried the bag of candles out of the guild, we found Lady Montgomery directing the necromancers to form a circle encompassing a section of the spirit line. I tracked down Morgan and Mackie, who worked on one section of the summoning circle with the demon puppy running around their feet.
“Hey,” I said. “Can either of you sense her? Evelyn?”
“No,” said Morgan. “Why?”
“I just wondered if there was anything left of your psychic link with her,” I explained. “It might help me figure out where she is.”
“I can’t sense anyone who isn’t in this realm,” said Mackie, moving to help with the candles. “Also, I haven’t sensed her since she made herself immortal.”
Hmm. “Maybe she’s immune to it.”
“Not necessarily,” said Morgan. “Normal people don’t send out as strong signals as psychic sensitives or powerful necromancers. Evelyn wasn’t either of those things even when she was bound to you, right?”
“I guess not.” She wasn’t a necromancer at all, and it was starting to look like she’d cut herself off from her own army.
I left them to it and went to see how far Isabel had got with teaching the necromancers and witches how to use blood magic symbols. She caught my eye and waved at me.
“This is Jas,” she told her fellow witches.
“The… Hemlock witch?” asked a pretty Asian woman who was in the middle of marking the arm of a ginger-haired witch with freckles.
“This is Lee, my Second,” Isabel explained, then gestured to the ginger-haired witch. “And Allie, my Third. They’re the strongest witches in my coven, so if Evelyn brings allies, we’ll be ready.”
“Yeah… about that,” I said. “I have a suspicion that Evelyn’s idea about making an army of vampires may have backfired on her.”
Isabel’s eyes widened when I told her my suspicions. “Whoa. I guess it makes sense, considering she got her necromancer powers from you.”
“And she saw me as her weak link,” I added. “Too bad she couldn’t untie her fate from mine after all. Are you all tattooing yourselves?”
“Yes,” said Isabel. “Everyone who is willing to wear marks is prepared to create a shield around the summoning circle to protect the city from Evelyn’s magic.”
“Nice job.” I spotted Asher approaching and went to waylay him. “You’re okay, then?”
“For now.” His gaze dropped to his wrist. “She knows. I told her.”
“Has she forgiven you?” I murmured.
His mouth tightened. “She understands why I did what I did. I… I guess you know what it feels like to be cut off from your magic. I would have lost mine if I’d given up my position when the rest of my coven died.”
I swallowed against a lump in my throat. “I get it, but… why not find two more people to join your coven?”
He shook his head. “I was backed into a corner, fighting for my life, and I was also young and foolish. It’s too late now. Isabel deserves someone whole, someone who isn’t dying. I told her that, but I’m not sure… not sure she accepts it yet.”
My eyes stung. “I get that. Believe me.”
Just thinking of Keir made my chest feel full of splinters. Not to mention the others I’d leave behind. Lloyd. Isabel. Ilsa.
I scanned the assembling witches. “Have you asked the local witch covens to help us? I understand why they’d want to avoid me, given what Lord Sutherland tried to do, but they must know Evelyn will either recruit them or wipe us out.”
“Some of them have agreed to help us,” said Asher. “But most of us didn’t know the Ancients existed, much less that they were buried right here in this realm. Nor would they have believed a witch would ever betray them the way Evelyn did.”
“If I have things my way, she’ll be the last,” I said. “Thank you, Asher.”
Candle by candle, the circle grew. I drifted among the crowd, checking the circle matched Ilsa’s instructions.
Drake waved me over. “Hey, Jas. The trap’s coming along well?”
I nodded. “Yeah. If this goes wrong and she breaks out… I’m trying to prepare for every possibility.”
“Gotcha,” he said. “Don’t worry, we won’t let her loose in the city. We have the best witches on our team. Even Lord Addison let them show him how to strengthen the city’s wards.”
Whoa. The mages were working with the witches?
“He doesn’t want the city to fall any more than the rest of us do,” said Vance. “Jas, are you prepared?”
Hell, no. “The circle is almost done. I’m just making sure we have enough defences in case she breaks out.”
“So you’re Jacinda,” said a voice. A mage wearing a knee-length cloak approached our group. Lord Addison, Edinburgh’s new head mage, was maybe thirty-five or so, with thick dark hair and pale, angular features. “You’re the one responsible for… this?” He indicated the spirit line as a whole, the destruction ripping through the heart of the city.
“No,” I told him. “Evelyn is. I’m going to stop her.”
“She is,” Vance put in. “As for the spirit line, it should be fixable once the effects of Evelyn’s magic fade.”
“And what do you plan on doing if it isn’t?” Lord Addison said. “The Ancients targeted us because of the Hemlock Coven. They attacked my city and slaughtered my people. It all goes back to the Hemlocks and the Council of Twelve.”
“Actually, I think it goes back to your predecessors burying the gods under the earth and hoping nobody would notice,” I interjected. “Which wasn’t a smart idea. Why bury the means of awakening the gods right next to them?”
Lord Addison’s face flushed an angry red. “That was not our decision. We have nothing to do with these gods.”
“And the one Lord Sutherland bound to him got there by accident, did he?” I said recklessly. If I was about to die, I might as well give the mages a good talking-to before I did. “The one he imprisoned in the lab, too? If you ask me, the mages did more to draw the Ancients’ wrath than my coven ever did. Don’t try to bury what Lord Sutherland did, Lord Addison. Making the same mistakes he did will lead you to ruin, not glory.”
Vance cut in. “I think you’ll find she’s right, and the mages were involved in the Council of Twelve from its inception, Lord Addison. Furthermore, I believe that if the original Council had shared their knowledge of the Ancients, we might have been able to prevent this.”
“Sharing knowledge?” said Lord Addison incredulously. “Those gods were buried for a reason. If you’re suggesting we make the information public, then I will not be involving myself in this ridiculous scheme.”
“If that’s the case, we will use our own resources to prepare the public for an attack,” said Vance.
“That sounds dangerously close to a revolution, Lord Colton.”
“The world is on the brink of a war.” He indicated the spirit line. “Perhaps a revolution is the only thing that can end it.”
I didn’t hear the Mage Lord’s reply, because an array of candle lights filled the air.
The circle was ready.
It was time for me to die.
21
Each second seemed to stretch out, taut as elastic, as I walked over to Lloyd.
“I need you to do the summoning,” I said. “When she’s in the circle, she won’t hurt you. I have to be ready to cross into the forest as soon as she appears.”
“Does—does that mean…?”
He took my silence as a yes, and hugged me. “I don’t want to drag this out,” I whispered. “I… I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I’ll always regret waiting if it turns out I could have stopped her now.”
Ilsa gave me a one-armed hug, gripping a candle in her other hand. “I promise I’ll take good care of the guild.”
Isabel was next. “I’m ready,” she said. “Just give me the word. And who knows… maybe we’ll be able to talk to you like the other Hemlocks when you’re in the forest.”
I swallowed, my e
yes stinging. Keir wasn’t among the gathering crowd.
Where is he?
“The circle won’t hold for long,” said Lady Montgomery. “The line is too unstable.”
Ah. Shit.
“One second.”
I tapped into the spirit realm. No sign of Keir. I scanned the greyness, desperately, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Jas,” warned Lady Montgomery.
Fuck. I turned off my spirit sight and nodded to Lloyd. “Do it.”
I stepped onto the spirit line. At once, its energies penetrated me, tugging at the magic inside my blood and bones. I pulled a knife, and carefully traced a line along my arm. Blood spilt into the circle.
Hemlock blood.
Lloyd’s voice rang out. “I summon you, Evelyn Hemlock.”
The spirit line ignited. Strands of vivid green light split the air in two, and Evelyn’s furious shout echoed through the city.
In an instant, the necromancers closed in, flanked by the witches. Evelyn’s outline appeared in the circle, solidifying into her human form. Our eyes locked—and then I stepped over the line, letting its currents carry me away.
My bleeding arm throbbed, healing in an instant as the line’s magic mingled with my own. I floated, high above the line, above the city. Necromancers and witches surrounded Evelyn in a circle of glowing blue lights. The spirit line cut the world in two, spreading up north to where Lady Harper’s house lay in ruins. On top of the wreckage lay the body of an Ancient, slain in battle. Evelyn was killing all the Ancients. One by one. A war of her own design.
But they weren’t her end goal.
With difficulty, I pushed my way back into my body, finding myself lying on the floor of the Hemlocks’ cave. My breaths came quickly. The skin on my arms burned, and when I looked down, the markings on my arms and hands mirrored the walls of the cave.
“Cordelia,” I said. “I’m here, and I want to accelerate the curse. Evelyn is on the spirit line right, now, trapped in a summoning circle. I can’t get her any closer without putting you at risk.”
“Wait,” said a voice that wasn’t Cordelia’s. Agnes stepped into the cave behind me. “Not before you tell her the truth. You owe that to her.”
I twisted to face Cordelia’s statue. “More secrets? You’re still hiding things from me?”
“You’re not a Hemlock witch, Jas,” said Agnes. “You don’t need to sacrifice yourself. Don’t lie to her, Cordelia. If she’s going to make this choice, it should at least be an informed decision.”
“Tell me it’s not true.” My mind reeled. The Hemlock magic was branded into my skin and flowed alongside the blood in my veins. I was one of them.
“You were never born a Hemlock witch, Jacinda,” Cordelia said. “You were chosen by Lady Harper because she could not bear to sacrifice her own granddaughter.”
“What?” My voice cracked. “If you’re wasting my time with lies—”
“I am not,” she said. “You were one of many children orphaned in the invasion. Agnes and Alice dug you out of the wreckage of your family’s home and brought you to the forest. They reasoned that we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between you and Alice’s own granddaughter, and they were right.”
“But why did she go to the trouble of adopting me and bringing me to live with the mages?” I looked between her and Agnes, searching for any sign that this was a joke, a lie—anything.
“Maybe she had a change of heart and wanted to make up for what she did,” said Cordelia. “Alice Harper and I never did understand one another well.”
“She knew I’d have no magic!” I said. “I would have been someone else, and you erased that person to make me into your pawn.”
“They saved your life, Jacinda,” said Cordelia. “Agnes regretted her part in binding you, and I believe that is why she broke contact with Lady Harper after the incident. They only got back in touch when you arrived in Edinburgh, to protect your life.”
“So I’m not cursed?” I held up my green-tinted arm, showing the runes gleaming on the skin. “Yeah, that’s bullshit.”
“You weren’t cursed,” Cordelia said. “Not until you took our magic.”
So my only option was to sacrifice my life for a coven that had never been never mine to begin with. Even Lady Harper had known the magic I’d had was on loan, yet she’d taken the easy road, dying without ever telling me the truth.
As for the others? I should have known there was nothing they wouldn’t do to protect Evelyn. To ensure she became the heir.
It had always been her.
I looked Cordelia in the eyes. “I hope what you did haunts you for the rest of your existence. But I’m choosing to do this. Speed up the curse. And let me bind Evelyn into the forest along with me.”
Agnes shouted a warning, but the magic in the cave was already rushing towards me. Green light swirled around my body, and the runes on my skin ignited.
Then the forest exploded.
Light burst outwards from the cave walls. I dropped to the ground, the cave spinning around me. No, not spinning—the tendrils of magic forming the walls were unravelling, thread by thread. The hole in the universe grew bigger, revealing the monstrous shapes within.
“Jas!” Agnes’s hand caught mine, pulling me towards the cave exit. “The whole place is going to collapse.”
“What?” I gasped out. “But that means the gods—”
The cave walls peeled back as the hole grew bigger and bigger, the glyphs around the edges disappearing. I called threads of Hemlock magic to my hands, pushing them in the direction of the hole, but the void drew the magic from my fingertips into the oblivion beyond.
“Don’t bother, Jas,” said Evelyn.
No. No. She should be trapped, but there she stood. Solid, human, a smile on her face as she stood where the cave entrance had once been.
“You were too late, Jas.” She took one step forward, then another. “As the witches say, some doors, once opened, can never be closed.”
“The Hemlocks taught you that, too, huh.” I stood stock-still, unable to look away from the gaping hole in the universe consuming the forest inch by inch. And her—standing right in front of the hole as though unafraid it might swallow her, too.
“I was right, you know,” said Evelyn. “The only way to undo the curse is to kill the gods. For me, that’s worth the risk.”
“Stop, you fool,” said Agnes, who stood at the far end of the former cave, looking on in horror. “Have you not learned from the demise of your fellow witches?”
“They deserved it,” Evelyn said.
My heart gave a jolt. I tilted my head, expecting to see Cordelia staring down at me with her judgemental eyes. Instead, nothing more remained of the cave but the small piece of earth we stood on. An island floating in the void.
Cordelia, and the other Hemlocks, were dead.
“She loved you, Evelyn,” I said. “She gave up her life to protect you, and you’re repaying her by undoing everything she worked for. Is this pointless war of yours worth their sacrifice?”
“It isn’t pointless.” She walked forwards, the whip appearing in her hands. “As for Cordelia, she denied me my vengeance for too long.”
My throat went dry. Sure, our magic could kill the gods, but if it didn’t work—if the Devourer surpassed her power—I’d be obligated to help her, or else we’d all die. She’d backed me into a corner.
Agnes hissed a warning, but I gave her a warning look, telling her to stay back. Then I followed Evelyn out of the cave, my feet treading on empty air. My magic—our magic—kept us from falling into the void, cocooning us from harm.
Below, the Devourer stirred. Its eyelid flickered, tendrils of magic coiling around its body like smoke. The Ancient whose power cancelled out all other magic it came into contact with.
Except for ours.
Evelyn raised her whip and brought it down on the beast’s neck.
A horrible scream rent the air. Magic burst from my skin, mingling with h
ers, whipping through the void and slicing into the sleeping forms of the gods. Blood, thick and silver-blue, filled the void, flowing into nothingness.
And then…
Magic.
Power hummed in my blood, in my bones. The marks on my hands and arms faded away, every cell in my body renewed with new life.
“The wellspring,” Evelyn said, a reverent expression on her face. “The binding is undone, and the magic is mine once again.”
“Evelyn…”
Evelyn smiled. “The supernatural world is mine for the taking. There’s only room for one of us, Jacinda. The realm of death gave birth to you, and now, Jas… it’s time for you to go back home.”
She stepped back into the cave, and the magic followed her, wrapping around her like a cloak. When it cleared, she and Agnes were gone, and I was alone with the floating bodies of the dead gods.
22
“Evelyn!” My voice echoed through emptiness. Threads of magic drifted around me, around the sprawling bodies of the slaughtered Ancients. Currents of blood flowed into the void, yet the gods continued to drift. There was nowhere for them to fall, nor anywhere for me to run. No gravity, and nothing else either. Hemlock magic surrounded me in a halo of green light, keeping me alive where no other human would survive.
I trod air like water, following Evelyn’s path, hoping some part of the cave was still there. After escaping the Hemlock curse, it’d be a fine thing if I died here in a hole with the same gods I was supposed to give up my life to defend the world against.
Tendrils of shadowy magic swirled around the Devourer’s corpse. While his head floated a few inches from his scaly neck, he didn’t look dead. Nor did he look like an all-powerful being capable of devouring the world. I moved closer, and a shadowy thread of magic brushed my hand.
A scream burst from my throat as agony tore from my hand up my arm, leaving a trail like wildfire in my veins. Wrenching my whole body away, I reeled backwards through the void. Fuck.
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