Doing it now was much more difficult. His body was exhausted, and channeling more magic taxed him almost beyond his limits. He felt hollowed out inside, and that this new emptiness was filled with burning coals. It was dangerous; that heat wasn’t in his mind—it was real, and familiar.
He pushed through it anyway. Now wasn’t the time to worry about things like that.
Bailey’s primal magic proved to be a difficult obstacle. It couldn’t be contained. When he realized this, he spared just a little attention to release the wards on his mind—they seemed pointless now anyway—and almost immediately he felt her magic respond as she sensed his intention, or even read his mind.
I’m here, she said, in response to his brief thought on the matter.
We need to switch places, he told her, hoping that she was still listening.
She was. It’ll have to be very fast.
I can do fast, Avery said.
I’ve got a string of frustrated exes I can call up to refute that, she sent him.
For a heartbeat he let himself be bashfully amused. Just waiting for the right one, Bails.
Almost ready? She asked.
He was, fitting the last few tangents into place. Bails?
I’m here. Ready when you are.
Do you know what I’m thinking? He asked.
There was a pause. I do.
Good, he thought. Just making sure. Didn’t want anything to be… unsaid, just in case.
It won’t be, Bailey assured him. I love you, too, Ave.
He sheathed the tangents as he had before, and let magic fill them. I’m ready. Do it now.
Instantly, he felt the support of Bailey’s magic vanish, at the precise moment that his spell swelled into the breach. The pressure was unthinkable. How had she been holding it for so long? It didn’t seem possible.
A moment later, though, Aiden was beside him. His wand flew, and he followed Avery’s spell form with genius precision, laying a second spell in place almost as fast as Avery had done himself.
And then there was another wizard—Boris, his wand flickering along as he layered his own spell there.
“Ingenious,” Boris muttered. “You must teach me this when we are done.”
“No… problem…” Avery answered.
All three of them, together, began to strain. Something on the other side of the breach struck the spell, hard. Avery was unaware that there could be such a physical backlash from something striking a spell, but he felt the attack in his arm—the sudden shock of it making his bones ache.
We can’t hold this long, he thought at Bailey.
You won’t have to, Bailey told him. The Throne is almost ready. Just a little longer, Ave.
They both knew that he would hold it until the magic burned him to a crisp. If there was such a thing as a psychic embrace, he got it from Bailey at that moment. Avery had to push the emotion down and focus on the spell as another attack slammed into it.
Just a little longer.
Chapter 45
The crones moved with greater speed than Bailey would have given them credit for, and they seemed to know what to do—but they did make mistakes.
Bailey only realized it when she felt how the magic in the keystones shifted depending on where they were in relationship to one another. Some positions felt… wrong. Some felt perfect. So as the Crones placed them in a pattern that began to resemble something like the intersecting points on a flower of life diagram, creating the illusion of circles between them, she felt for the shifting patterns of magic between them and moved stones as she decided they needed to be moved.
She expected Rita to scold her about thinking she knew more than they did, but the crone didn’t—she only went about her own work like the others did, putting stones down and picking them up, as calmly and patiently as if they were arranging a rock garden on a sunny day.
It was difficult not to let her attention wander to the three wizards who now held the breach in her stead. They were expiring, so each of them radiated determination, even to the extent that they would, if necessary, let the magic consume them to buy the last few seconds they could.
“What will you do?” Chloe asked breathlessly as Bailey took a step back from the keystone mandala and waited to see where the last few stones were placed.
“I’ll know when I do it,” Bailey said. She glanced at Chloe. “Sorry. That’s… really the best I can do. There’s an instinct I can’t quite explain. Like… there’s a puzzle that I fit into, somehow, and I just have to keep exploring the edges until I snap it into place.”
“Alright,” Chloe said. She was quiet for a moment as some of the Crones left the array, and the last few patiently hunted for the right place to put their final pieces.
There was no good time to have the conversation—but there might not be another chance. Bailey turned to Chloe and pulled her close.
Chloe was surprised, but held Bailey back just as tightly. “I trust you,” she whispered. “And I believe in you.”
“Chloe,” Bailey said, and then stopped, swallowing a lump. “Uh… Mom… I know there’s a lot of stuff between us. Stuff I’ve had a hard time getting over. I’m sorry for that. I wanted it all to just… go away on it’s own.”
“We didn’t have the time,” Chloe said. There was a hollow sound in her voice. She knew.
“No,” Bailey said. “We… we didn’t. Just… for now can you just know that… I think if we did then things would be different. That I could get over my hurt and… and you could just be my mom again. I wanted that.”
“Oh…” Chloe breathed. She wiped her eyes, and put her hands on Bailey’s cheeks. “Bailey… you’ve always been my daughter. I’m so, so sorry it took so long for me to be there for you the way I wanted to.”
“You know that I have to do this, don’t you?” Bailey asked. “That I don’t have a choice? It’s… me or everything.”
“If I had to choose,” Chloe told her. “I would choose you. Every time.”
“I know,” Bailey said. She took a long breath in and stilled her emotions. She couldn’t take them with her. “I know, Mom. And… if you see him… tell Dad that—”
“It’s ready, girl,” Rita said.
“I know,” Chloe told her. She nodded quickly. “I know. Oh… Bailey. I love you so much.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
Bailey stepped back, and then turned while she still had the will to do so to face the mandala. It was right. She could feel it, how each of the stones spoke to the others. It was a spell, carved into each of them, spread out over the world for ages.
No more. Now it was here. For the second time since the world was made, the fulcrum of an entire age was assembled, and Bailey Robinson stepped onto it to turn the wheel another time, just as Itaja had thousands of years before her.
Her feet didn’t touch the ground. The spell supported her weight invisibly, and drew her toward the center, in a long spiral. As she walked it, the world around her slowed, and the color bled out of it. By the time she reached the center, she could see it—the throne itself, a real thing; high backed but simple, made of some smooth substance that wasn’t quite wood, and wasn’t quite stone. It was something from the place between worlds, summoned by the mandala. Even now, she could see a series of cracks in it that were slowly healing.
She waited for the final crack to seal, and then stared at it for a long moment. It was time. She found her courage, looked around at the still forms of her friends, her mother, the crones, and the new allies that had crossed the world to help her see her destiny through.
“Thank you,” she said to all of them, even though she suspected they couldn’t hear her.
Then she stepped up to the throne, turned, and sat down.
Chapter 46
In the space of a breath, she was somewhere else.
The Caves were gone. The keystones, the Throne of Medea, the breach, the sky—everything was gone. It was a blank world.
Or… not quite. As she strug
gled to see something—anything—she realized that the white distance had shapes in it. Trees, she thought, and became more certain as they became more defined. It was snowing, but the snow wasn’t cold. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t anything.
“You have come.” The voice was silken, and high, almost like a bird’s voice might be.
Bailey looked around, and saw her. There was no mistaking who she was. She was painful to look at, her beauty somehow blinding to the eye, as if she’d been made of the things that had once, long ago, inspired the very idea. Her gown was gossamer, made of spider silk and songs, her white hair perfectly straight and falling to her ankles, blending with the gown as though they were, in fact, all of one piece. Her eyes were a blue so pale they were almost white as well.
“Mab,” Bailey said, naming the Faerie queen with certainty. Now that Bailey knew the feel of Faerie magic, there could be no mistake—this woman was the font of it the way Bailey was the font of the deep, primal magic of her own world.
“I’m flattered,” Mab said, brushing long fingered hands over her collar bone. “My reputation precedes me, it seems. And who are you, mortal queen? You have the scent of an old friend on you. Itaja, the sorceress. But you are not her. You do not have her will.”
“I’m Bailey,” Bailey said.
The Faerie queen reached out lightning fast into the air before her and caught the name. Bailey felt it in her gut when it happened, and panicked briefly as she realized her mistake.
Mab tittered a glittering laugh. “You are not prepared, it seems, to so easily give a part of your own name to a Faerie. Perhaps we are not so well known as I believed. You have come to face me, have you not? I wonder, little queen, how you will do so when you do not even know the rules of this place. Do you even know where you are?”
Bailey didn’t, but thought that revealing this would be a mistake. “I haven’t come to talk, Mab. I’ve come to put things back the way they’re supposed to be. Back into balance.”
Mab clucked her tongue delicately with disappointment. “And to think… well, more’s the pity, then. If you’ve already decided, then I suppose there is no need to talk of peace.”
“Peace?” Bailey asked. “What peace? Even now, your people assault the barrier to my world.”
“Faw,” Mab said, waving a delicate hand. She glided toward Bailey slowly, her gown and feet leaving no trace in the fine white powder over the ground. “The rabble. What care have I of what they do? My aim is not to rule your pitiful world. Mine is a world of dreams, desires, and indulgence. Your queendom is but a dull, dreary rock. Why should I covet such a thing?”
“If it is not to rule,” Bailey said cautiously, “then what’s your goal?”
“What is the goal of all who dream?” Mab wondered aloud, more so than actually asked, it seemed; as if she were posing an existential question to the void.
“That isn’t an answer,” Bailey said. She reached for her magic and found that she didn’t need to. The world itself seemed to respond, the colors becoming momentarily more vivid.
Mab gave her a long look. “Careful, little queen, lest you spoil my mood and rouse my ire.”
Where were they? Bailey searched the instincts that had guided her to this point, but found nothing. And yet, magic was, at least, no longer a distant thing. It wasn’t flowing through her like it had been before. Instead it was as if she…
“This… this is where it all comes from,” Bailey breathed. She looked around her. The trees reached for an eternity into the sky above, into the endless white. There was no end to the place—she knew that as soon as she peered into the distance to either side, and before her.
“The sublime beginning,” Mab said with unexpected reverence. “The first place. The origin.”
“Not Faerie,” Bailey said. “How did you come here?”
Mab smiled cryptically. “I walked through the door. How else does one go anywhere?”
“I came by way of the Throne of Medea,” Bailey answered.
“A relic of this place,” Mab said. She wandered in a slow circle around Bailey as she spoke, and Bailey had to turn to follow her. She didn’t want the Faerie queen at her back. “A lock on a door. And a hinge, and a key. Itaja was a wretched student—it is no wonder she made such a poor teacher. Busy with her endless painting, no doubt, and weary from it. Perhaps it is why she sent you.”
“She didn’t…” Bailey trailed off. Hadn’t she, though? She changed courses. “You taught Itaja? What did you teach her?”
“So many questions for one who does not wish to talk,” Mab muttered.
“If you prefer to fight it out…” Bailey said, and again tugged at the magic around her.
Mab stopped pacing and faced her. “How very primitive,” she sighed. She folded thin arms. “What do you imagine I taught the foundling?”
“Foundling,” Bailey said. “Like an orphan?”
“One who is found,” Mab said, enunciating the words as if Bailey didn’t properly grasp the fundamentals of language. “She fell into my domain, thoughtless and fumbling. I gathered her up. Gave her her paints and brushes—my generous gift.”
“You taught her magic,” Bailey said slowly.
“I taught her the true art. And she squandered it.” Mab made a disappointed sound, and waved a hand lazily as if it was all in the past. “Perhaps you would do the same. Or… perhaps you would be a more apt pupil. Would you know the true nature of this place? With but a whim, you could carve the shape of your world into whatever your soul desired. That, is peace, little queen. That all should kneel to a single crown. Not another drop of mortal blood shed. Not another trinket or bauble coveted. Not another heart broken. Drink of my wisdom, little queen, and our worlds need not clash.”
Bailey couldn’t help but imagine a world where no one killed, or stole. Where no love went unrequited. No pain. No war. Maybe even a world without death. She could feel in her bones that it was possible. This place was the foundation of all worlds, the beginning and end of magic—of creation itself, maybe. No… not maybe.
“Why?” Bailey asked. “Why would you want that?”
“I am merciful, and kind,” Mab said, “if I so choose.”
Again, it wasn’t precisely a statement. Faeries couldn’t lie directly; Mab was avoiding answering the question. But, perhaps that was an answer in itself. And, when Bailey had offered to fight it out, Mab had elected instead to keep talking, and make an offer.
The Faerie queen had followed Bailey here… but she wasn’t in control of this place.
“You’ve been here before,” Bailey said quietly. “You know this place because… the Throne itself was yours, wasn’t it? Itaja took it from you.”
Mab’s expression was inscrutable. She stood, unnaturally still, watching Bailey for a long moment before she spoke. “And now, you are here. Even as we speak in this timeless place, my children assail your world to take back what was mine. I give not a single pitied tear for your husk of a world, little queen. But I will have again what rightfully is mine.”
Bailey felt a rush of adrenaline, and a sudden desire to return to her own world. Something, though, held her fast.
Mab laughed. “Oh, little fly, little fly. How far into the web you have wandered.”
Bailey frowned until Mab’s laughing died down, and weighed her options. Escape wasn’t one, it seemed, and Mab’s idea of peace didn’t seem very peaceful at all. That only really left the one that Bailey had been dreading, but had somehow known was inevitable.
“Fine,” Bailey said softly. “I’ve tried to avoid this, and it hasn't worked. I don't want to fight anyone, or anything. I want peace. But make no mistake, Mab—I am the daughter of Medea and Itaja. I have inherited the first power, the primal magic. I died, and was reborn. I am the Witch Queen, whether I like it or not, and if I have to fight then trust me; I will die again before I let you harm a single person in my world."
“Then,” Mab said, her form growing dark as magic curled around her, “I invite
you to do so.” With no more warning than that, Mab’s power struck, and the battle began.
Chapter 47
Avery would have held the breach until he died. He expected to hold it until he died.
But, that wasn’t how it worked out.
The moment Bailey stepped into the mandala of the keystones, she winked out of existence. There was no sudden movement of magic, no pop, or sound, or flash of light—she was there one moment, and then not there. In a way, it was impressive—whatever magic was at work was perfectly efficient.
It was also horrifying, and the moment that it happened, the assault from the other side of the breach doubled, tripled, and then shattered the interdiction spell into thousands of invisible shards of razor-edged magic that seared Avery’s nerves.
Boris and Aiden were no better off, both of them staggering back and then falling down as the backlash of uncontrolled magic driven wild with violence assaulted them as well.
The breach was not an efficient magical construct. It blazed suddenly with blinding azure light that quickly brightened to a colorless white.
And then they came, like a swarm. The first of them were small, flitting things, no larger than dragon flies. They glittered in the light, and when one of them flashed past Avery’s face, he got the slightest glimpse of a tiny suit of silvered armor and a blade no longer than a toothpick wielded in the being’s hand.
It dove at him with it—right at his throat.
The magic he called up seared his hands, and was inelegant, but did what it was supposed to—swatted the faerie creature away from him, sending it sailing against the wall of the Cave.
Others came, though, like a sparkling plague of locusts. Some of them swarmed through the Caves toward the entrance, but most of them began diving at whoever was close.
Witching for a Miracle (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 7) Page 19
