by Sarra Cannon
Would I ever see him again? I wanted to run to him. To tell him one last time just how much I loved him. But he already knew.
"Are you ready?" Zara asked. She took my hand, her usually cheerful attitude turned gloomy and serious.
The three of us made our way down the stairs to where Mary Anne, Courtney, and Angela already waited. The ritual room itself was dark without the magical orbs to light it. Only a single black candle shone in the darkness. Angela held it out to me as I passed her.
The other rituals items lay on the floor by the portal stone.
The chalice.
The ritual dagger.
The necklace.
The matching blue stones glittered in the dim light, all of them chipped from the much larger stone in the middle. In the quiet chamber, I felt the energy and power of these items. They belonged together.
My heart fluttered and I had to work to keep my breathing steady.
Zara nodded to me, then took her place at the head of the five-pointed star. A descendant of the one who created this portal a hundred years ago. She leaned down and placed her hand around the hilt of the ritual dagger. She looked to me, questioning.
A chill ran through my body, a mix of fear and excitement. My hand trembled as I held it out to her and nodded.
"Mary Anne, bring the chalice," Zara said.
Mary Anne wrapped her hands tight around the base of the cup. She stepped forward and held it under my outstretched hand.
Zara's shoulders tensed, and her lips pressed tight together. With a nervous breath in and out, she placed the tip of the dagger on the tender skin of my palm. I braced myself for the pain as she sliced through my flesh in one swift movement.
I winced and clenched my jaw. A blue stream of blood flowed from my hand, pouring into the ritual chalice. The blue stone embedded on the side of the cup began to glow.
"Now the necklace," Zara said, nodding to Angela King. "It's important to get the scene set up exactly like it would be at the end of the binding ceremony."
I closed my palm, then cradled it to my chest. Angela stepped forward and secured the necklace around my throat. I lifted my hand to the stone and rubbed my fingertip across its smooth surface.
Zara secured the dagger in her belt, then carefully reached for the cup. "Take your places," she said. "We're ready."
The five of them stepped onto the points of the pentagram drawn on the floor of the ritual room. Everyone but Zara knelt down on the floor and placed their left hands on the small blue stone embedded in the floor.
I retrieved the communication stone from my pocket and rubbed my finger over the top of it until it began to glow. I thought of Piotrek in the shadow world. Caroline Sullivan at the edge of town. Jackson up above on the ritual grounds. They each held a similar stone which now glowed bright with my signal.
Were their hands shaking like mine?
With timid steps, I took my place in the center of the star, the light from my candle creating five flickering shadows on the walls behind us. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. My heart thundered in my ears. I held the air inside my lungs until it burned, my body tense. After all these months of pain and frustration. After all Jackson's years of sorrow. After so many like Brooke had been forced into a life no longer their own. This would finally be the end of it.
I released the breath from my body, surrendering myself to the power of the ritual.
Electricity surrounded us. Anticipation. Great longing.
The scene was set. It was time to begin.
A Crack In The Bond
"Cognatus ab adnexus."
Zara held the blood-filled cup high in the air as she recited the words of the original ritual backwards.
I held my breath, unsure what to expect. We were in unexplored territory now, at the mercy of the ritual. At the mercy of our own hope.
At first, nothing happened. My ears hummed with the silence that surrounded us. I held my body tense, waiting, terrified. What if we couldn't get the ritual to work? What if something had happened to Piotrek and he'd been unable to place the ring in the right place? What if we'd risked everything for nothing?
Then, in a rush, light erupted from the portal stone. The force of it seized my body, pulling my neck backward as my feet lifted off the ground. I hovered in the air, parallel to the stone floor. An invisible power bore down on my chest, and I gasped for air.
A breeze swirled around the room, whipping my hair like ropes across my face. My lips parted as my head stretched back. Something deep in my veins burned, and I cried out.
The ghostly body of a woman in white formed on top of mine. My ancestor, Clara. The first Peachville Prima. Mary Anne gasped as the room filled with the ghosts of an entire coven of women. The memory of the first day, the creation of the Peachville gate, became visible to us.
We watched the last moments of the binding, as if watching a movie in reverse.
I felt Clara's terror as her jaw wrenched open, the black smoke of a demon ripped from her body.
Aerden.
Our connection burned within me. The bond boiled in my blood. Then, as the last of his essence left Clara's mouth, the necklace lifted from my chest. Aerden's spirit passed through the stone, and I felt a strange distance open between us. A crack in the bond. He coiled around us, swirling wildly as he tried to break free.
"It's working," I said, having to raise my voice over the force of the wind.
Lark, Mary Anne, Angela and Courtney stood and began to chant ancient ritual words in reverse. Mary Anne stepped forward, her fingers trembling as she unclasped the necklace and pulled it from me.
She held it over the chalice of blood. "Moderatus compingere animus."
She opened her fist and let the pendant fall deep into the chalice. The blood bubbled up, overflowing and spilling down the side of the cup.
Zara took my wounded hand in hers. Slowly, she poured the blood onto my palm. Wide-eyed, we all watched, breathless as the blood soaked back into the cut. Lifting the dagger from her belt, Zara retraced the scar, gasping as it disappeared, erased from my skin as if it never happened.
Like a mirror image, the ghostly forms around us went through the original steps of the ritual from a hundred years ago, only this time in exact reverse. Hope filled my heart as Aerden's essence uncoiled itself from me, his bond growing more distant.
Continuing to follow the steps, Zara fell to her knees beneath the swirling black smoke. Her light blue eyes appeared white, glowing as she lifted both palms high into the air. "Animus efferri accio."
Aerden's dark essence was sucked back into the stone and the wind around us died suddenly. The portal's light extinguished and the ghostly vision dropped from sight. Whatever force held me up disappeared, and I fell.
My head slammed against the portal stone with a crack, and I cried out in pain and panic. Fear gripped my heart with its tight fist as blood trickled down my neck.
What happened? This couldn't be right. I struggled to sit up, a scream lodged in my throat.
Angela rushed to my side. "Why did it stop? Is it over?"
"I don't know," Zara said. Panic filled her voice. "Maybe I did something wrong."
A rumbling above caught my attention. "Shhh," I said, lifting my eyes to the ceiling as bits of earth and dirt fell on us.
"What was that?" Mary Anne asked.
Shouts rang out in the clearing above and adrenaline shot through me like a lightning bolt.
"They're here," I said, holding my hand out to her. "Help me up, quick."
I stood and ran toward the stairs, but an invisible power pushed past me. Before I could reach the top, an onyx barrier rose up, closing off the exit. I'd seen a barrier like this before when the tiger witch used it to lock me out of the domed city.
Dark magic.
The candle went out, plunging us into complete darkness. We'd been sealed inside, the ritual room silent and dark as a tomb.
A stream of light from below raced toward us, its beam separating
into four points. With a popping sound, the points exploded as they barreled into the chest of the girls standing behind me on the stairs. Mary Anne. Zara. Courtney. Angela. All frozen in time, their mouths open in various stages of a scream. Their bodies still like statues.
Something skittered through the darkness below. I swallowed, my throat thick with fear. Someone was down here with us, but how? Where had they come from? How did we miss that? I stretched my hand out and formed a small orb of light, then sent it down into the heart of the room.
There, at the bottom of the stairs, surrounded by five scorpion monsters, stood Lark. She wore a strange smile on her face, her dark eyes watching me carefully.
My first instinct was to rush down to her. To warn her. But something in those eyes stopped me cold.
They held no fear.
"Lark?" I asked, my tone uncertain.
She sighed and shook her head. "This is the part I've been dreading," she said. She glanced at the monsters next to her. "I never wanted to hurt you, Harper. Why couldn't you have just cooperated with the Order? Things would have turned out so much better for all of us."
Her words took my breath away. The room began to spin, and my knees went weak. I couldn't seem to make sense of what was happening.
"I really didn't want to have to be the one to do this," she said. "My grandmother told me I didn't have a choice."
"I don't understand," I said, shaking my head. I took a few steps forward, holding on to the wall beside me for support.
"Maybe this will help," she said. She spun around, her body shrinking to a tiny blue butterfly.
I fell to my knees on the hard stone steps, her betrayal piercing my heart. I brought my hands up to my head, the truth coming in waves.
Anyone could be anyone.
An image of the blue butterfly tattoo on her back flashed into my mind and I opened my eyes. She fluttered around me, then reformed on the steps by my side.
"You're one of them?" I asked. "You're a Winter? But how?"
Lark giggled. "I know it's hard to believe," she said. "My mother and I don't look a thing like them, but that's because of the glamour. I would drop it, but it's permanent. The real Chen family had to be sacrificed years ago, of course, but it couldn't be helped. Grandmother needed a spy on the inside, someone about the same age as the future prima, just in case you ever came home. Someone who could gain your trust. Teach you special spells to make you think we were friends."
"The glamours," I said.
Lark stood and walked back down to where the scorpions waited. "My job was to seduce you with your own power and with the idea of acceptance and friendship."
"I can't believe I trusted you," I said, anger and sadness twisting in my stomach. "I should have seen the signs. The butterfly tattoo. The insane amount of security at your house. The fact that you knew spells none of the other girls knew."
"Don't be too hard on yourself," she said with a frown. "I can be a very good actress. I learned it from my mother. All seconds are trained in the art of deception from the day they are born."
"Seconds?" My eyes widened. "Your mother was a second?"
She nodded. "Yes," she said. "All seconds are eventually placed as spies in demon gate towns. That's why no one can remember them. Seconds become someone else. The priestess has eyes everywhere."
Everything was finally becoming clear. No wonder Zara never knew where the seconds were taken. They weren't being sacrificed. They were becoming a part of some evil network of spies, sending information to the priestess about each individual coven. That must have been how Priestess Winter knew about gates like Aldeen. Gates where the witches had begun to protest the slavery of demons.
A loud rumbling above sent more debris raining down on us.
Lark looked up. "I'm afraid I don't have any more time to talk," she said. "Grandmother is expecting me to deliver you to her soon so we can end this once and for all."
With a snap of her wrist, she sent a stream of light toward me. It was exactly like the one she'd frozen the other girls with, but I was too fast for her.
I shifted into white smoke and flew down to the back of the room, disappearing into the shadows.
Lark cursed and whipped around, her black eyes searching for me. She formed a bright orb in her palm, then commanded the scorpions to find me.
I had to think fast. It had taken everything Jackson and I had to fight just one of these things. Luckily, I already knew their greatest weakness.
I reached inside my core and dragged my power to the surface. Flames danced across my fingertips as the scorpions skittered toward me. With a fierce cry, I fueled the white-hot fire with my pain. I had trusted her. Loved her. And all along, her friendship had been a lie.
Tears streamed down my face, but rage burned in my heart. I sent the fire out in a circle around my body, burning the scorpions' shells to a crisp until their green blood boiled within. The sounds of their final screams mirrored the agony I felt inside.
When the scorpions were dead, I turned to Lark.
I would mourn our friendship later, but now, I would have my revenge.
I Trusted You
Lark's eyes grew wide, surprise and fear sending her stumbling backward toward the stairs. She kept shaking her head, unable to take her eyes off the sizzling corpses of the scorpions.
I raised my hand in the air and the stone beneath her feet obeyed my command, rising up in a wave to send her sprawling, head-first into my arms.
I gripped her shoulders tight. "Look at me," I said, my voice trembling with anger.
She choked out a sob and ran her hand under her dripping nose. "I can't."
I reached up and grabbed her jaw between my thumb and index finger, forcing her eyes to mine. I stared straight through them, hoping to send my message straight to her soul. If she had one.
"I loved you as a sister," I said, my heart breaking. "I would have given my life for yours."
She raised her hand to my wrist and pushed, trying to escape my grip, but I wasn't ready to let her go.
"I don't give my trust easily, but I trusted you," I said. "I should kill you for this. For putting us all in danger."
A whimper escaped from her lips as she struggled against me.
I looked toward the entrance to the ritual room where the other girls stood frozen. "Release them," I said. "Whatever spell you're holding them with, undo it."
I let go of her jaw and forced her to turn around. With shaking hands, she cast a new spell, sending a darker stream of energy toward the others. With audible gasps and chokes, they came back to life, stumbling against the stairs, horror written across their features.
The others came down to stand beside me.
"How could you do this?" Angela asked, staring at Lark. "This whole time, it was all just an act?"
"I never wanted it to be this way," she said. "This was Harper's choice."
"Now, the barrier," I said. We didn't have any time to waste. "Take it down."
Lark shook her head. "I can't," she said. "The way the magic works won't allow anyone to open that barrier except Priestess Winter herself."
I lifted my hands, flames springing to life. Lark cowered.
"Priestess Winter knew we were coming this whole time, didn't she?" I asked. "You told her about our whole plan. This was an ambush."
Lark pulled away, attempting to run. I sank my power deep into the earth, then lifted up with all my might. A cage of stone rose up from the ground, trapping her inside. She beat her hands against the barricade, but it held firm.
"Tell me why the ritual failed," I said. "It was working at the beginning. I could feel it. What happened?"
She shook her head, scratching her nails furiously against the stone until her fingers were bloody.
"You must have known we wouldn't be able to free Aerden," I said. "If it had any chance of working, Priestess Winter never would have let us get as far as we did. What did we do wrong?"
She stopped clawing at her cage and stared at
me through prison bars made of earth.
"Tell me," I said. "I need to know."
She sniffed, tears running down her face. "You were missing one piece all along," she said.
I shook my head. "That's not possible," I said. "We went over it a dozen times. We had every item from the original ritual."
"Every item except one," she said. "You never had the master stone."
My breath stuck in my throat. "But the master stone is here," I said, looking back at the large blue gemstone embedded in the floor. "The portal stone."
"No," she said. "You assumed the portal stone and the master stone were the same thing. I just confirmed it for you, making you think you were right all along. The ritual was never going to work without the master stone. Priestess Winter wanted you to believe it would so that you would put the ring back where it belongs and reactivate the blue demon gates."
I brought my hand to my forehead.
"Piotrek and the others?" My head pounded.
She lifted her chin. "Probably dead by now," she said. "Once they placed the ring near the stones, more than a dozen hunters appeared to take them down. Hunters led by an old friend of ours. Lydia Ashworth. Or what's left of her."
I clenched my teeth together. This was my fault. I'd trusted the wrong person and now my friends were dead. I had to find a way to make this right.
I had to find the master stone and complete the ritual. I searched my memory for any reference to another stone during the rituals I'd witnessed, but there was nothing.
"Where is the master stone?" I asked. "Does Brooke's mom have it?"
"The stone belongs to Priestess Winter," she said, "Like the ring, there's only one for all the blue demon gates. I've never seen it, but I know she keeps it with her at all times. You'll never be able to get it from her."
Above us, a loud boom shook the earth. More of the ceiling caved in around us. I lifted my hands over my head and moved toward the stairs. We had to get out of here before this whole thing fell in on us. The others followed me.
