She was a rattlesnake. As real as the rock beneath my feet.
Back here on planet Fuck My Life, I may not have an undead army to contend with, but my leg is already swelling from the bite, the pain like lava chewing through my skin.
I try to scramble off the boulder, but I stumble and land on my ass. The puncture wounds are closing, but the venom is working its way into my bloodstream—pretty sure I can’t heal that on my own.
Fuckrabbits. I can’t stay here. I need to find help. I reach for my pack with the phone, but my fingers graze the strap, and it slides down the side of the bolder, wedging itself into a crack I can’t reach.
Seconds later, my leg goes numb, my lips tingly.
I try to remember everything they ever taught us in Tres Búhos elementary school about rattlesnake bites, but it’s no use.
My stomach lurches—pretty sure I just puked up that granola bar.
My vision is swimming, darkening.
The last conscious thought I have is one of pure fear. Not that I’m going to be destroyed by an undead army, but that I’m going to die on this rock, and someone is going to find my phone, and instead of being remembered as the spirit-blessed witch who mastered her magick and translated her mother’s prophecies and saved countless lives, I’ll be forever immortalized as the girl who felt compelled to issue unsolicited warnings about the dangers of masturbating with a cactus, and then got herself killed by a poisonous snake.
Son of a hairy-ass bitch, I always knew Mother Nature would be the one to take me out.
I’ve got just enough energy left to laugh and flip a middle finger up to the sky.
And then the world simply fades away, taking me right with it.
Thirty-Six
CASS
Her fever still hasn’t broken, her words coming fast and furious now.
“Flame and blood and blade and bone, what starts with zero ends with one. One, five, seven, twenty. Arcana devours, all and plenty.”
“Easy, Stevie. You’re alright. You’re home safe, resting in your bed.” I dip a clean cloth into the ice water, then press it to her forehead.
Twice in as many days, the woman has fallen victim to this landscape. The river, the snake… It’s too much to be a coincidence.
She’s a target. We knew it was a risk, but I didn’t expect it to start so soon. Unlike her home in Tres Búhos, the Academy is warded against dark magick.
Which only proves how powerful our adversaries truly are.
“I saw his army,” she says. “Death and rot and blood and ruin. Zero begets the next, the One
Innocence lost, magick undone.”
Her voice is high-pitched, frantic, her words mixing her own visions with translations Kirin shared from her mother’s work. It’s all interwoven, but so far, none of us have been able to connect those dots.
“Shh,” I murmur, stroking her face. “Try to rest.”
She slips into a light sleep, but her dreams are perilous, her body twitching, soft whimpers escaping her lips. I lower the lights, ignite candles instead. Place the Four of Swords on her bedside table. It seems to calm her.
I don’t dare leave her side. Though her body heals external wounds quickly, the venom is largely immune to her magick. In fact, it seems to feed off it, sending her into a fevered state even after the Academy healer administered the antivenin.
For now, all I can do is keep watch.
There’s a soft knock at the door, and Baz enters.
“How is she?” he asks softly. Here in the candlelight, his features are thrown into sharp, exaggerated relief, his eyes glinting with a wicked tint. But I know he’s already grown to care for her. We all share the same worry.
“Not out of the woods yet,” I tell him, “but getting better. She’ll be okay—her fever is starting to break.”
