“Mom and Dad were looking for you,” Casey whispers into my ear, her body trembling. “They wanted to tell you it’s okay.”
“I know. Shh.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “Close your eyes.”
“But you didn’t even say goodbye,” she says. Tears leak from her eyes, dampening my shoulder. “Now they’re dead, and you never even said goodbye.”
Before I can even ask her what happened to my parents, two bodies appear before her in the dirt, their eyes open and glassy, their skin sallow.
My parents.
Grief seizes my chest, and I fall forward and reach for my mother’s hand.
“It’s too late, Kirin,” Casey says. “You should’ve come sooner.”
Casey’s right. The moment I touch my mother’s cold fingers, the skin melts away, along with her hair and clothing. My father’s body follows suit. Bit by bit, I watch everything recognizable about my parents seep into the earth until there’s nothing left but bones.
“Youwereright, you know,” a dark voice calls from behind me, his shadow falling over the bones. “All of thisisyour fault.”
I jump to my feet and spin around to confront this new enemy. The Chariot has vanished, but in her place a darker presence lurks, looming over us. He looks like some kind of ancient druid priest, dressed in white robes stained red with blood. Evil and powerful magick emanate from his very core.
Judgment. Just as dark and terrifying as Stevie described him.
From inside the folds of his filthy robe, he retrieves a wand, already glowing with power. I try to reach for my siblings, but I’m suddenly seized by darkness, completely paralyzed. In a blur, Judgment touches his wands to the bones, incinerating them.
Casey and Derrick scream, the sound of it so horrifying it crushes my lungs.
Unable to move, to blink, to breathe, I watch my family turn to ash.
“You have brought great shame upon your home, Kirin Weber,” the robed man says. “Upon your family.”
I want to deny it, to stand up for myself, but his magick is already working its way deep into my mind. I can’t fight him, can’t lash out. I can only stand mute, enthralled by the raw power in his voice.
“This is your doing.” He gestures across the ruined landscape, all of it crumbling and smoldering around us. “And it is but a glimpse of the pain you will eventually unleash. Yet despite this destruction, this chaos, you live. Always, you live.”
He releases me from his hold, and I fall to my knees, nodding up at him. I hate myself for succumbing to his influence, but I’m powerless in the face of it.
Even without his magick, the words themselves are a spell, seeping beneath my skin and poisoning me from the inside out.
“You don’t deserve to be here,” he says.
“I don’t deserve to be here,” I parrot back. Inside, my mind is shouting at me to fight, to run, to do something other than give up, but my will is bent to his command.
“You don’t deserve to live,” he says. “You’ve known this for many years now.”
“I don’t deserve to live.”
“You are an abomination and you must be eradicated.”
“I am an abomination. I must be eradicated.” I look up and meet his eyes, cold and dead, even as his mouth twists in pleasure. He wants this to be the last thing I see before he incinerates me.
With the last shred of self-respect I possess, I close my eyes, calling up a new image. It’s a tiny act of rebellion, but it’s all mine.
Instead of the dark mage before me, I picture Casey and Derrick. Not as children, but as I last saw them together in London with my parents, before all hell broke loose and I fled. Derrick, still just a kid then, wriggled uncomfortably in his tuxedo. Casey was dressed in a blue satin gown the color of the sky, her cheeks pink with pride and excitement. It was the night of her official acceptance into the Association for the Preservation of the Occult Arts, the night that would kick off her brilliant career. I’d never seen her or my parents so happy.
A faint smile touches my lips, and then the image changes, my family fading away to reveal a stunning woman in a wedding gown, her curly hair studded with purple flowers. She walks toward me, carefully picking her way through the rubble.
Stevie…
I smile as she approaches, but she doesn’t smile back. Her eyes are wide with fear, her mouth stretched into a scream.
