I look at him, at how calm he is in a room about to come apart, and I don’t get it. “Why is he like this?” The question comes out half to myself.
“Because he’s the same as them.” Ellie’s voice drifts up from the corner, low and almost gentle, her eyes on Josiah and not on me. “Something got made out of him that he never asked to be. He’s the only one who’s ever come to this realm and not looked at my people like monsters.” She tightens her arms around herself. “He looks at them like he’s looking in a mirror.”
It lands somewhere in me and stays. I’ve known Josiah my whole life as the uncle everyone loves and keeps at arm’s length, and not once did I think to ask what put him out there to begin with.
Kade looks at Josiah like she’s thinking about killing him. Then she gives up on him and tears through the room for a weapon. She throws a hand out to teleport, but all she gets is a curl of black smoke. She tries again, and it’s the same. “FUCK.”
Josiah doesn’t go for a weapon or cover like the rest of us. He just stands in the middle of the floor, hands behind his back, loose and unbothered, his red eyes on the sealed doors.
I grab his arm. “Please protect Mara. Whatever’s about to happen, please. Protect my mate.”
He looks at me, and for once there’s nothing playful in his face. He nods.
I look back at Mara. She’s clawing at the inside of the dome, snarling at me. I shake my head at her. I should have listened. I can’t lose her.
Then the doors give, and they pour into the room.
There are too many of them. Half-human, half-something-else, the witches and warlocks of the Glen turned into this. Some are barely changed, just gray and hollow, thin dark smoke leaking from their eyes, their movements jerking and wrong like the strings holding them up got tangled. Some are further gone,skin split and cracked over a light that shouldn’t be inside a body, jaws hung too wide, fingers grown long and clawed. And some have been remade all the way, into whatever shape the magic left behind—a man crowned with antlers of black bone, a thing that drags itself on too many limbs, a woman with great trembling wings spread over the swarm, butterfly-bright, beautiful and all wrong, her face still human under eyes gone black.
She fixes on me and flies straight at me.
“Magnificent,” Josiah breathes.
Josiah doesn’t even brace himself. He watches the winged woman come for us like he’s glad to see her.
Then they’re on me, and there’s no time to think.
I throw everything I have at them, both hands, light cracking out of me, knocking them back, raising walls they tear straight through. There are too many. For every one I drop, three more climb over it. Across the room, Kade’s tearing through them, hurling anything she can lift, breaking bones with her bare hands, while Hella and Ellie press back into the far corner.
Worst of all, a knot of them breaks off and goes for Mara. They rake at the dome, dozens of them, and she swipes and hisses from inside while the light flickers where they hit. I don’t know how long it’ll hold.
I don’t get to find out. The rest come for me all at once and drag me down. They’re clawing my shoulders, biting my arm, ripping my shirt. There’s nothing around me but gray skin, leaking eyes, the stink of rot. I can’t see Mara. I feel them digging into me, and somewhere over my head I hear her shield crack.
Then the bodies shift, just enough, and I see it—a hole torn in the top of the dome, hands reaching down through it for Mara.
Something in me snaps.
Whatever I’ve been holding back tears loose all at once. It blasts out of me, and the bodies on top of me go flying. Somedon’t fly so much as come apart, blown to pieces across the marble. I’m still pulling myself up when it hits me. I killed them. I didn’t mean to. More are already climbing over the ones I broke to take their place.
“Get the fuck off my mate.” I throw my hand out and rip the rest off Mara’s dome, slamming them into the wall.
Across the room, Josiah’s buried under his own pile, red eyes flashing as he throws them off and they climb right back. More keep pouring in through the doors and the windows. I turn and see Kade go down, one of them on top of her, a jagged stake in its fist, the point pressed to her chest while she holds its wrist off by inches.
I get it then. I have to siphon the magic out of every last one of them—it’s the only way this ends.
I stop holding it back, and it floods out of me. Blue-gold light spills off my skin, and my feet lift off the floor. I rise, and I feel myself reaching past the tower, out across the whole dead realm, to every witch and warlock left in the Glen.
It starts slow. Threads of light peel off the ones closest to me and drift toward my hands. The winged woman beats up toward me to drag me down, and I throw out a hand. The light catches her by the throat—not crushing, just holding her in the air.
The creatures on Josiah start to sag, the fight going out of them as I pull. He shoves up out of the pile and blurs to Kade, pulling her to her feet.
“No.” It doesn’t sound like me. “Please. I don’t want to hurt them. I just want it to stop.”
I throw a shield over Josiah and Kade without looking. Josiah hisses as the light closes over them. “What are you doing?—“
I can’t answer. The pull’s getting stronger, dragging from everywhere now, the walls, the floor, the ones hiding in the darkcorners of the tower. It fills me up and keeps coming, more and more, until my head tips back and my eyes fall closed.
I drain the Witching Glen.
