Page 176 of Bound By Fury

Centuries of guidance. For the Mother and all the mothers before her. For the Daughter. For the original twelve witches who gave their lives for this power that overwhelms me. For Mama Mae, her life stolen before she could live free, for Nora and her visions of a better future for us all. For the sacrifice made anew.

For me, and Kai, and the prophecy we are destined to fulfill.

Natural enemies, bound together, whether we like it or not.

I am made of stardust, just like all the women before me.

And for now, that has to be enough.

I look over and watch as a tear slips down Daisy’s cheek. “I’m so sorry, Harper. I’m so, so sorry.”

Turning, I pull her toward me. “What? Why are you apologizing?”

“I should have found you sooner. I should have done more to help you.”

My brows pull to the center of my face.

“Daisy, you can’t blame yourself for this. I—listen, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything. For what I said. For pushing you away. I just… this is exactly what I wanted to avoid. I didn’t want y’all to get hurt because of me.” My voice is hoarse. “Why—I mean, how did you guys know? How did you find me?”

“It’s a long story,” Sam mutters.

Daisy shifts. “Well, I guess it really started after the tarot reading. That’s when I knew for sure that something was going on with you. Although I couldn’t have ever imagined what.”

Her eyes cut to Kai.

“But then when you started distancing yourself from us, I knew you would never ask us for help. I started to follow you, see where you were going when you’d disappear. I still couldn’t put the pieces together.

“Then during the séance, it’s like you hijacked it. I couldn’t see anything. I was just sucked into some dark, liminal place. When you left campus, I turned to Spirit for help. I knew you needed us.

“So I broke into your room looking for clues as to where you might have gone. I found some papers in your desk.” Tears spring to her eyes again. “The women hanged outside the old school… Something about it didn’t sit right with me, so I brought them to Sam and Missy.”

Sam reaches over and grabs Daisy’s hand.

“We did another séance. We asked Spirit to help us find you. For a while now something has been wrong with my visions. Since coming here, something has been clouding them. This time I could finally see you, but I couldn’t see what was happening. It didn’t make any sense, but I knew that I needed to get to you somehow.”

Sam cuts in, “For the record, I didn’t know about any of this either before that fight in your room. No one tells me anything! Everyone pulls me into their unhinged schemes, but no one wants to tell me that witches and witch hunters and spirit-mediums and whatever-the-fuck Lucas is exists?!” Their voice gets higher pitched with every word.

Missy snorts through her tears, but she doesn’t say anything, just meets Daisy’s eyes before turning away again.

Lucas. I fight against the flashes of him limp in the arms of my enemies. Of him standing over Maureen, confusion and fear warring across his face.

Syphon, Maureen had whispered as she took her last breath. She’d said syphons were creatures that feed off the powers of others.

A pit forms in my belly. All those times I craved his touch, desperate for the reprieve he gave me from the tumultuous power inside me. I thought that he calmed me, that we had a special connection, but in reality… was he… feeding on me?

I shiver. “I know,” I say, guilt pouring out of me. “To be fair, I didn’t know either until it was already happening. And I could barely believe it myself.”

My friends came to help me, and it could have gotten them killed.

“This is why I didn’t tell you. I never wanted—”

“If you think that we were just going to sit by and watch you get murdered, then you’re dumber than you look,” Missy finally chimes in.

“Or,” Sam tries, “you don’t know us at all. You weren’t the only one with secrets, Harper, but at least now we’re in this together.” Their voice is steady as they say this, and a lump forms in my throat.

“Although you still have, like, a lot of explaining to do,” Daisy adds.

A small chuckle falls from my lips as I grab Daisy’s other hand, and we lapse back into silence.