Page 23 of We Steal The Flight

I can’t look. I can’t think of anything other than the fact that I only just found her, and them, and they’re gone. I touch the ring on my finger, remembering that they sacrificed their lives and it needs to be for a reason. I feel Wini’s hands on me as Vale puts me down, as Black shifts and goes to the sky and Vale fights with Luke and Aster to keep anyone away from us. “You still have family, Juni. Stand for us. Fight for us.”

She is right, I know she is, but I struggle to make myself stand up. The grief is drowning me into a puddle, and I don’t know how to escape it. “JUNI!” She shouts at me and I snap my eyes up. “Stand up and do the spell!”

“Wini,” I whisper. She is right, I need to end this and grieve after. I still have my mates, my best friend, and a world to save. “Have you got the potion?”

She nods with relief in her eyes. “All done and in the biggest cauldron I could find. You ready for this?”

“No.” I brush my tears away. “But we have to do what’s right, or her death was for nothing. We can make it be remembered.”

I take the spell out of my pocket, and Wini runs us over to the cauldron while we are defended. “Stand behind me,” I tell her.

Using my grief, using every bit of pain, I push myself into the spell, feeling the magic flow through me, to the tarot cards, to Minnie wrapped around the back of my neck, to the watch on my wrist with a chain, all of it. The power explodes through me in almost a rainbow, and it smothers the smoky sky until there is nothing but light. I imagine Gwen and the Nexus academy but let the magic take over. It easily flows through me, and I sigh, enjoying every moment of it. A portal blasts out of the cauldron, spreading in a line, making a huge half-circle.

“So you took my offer,” Gwenieve shouts from the other side. “I got your note the other day to be prepared!”

With tears still falling down my face, I shout back, “Kill any of those creatures that come through. They can’t be saved and they bite. Get everyone else through. You don’t have long before this world dies!”

She says something to the blond man at her side, who runs off fast. I turn to Vale. “Let’s go to Bloodstone Academy and end this.”

Chapter 15

Bloodstone is silent and colder than I have ever felt it. The kind of cold that settles into stone and bone alike, like the castle itself is holding its breath. The Mindless that were here are gone. If there are witches, I wonder if they are hiding, and I don’t blame them. I’ve opened a portal right above the staircase that leads down to the thing in the basement, and I turn, looking down at Juniper. There is determination in her pretty eyes but so much grief and pain too. I want to fix it all for her, but I can’t bring back her parents, and she has lost so much. I’m so fucking proud she is still standing here at my side, ready to fight for me. For Kane. “This ends today,” she says with determination.

“Yes, it does. It’s not too late to change your mind, Hex,” I murmur to her, breathing in her scent that is mixed perfectly with mine. Even now, even here, it steadies something in me that nothing else can.

My perfect mate leans up and kisses me before looking down at the staircase. Her lips are cold against mine, and I try not to let that frighten me. “I will not lose anyone else. Not today, not ever. As long as this academy stands, so do you and Kane.”

”You won’t be doing it alone.” I take her hand, linking her fingers through mine. She feels cold and clammy. Fuck, I don’t like this. I rub my thumb over her knuckles anyway, like warmth alone could argue with whatever’s draining out of her.

Her eyes trace to a window. “Lyra said the spell to destroy the world starts at sunrise. It is getting light out.” I follow her gaze and see she is right. The horizon is already bruising gold at the edges, far too beautiful for what it’s about to mean. Our plan was always for Black, Maz and Kane to secure the portal to Earth before flying to meet us while we distracted the monster.

“Together. It’s our only chance. The others will get to us in time.” She squeezes my hand once. I hold on like that squeeze is a promise I intend to make her keep.

We walk down the stairs together, through the domed room, and she pulls open the door and steps down to the place where that thing resides. The walls and floor are sticky with blood and vines and who knows what crawling all over the wall. The air is thick and wrong, pressing into my lungs like something alive is breathing it back at me. My dragon roars in my head, bashing around to get out, to take Juniper away from this evil thing, but we carry on all the way down to the bottom until it’s just us and the monster floating in the middle of the room.

It speaks directly into my mind, into hers too, I assume, with how she freezes. “You’ve finally come to finish what was done. They will not bring me any more food now that you’ve killed them all. I liked my pets.”

“You should never have given them power in the first place, and they should never have given you people to feed your power. It was wrong, and it was a mistake,” Juniper shouts at it.

“Your mother is dead.” She flinches, and I want to kill the thing. My whole body wants to lunge for it, consequences be damned, just to wipe that satisfaction out of its voice. The monster changes so suddenly, morphing into a version of Lyra, glowing red. A version I’ve seen before. The fake Lyra looks at me. “Cursing you four was the only time I left these walls. It was my idea to break what was left of the dragons. But you didn’t break…why?”

“I felt Juniper out there, even as a child. I fought for her,” I answer. “And you will die now.”

The fake Lyra turns to Juniper, who was watching me for a second. “It is a shame that with all your power and potential, you will not act as your mother. Lyra could have ruled every world. She chose not to the moment you were born. I was there, witnessing it in her mind, the moment she chose to be good. Your father would have done anything, evil or good, for her. What a shame you both spun the wrong way.”

“You were a small creature once. Were you ever innocent? Good? Or were you always this?” Juniper questions. “Is there anything good left?”

“I want to be free, not good, and you can give me freedom. It is in your blood,” the monster snarls.

Its power surges out, ripping me from her, slamming me into the wall. The impact knocks the air clean out of me, stone biting into my back, but it’s nothing compared to watching her go still. I go to whisper spells, but vines wrap right around my mouth, and it yanks her straight towards it. She screams, only for a second before blood-like veins crawl across her body, making her almost incapable of moving.

Her cloak moves in a fake breeze as that thing drains her. I claw at the vines binding me, desperate, useless, watching the color leach out of her face.

I hear her voice fill my head. “Shift and burn this place down.”

She isn’t just speaking to me, but to the others who are so close now in dragon form. They roar in disagreement, and she turns to look at me, her eyes bloodshot and her skin too pale. I struggle against the vines and magic, but it doesn’t work. “Vale.” The connection between us is crackly, almost as if the monster is trying to stop us from speaking. “Burn it all.”

“You will burn too. NO!” I shout back.