Page 57 of The Endless One

“Princess, you’re falling apart at the seams. We need to figure this out. And quickly. If that spreads…” Sybil covered her mouth, likely trying to hold another gag in. “Whatever is happening to you, we need to get control of it.”

Yes, they did.

But the other reality was that they couldn’t. Ajax had cast a spell on her that was unrecognizable. No one had seen this magic before, and therefore, no one knew what it would do to her. Maybe this was just the spell continuing to work. Without adding a goddess to her body, perhaps the only other option for her form was to disintegrate. It wasn’t ideal, obviously. She wanted to still be here to see her kingdom flourish.

Jessamine looked down at those skeletal hands once more, seeing the white reflecting in the sunlight that broke through the shadows of Elric’s magic. If this was her reality, if this was how it had to be, then she wanted to make sure it was done right. She wanted to ensure that her kingdom would be fine, even at the inevitability of her own destruction.

She would see this through until the end. No matter what that end was.

“Sybil,” she said, after watching her fingers somehow move. “I don’t wish to alarm you, but we both know I may not be fixable.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth, and we’ve been avoiding that as much as possible, but you know as well as I that Ajax might have damaged me. Irreparably. Now, I do not want that to be the case, but we both can see what is happening to my body. I am rotting away.”

“You are not rotting.” Sybil spun around, glaring at her with more anger than she’d ever shown before. “Don’t say that about yourself.”

“I’m already dead.” Jessamine hated to say the words. “I have been dead for months now. It is only natural that some magic would try to return me to that state. In the case that this magical spell we are crafting goes awry, I want you to take all the magic you can from me.”

“Jessamine—”

“Don’t interrupt me.” She sounded like her mother. Hard, sharp, and commanding. “You will make this promise to me. You will drain all the magic from me, if that is what it takes. Drain me dry, until there is nothing but a husk. I don’t care if it kills me. Fill the coven with magic and save this kingdom. No matter what you have to do.”

With tears in her eyes, Sybil nodded.

He knew the coven had gone ahead of him. Sybil had taken them to the cave hidden beyond vines, readying them for what they would soon have to do. After all, they were here in Inverholm. The coven was officially building and growing in power, and why would they not perform magic where the coven always had?

It was time for them all to return to the old ritual site and witness the madness and the beauty of their own history so that they could see for the very first time what it truly meant to be a witch.

There was a sense of poetry to it. They needed to remember their roots. They needed to feel the old energy of that place as it rolled over them, proving that they came from a long line of strong women who had never been afraid to do what they had to do. The blood, the gore, the pain, all of it had been part of who they were.

They were becoming what they always should have been, and he had to walk beside them this time. Yet still, his stomach churned.

Jessamine hadn’t helped. She refused to see him before the ritual, speaking through Sybil in words that made little sense. She was busy. Preparations needed to be made, and the other coven members needed her help. She would see him there, and not to worry, she wouldn’t let them hurt him.

All of it felt wrong. She had always been by his side. She belonged with him. Something was wrong. He could feel it deep in his bones.

Elric just didn’t know what yet.

He brushed the vines away from the entrance and walked into that old place with all its dark memories. A coven of witches all stood around the altar, just as it had been all those years ago. But this time, he was connected to them. He sympathized with the woman on the left with the scar down her eye who had lost a son to the plague. He prayed along with Agnes, who worried for her grandson. He listened to Sybil’s fear about what this would mean for all of them.

Standing at the altar, with her back to him, was Jessamine. He would know her anywhere. It didn’t matter how far she was from his sight or how difficult it was for him to see her. She’d covered herself with a cloak, though. All of her dark hair and lovely figure were obscured from view.

Her energy was so muted. He hadn’t been able to feel her much before, but now? Now she was entirely gone. No matter how much he struggled to reach out to her, no matter how hard he pulled on that meager thread that used to link them, she was gone.

He walked up to her side, his hands shaking with nerves that he didn’t understand. “Nightmare?”

Jessamine’s voice rose, and the entire coven fell silent. “There has been a change of plans,” his gravesinger said. “I do not know what Ajax has done to me, but I know that there is irreparable damage within my body. I thought, perhaps, we could channel Elric’s magic through me, but…”

Sybil reached forward and helped Jessamine pull the cloak from her body. At first, he noticed nothing wrong. She was still the beautiful woman he had fallen in love with. Though her dark hair seemed to billow slightly more than the smooth waterfall he was used to, or the tangled rat’s nest it sometimes was. She still had that lovely silver scar around her throat and eyes that saw straight into his soul. Those berry-red lips always made him want to kiss her. And why would he not?

Until his gaze traveled down to see how much of her had already been lost. Both of her hands, all the way up to the elbows, were nothing but dripping shadows. She lifted one of them, revealing the bones beneath that gleamed in the moonlight illuminating the cavern from above.

She was dying, and he died a bit with her. No magic could save her while she was eaten from the inside out. It was his magic eating her, and he couldn’t help but feel like he had cursed her with just a touch.

Her sleeveless, threadbare dress showed how thin her body had become. He could see the edges of her, outlined in the light as she looked at each and every one of them.

“I don’t think I’m surviving this one,” she murmured. “My connection to the Deathless One has been severed entirely. The magic that is leaking out of me… I don’t know what it is doing to my form, but I think we all can see that it is no longer fixable.”