Page 67 of The Endless One

The wolves slowly dissolved into her, their anger burning throughout her entire body. She wanted to hunt. She wanted to kill. She wanted to find each and every part of herself until she was finally whole again. Jessamine was tired of waiting.

But these weren’t her thoughts. At least, she didn’t think they were. She lay there on the ground, gasping and trying to make sense of the madness that rolled through her body. Fur sprouted on her arms, trailing down her legs until she was wholly a beast, and then the spider walked up her chest.

She could feel each individual leg as it touched her skin. The abrasive fibers on the legs of the spider made her itch and burn. Those legs crawled over her face. Jessamine wished she could close her eyes, but all she could do was lie there in horror, staring up at the twin fangs that came out from the spider’s mouth.

It could take her eyes if it wanted. Bite down on her cheek and inject her with venom that would melt through flesh and skin.

Instead, it moved all the way to her forehead and melted where her third eye should be.

Lightning struck through her body, seizing her muscles until she was arched upward with her eyes wide. She was flooded with emotion all at once.

Hope, fear, love, sadness, guilt, all of it surging through her entire body. She had missed this. She had been so terrified of it all coming back. This was who she was, and it was as terrifying as it was magical.

Padding footsteps approached. Her breath came in sharp little pants as she turned her head to see a black cat walking toward her. Those familiar dark whiskers flicked at the sight of her, and Nyx sat down just out of reach.

“Hello, friend,” Jessamine whispered, her voice shuddering with each word. “Have you come to take me home?”

Nyx reached out with a single paw and touched her forehead. Those warm pads filled her with a sense of relief and understanding, and suddenly she knew this wasn’t a punishment.

All the parts of herself had to come back. She had to pull herself together because this wasn’t the end. Not for her. Not for all that she needed to return for.

And these creatures, they were who she was. They were witchcraft and magic. They were the pieces of her that she had greatly missed, and they were the purpose she had nearly forgotten.

All of her pieces were not done fighting yet.

A voice came to her then, whispering in her ear, “Come on, nightmare. Come back to me. Fight, Jessamine. I need you to fight because we are running out of time.”

Of course they were. She was being hunted by a goddess who had no right in the slightest to take what wasn’t hers.

She allowed her eyes to close, and Nyx curled up over her heart. Her familiar seemed to be the last part to weave her shards all together, until finally, finally, she opened her eyes to stare up at Elric, who was holding her in his arms. He curved his body over hers, his lips whispering in something almost like a prayer.

But the pain was back. The same pain that made her shatter into pieces before. It had brought her here, and then she had broken herself even further.

His dark eyes snapped up to hers, and his lips twisted in a pained grin. “Welcome back, love.”

“Something is still wrong.”

“You aren’t entirely whole. Not yet.” He lifted his hand. Broken pieces of glass were collected there. If she looked a little closer, though, it wasn’t her reflection she saw in them.

She saw herself as a child, learning how to play the violin. Another shard showed the first moment she had met Leon. The next, a quiet moment with her mother in the garden. All memories that had deep meaning to her, memories that she still held dear.

“My soul?” she asked.

“I can’t keep you safe anymore,” he replied, laying the shards on her chest and allowing the glass to turn liquid against her and then seep through her skin. “Keeping your soul for myself is only hurting you more.”

She gasped. A little sound that made every part of her ache, but then the pain disappeared. It settled, as though her body had been seeking that soul for a very long time. And finally, she could feel like she wasn’t going mad any longer.

She was herself.

She was more than that.

She was everything that her magic had bid her to become. She was witchcraft and rage. She was a woman screaming into the night that she would be listened to, and the world would bow before her.

Mouth open in shock, she stared at Elric and asked, “What now?”

“Now you finish the spell, or you return as you were.”

“What spell?”