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"Simon. He's in the crowd. Guess he's okay with sacrificing his cousin."
I understood the betrayal of family, so without letting go of Zaide's hand, I wrapped my other arm around Charlie’s arms, hugging myself against his chest. "I'm sorry," I mumbled.
"I will kill him for you when we escape." Zaide patted Charlie's shoulder. And while I was glad he was feeling more himself and hopeful, I wondered what had changed to make him feel sure that we would survive. In the cave, he had been hopeless and distant.
Debs continued her speech, "We are going to drain the magic from the witch, familiar, and otherworlder who sabotaged the ceremony and have caused us all so much stress and trouble."
More cheers and shouts. I whimpered.
How do we get out of this?
I thought back to my conversation with Baelen and how he channeled his powers through my body and what I had felt. Maybe I could use that. Maybe we could figure out what our powers were and use them.
How did it feel? How did he do it?
It felt like a rush of power, but from where? Where could I find it?
To turn into my familiar form, I needed to go to my center and find the magic that was there.Maybe it worked the same way?
I closed my eyes and tried to slow my breathing, imagining I was traveling the veins of my body to my center. To find my magic. To see something new or hidden that I hadn’t noticed before. I imagined a box, a present with a bow wrapped around it, sparkling as if it were under the dim lights of a Christmas tree. I pictured myself unwrapping it and seeing a ball of violet power humming inside. Taking it out of the box and holding it in my hand, I watched as it slowly sank into my skin and rushed through me.
Opening my eyes, I knew I had unlocked something because I could see lines. Strings. Threads. They were everywhere. I didn’t know what it meant but it was something.
“I see the lines,” I said, waving a hand in front of my face. I turned to Zaide. “I see the lines now. You could see them earlier. Can you still see them?”
He covered my hands, which gripped at his shirt. “No, Little Cat. I can’t see them anymore.”
“I think the lines are the threads of the universe. Our titan powers.”
He nodded. “But we don’t know what they do, and there is a reason titans lost their power. Be careful.”
"Release the reservoir!" Debs shouted.
I turned to see the magic that had been collected in a pool rise out of its tiled container in the corner and move toward us in a wave of multicolored dust. The witches cheered and laughed and put their hands into the dust, their eyes alight with joy despite their haggard appearance as it floated through the sky. It was like watching children under a water fountain.
Each witch seemed to have a corresponding thread. They were different colors, mostly reds, pinks, and oranges. Different shapes, twists, twirls, and knots, and lengths but everyone seemed to have one that followed them.
The threads mean something about the witches. What do they do? How do I use it?
It was hard to keep focus, however, since the cage felt as though it was getting smaller. My breathing became choppy, and my body trembled with fear.
The magic dust lowered to touch the pentagram salt lines that we were sitting over in our cage. The colorful magic spread throughout the pentagram, turning the salt multi-colored and sparkling under the string lights, and then slowly sunk into the ground until the salt was white again. It would be beautiful if I wasn’t so scared.
As I stared at the ground, the whole clearing silent with anticipation, suddenly two threads appeared in front of me. Both were red, but one was twisted into a tight circle and the other was straight with a kink at the top. I looked up at the witches again. They still had their lines, and I was sure these was attached to them.
Did that mean there was someone in the ground?
I almost slapped myself when I realized.
They were raising the protector, Sigurd. He was in the ground and alive again because of their magic.
But who is the second thread?
I almost collapsed with relief as I realized that it meant we didn’t need to be drained. They just needed to get him out of the ground, and he would be fine.
I turned to smile at my men when Debs decided to shatter my dreams. “Gather around the cage!" Witches descended upon us, a breaths-width from the magical cage surrounding us, and more witches with their hands resting on the shoulders of the person in front.
“You don’t need to drain us. He’s alive. You can let us go!” I shouted.
