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As if to prove him, Dinah looks away, her lip curled in disgust.
Ebony walks to a small patch of protruding rocks, a pile of dirt sitting in the center. Kade would bet his blood it’s grave dirt. A powerful element for any spell, especially the kind to call a spirit from the dead. She kneels down beside it, an object in her hand—the talisman.
Round and silver, it’s engraved with a triple moon symbol. Intricate etchings surround it, glowing softly with an ethereal light. Ebony holds it high above her head as she chants. The Latin words grow with each utterance, swelling with the power she’s calling to her.
Her voice rises. Energy crackles around her.
There’s a crack. A blinding flash of light. A hideous scream.
The blaze dims, revealing Ebony lying on the ground, lifeless. A tendril of smoke rises from her mouth, the smell of singed flesh in the air.
“Ebony!” Chad screams, running toward her. He rolls her onto her back, choking on a sob. “She’s dead!”
Kade is frozen, trying to understand what just happened. The spell backfired. It killed the dark witch.
Dinah laughs darkly, shaking off the stunned shifters who were holding her. "Hecate's talisman, like the sword Excalibur, can only be handled by someone worthy. The talisman is made of the same element Excalibur is forged from. The same metal that was found in Mount Olympus, right under Zeus' palace—aurelium."
"Why have you done, Dinah?” Elara demands.
Kade’s afraid he already knows the answer.
Dinah smiles as she stalks forward. She stops, gazing down at Chad as he kneels beside his dead sister. “Hecate's talisman can only be handled by someone worthy. And that's not Ebony.” She points at Elara. "But she can."
Elara gasps. Kade growls, his wolf begging to be unleashed. His hands turn to claws, ready to attack, but the shifters move in. Two shove him against the rock, one presses the knife harder into his side, drawing blood. The fourth presses another against his throat.
"No!" he says, but it's drowned out by Elara’s screams as shifters drag her closer to the stone circle, the knees of her sweatpants threatening to tear against the jagged rocks and hard dirt.
Dinah arches a brow at Chad. "I thought you wanted my mother resurrected?"
Chad grins, then allows Dinah to help him up. He leans down and pries the talisman from the corpse of his now dead sister, then drags her body to the side. Returning, he places it in Elara’s and forces her fingers to close around it.
Laith tries to lunge, much like Kade, and for once, their purposes and minds are aligned. But the shifters hold him still. Kira screams in frustration.
"You need to stop fighting this,” Dinah warns. “Or it won't end well for Elara."
Kade clenches his hands; he was right not to trust the bitch. Impotent fury throbs through him, desperate for an outlet.
Dinah must sense his anger, because she turns her smug smile to him. "Oh, and Kade, your first lesson is to always trust your gut instinct."
25
Elara
Elara doesn’t expect the spell to hurt as much as it does.
But the agony tearing at her tissue, clawing at her bones, burrowing into her marrow is overwhelming.
She tries to breathe through it, conscious that if Kade knows the pain being inflicted on her, he’ll do whatever it takes to try and free her. No matter the cost to himself.
But the shallow puffs drawing into her lungs only seem to inflame the furious fire devouring her. So she holds her breath, battling to contain the scream exploding up her throat.
Dinah wraps her hand around Elara’s, the one gripping the talisman. Chad chuckles as he lifts the Excalibur replica and steps beside her. A vortex forms above them, like a small cloud about to turn into a roaring tornado, whipping at Elara’s hair.
"I call on you, Samara, my mother, to return to us,” Dinah cries. “Return to your body and rise again!"
A surge of energy tears through Elara, pouring from her open mouth and into the vortex. It sucks everything from her until the hand clenched in Dinah’s is the only thing keeping her from collapsing in the dirt.
The vortex extends down, shades of shadow and death twisting within it. It touches the center of the rock circle, whipping up the pale dirt piled there. Dinah’s panting with exertion, Chad’s grinning triumphantly. Elara wills herself to stay awake, to be ready for what’s coming next. She still has to save her friends somehow. She has to be strong enough.
