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Lorian leans in close, standing at my side. “We’ll handle them, you go. Get Smee and Scarlet,” he says, drawing his sword.
My pulse quickens, and I draw my own weapon as I nod to him. With a war cry, he takes off running and the crew follows. Even Zephyr has a weapon, which makes me more nervous for him than I am for the other men. Still, war cries fill the air as the men sprint toward the witches, and chaos ensues.
The clash of steel, the bright zaps of magic—everywhere I turn, there’s a new threat. But I have a singular focus. The compass guides me, and with every ounce of determination I possess, I dash towards the cave.
My lungs burn as the air rakes in and out of them, scorching through my windpipe. The smell of burnt ozone floods my senses, tasting both bitter and sickeningly sweet with magic. I push my legs, forcing them to move faster as I tear through the cave. The lanterns on the wall flame alive as I near, lighting the way, until finally, I burst into an open circle of a room. In the middle is a stone pillar. The symbol my uncle showed me on his palm is carved into it. There’s a round engraving on the opposite side of it, almost like a portal should be there. Runes are carved all over it and I gigantic swirl recesses into the stone.
“Nice of you to finally join us,” my uncle’s voice hits my ears and I jerk my head, desperate to see where it came from. To my right are Scarlet and Smee, sitting against the stone wall. Scarlet’s been bound and gagged. Her eyes are swollen from crying. Smee isn’t much better, but she’s not secured. She’s here willingly, holding the dreamcatcher in her hands.
Nelvin.
It doesn’t make sense to me...None of this does. Why attack Nelvin and put him in there to convince Smee to go into the vault? He’s had years to do that if he intended to use her as the sacrifice.Why wait now? Why go through the trouble of getting Scarlet too?He only needs one of them to open the vault for him to go inside and join my mother.Why go through all the effort of bringing them both here or waiting for me to love someone else?
I take one step forward and my uncle stops me in my tracks, his hands igniting with coils of jagged lines.Lightning. “Not until you open it. I would’ve given you a chance to say goodbye, but you’ve taken advantage of my mercy once already. I don’t intend for it to happen again.”
The chill of the room intensifies as I stand face-to-face with my uncle. My heart pounds, a furious drum in my chest, every beat calling for vengeance, for the chance to get the two of them to safety.
With a flick of my wrist, shadows twist and coil around my body as they rise from the ground like serpents, ready to strike. The darkness swirls over the sharpened blade in my hand and my uncle’s gaze is charged with a similar fury, sparks of electricity crackling around his fingertips.
We clash and the ring of metal against metal sings around us. Each time my shadows reach for him, they’re repelled by jolts of electricity, searing the ground where they touch. In turn, his lightning seeks me out, only to be swallowed by the abyss I summon.
With a surge of energy, a powerful bolt arcs toward me, striking my blade and sending tremors through my arm. Seizing the momentary lapse, my uncle lunges forward, driving the tip into my ribs, but I grip the metal blade in one hand, clutching it in a desperate attempt to keep it from piercing through me.
He leans in close, his menacing eyes staring into mine as he pins my body to the pillar in the middle of the room. The rune starts to glow the moment my skin touches the stone. I try to fight him off, but he pries my fingers from the sword in my hand. My uncle rips my arm above my head, smashing my palm into the rune, and the air hums like thousands of bees.
The scent of magic is pungent, and dust plumes as something starts to swirl fast enough to whip a breeze around the circular room—the portal. My uncle brings his face closer to mine, forcing me to look to the side to avoid touching him. Scarlet’s wide eyes stare at me, her body jerking frantically as she tries to free herself from the ropes.
“Take a good look,son, because they’re both about to be taken from you.”
My mind goes blank as the realization hits me like a ton of bricks.He never meant to go inside the vault to be with my mother... None of us were going to make it out alive but him.
As the magic starts to intensify, I feel myself losing control over my body. The rune’s energy courses through my veins like liquid fire, and I can hear Scarlet pleading for my uncle to stop, her voice nothing more than a distant echo.
My uncle needed Smee... He needed her to be a vessel to bring my mother back to life. My mother’s body is long gone, buried in the clearing by our home. There’s nothing to put her soul into without it.
Just like blood, it has to match. It can’t just be some random body, but every woman passes a little piece of their soul to their children, which makes Smee capable of housing it. It also made Smee and me the only two capable of pulling my mother out of the vault. And since he needed Smee’s body to put her in, it had to me to make the sacrifice. He couldn’t kill Smee—to force her soul out of her body—without damaging the vessel.
There was no promise... He needs me to get my shadow back so I can connect with my mother’s soul. To guide her out, I needed the sliver she gave me at birth, something for her soul to attach to, to follow like a beacon. There’s no way of knowing whether the piece is in my shadow or not, so he needed me whole first, but that would require two sacrifices. One to pull out my missing shadow and one to pull out my mother’s soul.
That was always his plan...It’s why he needed to wait until I loved someone else. He needed a second sacrifice. My uncle had no intention of letting any of us live. Not a single piece of it was out of the goodness of his heart or righting his wrongs. This was out of greed.
My father often alluded to my uncle’s need to be better, to have everything he did, and more. My mother and father had the kind of love people can only dream of finding one day. It wouldn’t surprise me if it infuriated my uncle to the point of obsession. I doubt any part of his story is true, from him claiming he and my mother were in love to me being their son.Any of it.
Focusing on my anger instead of who I fear losing, I grit my teeth and grind my jaw as he pins me harder, bending my arm into an awkward position to keep it on the rune. My lungs quiver, incapable of drawing more than a shallow breath.
The sword presses into the bones of my ribs, but the blade won’t go through, not unless it twists. It’s likely the only blessing I have right now, and the only thing allowing me to hold the blade in place with one hand, to keep it from sliding off to the left or right, or twisting so the flat side can pierce between the curved rib bones.
This ends here. Blood spills down my arm as the sharp edges of the blade slice into my hand, but my grip is the only thing holding the weight of it off me. He’s purposely positioned the blade this way to inflict pain, but it won’t kill me. The wound will be shallow, mostly skin and muscle, but my ribs can only take so much pressure before they break. Holding it is all I can do it keep that from happening, and he knows that. He knows I’ll fight to keep that sword out of my body, and it’s what allows him to hold me in the precarious position.
My focus is slipping, and he’s just biding time until I cave. I can’t keep my mind blank and off the people I love for much longer. Even a glance in their direction might be enough, and one of them will die. But he’s underestimated my need, my drive, to keep them alive.
Meeting my uncle’s steely eyes, I twist the hand holding the blade, releasing a guttural growl as it tears through flesh. The flat portion slips through my ribs and I let go. Without my hand holding his weight back, it plunges through my body, but my shadow is waiting for it. As the sword pierces through me, it doesn’t hit the stone. It appears out of the shadow I’ve formed between our bodies and stabs into his throat.
My uncle sputters, releasing the sword and staggering back. I remove my hand from the rune and the portal spins shut. His hands grapple at the wound, desperate to keep the blood from spilling, but it’s too late. He’s not an illusion. He wouldn’t miss the chance to be here in person. My uncle falls to his knees as crimson spills down the front of him and onto the dewy cave floor.
I drag in a shaky breath, my chest seizing from the pain radiating out from the wound. He’s dead.
Daring a glance at Scarlet, I find her bent over, feeling every bit of the pressure and the sharpness of every movement, of every breath. It burns inside and out as severed nerves spasm. I want to go to her, to comfort her, but moving would only cause her more agony.
