Chapter 43
Chapter
Forty-Three
This time, when the red haze descends over my vision, there’s no fighting it. I try breathing deeply, like Cooper showed me, but it doesn’t help. The door in my mind creaks open, revealing the red-tinged room beyond, and the undertow tugs at my feet, pulling me forward. Come, it coaxes. See.
I don’t want to go. I want to stay right here with Donovan, even if he doesn’t believe a word I say. But here comes the double vision, the world of my premonition layering over this one. I see Donovan stroking my hair, hear him saying my name. But I also see myself walking closer and closer to the open door, then stepping through into?—
I expect to find myself in the small white room, the way I usually do. Or worse, in my childhood home, in the moments before my parents were taken from me forever. But instead, I’m standing in that damned garden, the one that smells of honeysuckle. The melodic notes of Pachelbel’s Canon fill my ears, and when I look down at myself with a dawning sense of horror, I’m wearing the same gorgeous, delicate wedding dress. My bare toes peek from beneath the hem, the nails painted a gleaming champagne hue to match.
I open my mouth to scream. I try to run. But no sound comes out, and just like before, I find myself floating over the rose-petal-strewn grass toward the groom beneath the arched, white-flowered arbor. Toward Donovan.
He looks so handsome. So happy to see me. But he’s not alone. Because from among the crowd seated on the folding chairs rises one hooded figure after another. Blood Witches, concealed among my friends and the residents of Sapphire Springs. They stalk down the aisle, toward the place where Donovan stands.
“Donovan, run!” I shriek. This time, my voice rises loud and clear, drowning out the musicians. But Donovan doesn’t obey. He just stands there, looking perplexed, watching his death barrel toward him.
I want to save him. To stop this. But the world of the premonition shimmers, the undertow pulling me back through the doorway, into the world I’ve left behind.
I expect to land back in my body, to feel Donovan’s touch. Instead, my consciousness floats upward, hovering somewhere near the vaulted ceiling. From my vantage point far above, I see Donovan shaking me. My head lolls back, my eyes open but glazed, my body limp. He runs his hands over me, then shoves them through his hair in desperation. The cords in his neck stand out as he shouts for help. But no one comes.
He must think I’m dying. Or having some kind of seizure. My heart wrenches as I watch his agony, unable to tell him otherwise.
Donovan might act like he wants nothing to do with me other than to bury himself inside my body, but seeing this, I know better. For whatever reason, against all odds, he cares about me. Rejecting him, the confusion over Cooper…I’ve hurt him, and he’s been protecting himself the only way he knows how: by pretending he doesn’t give a crap.
Him. Me. Cooper. All of us are trying to keep him safe. But looking at him right now through the strange double vision of my premonition, I know we’ve failed. Because we can save his life, sure. But that doesn’t do fuck-all to cure a broken heart.
The undertow tugs at me again, sucking me back through the doorway, into the desecrated garden. In the seconds I’ve been gone, the hooded figures have formed a circle around Donovan. Just like the day my parents died, one of them pulls a knife from their robe. I recognize the raw arrogance in the gesture, the undiluted sense of triumph.
It’s my father’s murderer. Still alive and kicking, after all these years.
“Our day has finally come. Non sine sanguine gloria, ” he bellows. And the other figures echo, “No glory without blood.”
Like the doomed band on the Titanic, the musicians are still playing. The cellist drags her bow across the strings, the instrument voicing a raw, guttural note as the leader bares his forearm and slices it with the blade. Blood wells up, and beneath it, half-obscured by crimson, the scroll-and-dagger symbol appears on his skin. It glows the same way the stones did in the Hall of Mirrors, as if lit from within. Looking almost like a?—
No. It can’t be.
Donovan’s arm. The curlicue of ink. The tattoo he never bares in its entirety.
I don’t have time to follow my train of thought to its horrifying conclusion before the rest of the hooded figures follow suit, slicing their forearms. One by one, the symbol materializes on their skin. One by one, they dip their fingers in their own blood. And just like it did in my memory of my parents’ deaths, the scroll-and-dagger emblazons itself in the air.
It burns there, its edges ragged, as the rest of the wedding guests scramble to their feet. I don’t know if they can see the symbol, but they sure as hell can see something. They shove past each other, leaving purses and suit jackets behind. Even the musicians have dropped their instruments and taken flight. Alone among the crowd, Mrs. Grant, Mrs. Fontaine, Mrs. Hernandez, and Ella Campbell stand their ground. Their hands curve through the air, tracing intricate shapes, and their lips move, chanting the same words again and again: Cavea ad tenebras continendas .
I don’t know what it means. But I can see what it does.
Sparks fly from the coven members’ fingers. They flicker, then merge and elongate into chains of fire that stretch toward the Blood Witches, seeking to contain them. To bind them.
Hope ignites within me. The first time I stood in the garden, this didn’t happen. The blood tide rose, and Donovan drowned. No one intervened. Did I change the future by meeting with the coven? Even though I couldn’t tell them the truth about my premonitions, have they come to defend me somehow? To save Donovan and change the course of history?
More than anything, I want to see if they succeed. But as the chains of fire weave through the air, I’m sucked back into the real world once more.
Inside the ring of flames, Donovan kneels on the stones, with me in his arms. As I watch, he lowers his head and presses his mouth to mine, as if his kiss can wake me.
The moment his lips touch mine, the floor beneath us buckles. Cracks spiderweb outward, with us at the epicenter. Bursting through every fracture and crevice, blue light gleams. It’s every color at once: sapphire and navy and cobalt and aquamarine. Haunting and tempting and somehow impossibly familiar, it calls to me. Mine, it whispers.
And I only have one answer. Yours.
Donovan’s jaw drops, clutching me tighter, his face gone pale. And I realize what the blue light reminds me of, with its shifting shades and undeniable allure: his eyes. It’s like a piece of the light is inside him, revealing itself the only way it can.
What in the?—
Inside my head, Cooper speaks, his voice heavy with resignation. Like calls to like, he murmurs. What is done cannot be undone.
The undertow grabs hold of me again, sucking me back into the world of the premonition, leaving the light behind. I land with a thud, my eyes fixed on the circle of hooded witches. An impossible amount of blood drips from their arms onto the ground, flowing toward me, rising like the tide. The chains of fire haven’t bound them. Instead, it’s as if the witches are encased in an invisible bubble. The chains climb it like ivy, searching for a way in, but they can’t penetrate.
But maybe I can.
Donovan’s talking now, gesticulating, demanding to know what’s going on. No one answers him. And I know we’re out of time.
I run for him, the blood tide swirling around my ankles, the coppery scent filling my lungs and the train of my dress dragging behind me. Screaming no and wait and don’t.
I have the unmistakable sense that the leader is staring at me, though I can’t see his face. I can feel his gaze on me, cold and calculating, as he gestures to the Blood Witch next to him. “You,” he says. “Now.”
Their face obscured by their hood, their eyes sunk in shadow, the witch lunges for Donovan, knife held high. And I leap for them, straight through the invisible bubble, knocking their blade out of their hand as we tumble into the sea of blood.
For an interminable, awful moment, my head goes under. Then I’m up, gasping for air, grappling with the witch. Their robes weigh them down, and I scramble on top of them, my hands around their neck, dragging them beneath the surface. I haven’t felt rage like this since I lit the monster on fire. It electrifies every part of me, imbuing my muscles with more strength than I ought to have.
I don’t care what I think I saw on Donovan’s arm. They’re not going to kill him before I have answers.
The witch fights, twisting beneath me, slippery with blood. Their hood slips back, baring their face. And then I gasp, shock and fury reverberating through my limbs in equal measure.
The man beneath me—the Blood Witch who was about to take Donovan’s life—is no stranger. I’d know his blue eyes and the sardonic twist of his mouth anywhere.
Cooper.