Chapter 57
Chapter
Fifty-Seven
The world behind my eyes is bathed in blue light, so intense it’s all I can see. My head throbs in sync with the beat of my heart.
And then a face emerges from the iridescent glow, familiar but much younger: Mina, without her wrinkles and the bitter sadness that pervades every facet of her being.
“Iris,” she whispers, leaning close to me. “So small to have suffered so much. To be so important to so many.”
My hand rises, trying to bat her away. It’s small and chubby, the knuckles dimpled. The hand of an infant, not an adult woman.
This is a memory, I realize, like the one Mrs. Grant was able to evoke. Except this time, I’m inside the body of the baby I was back then. Somehow, Mina’s efforts to lift the curse have brought me back to where it all began.
The blue light flares around Mina’s face as she leans forward to stroke my cheek. Her fingers are rough, leaving an uncomfortable burn behind when she pulls away. “You’re all alone in the world,” she cooes. “But not for long. We’ll find you a good home, don’t you worry. First, though…”
She pricks my tiny finger. It hurts, and a wail erupts from my throat. Murmuring assurances, she draws an X on my forehead with my blood. “Iris Duval,” she says, voice solemn, “your mother and father have passed beyond the veil, but their blood lives on in you. It must not be allowed to speak. Ab incunabulis , I bind your magic. When once it rose, so will it fall.”
Pain bursts from my epicenter, stealing my breath. I scream again, louder this time, and she hushes me, a finger pressed to my lips. “With these words, I lay a curse upon you. You will see, but none will believe. You will speak, but none will listen.” She takes her hands away, guiding them through the air. Again and again, she makes the same shape: a helix, winding tighter and tighter. “Maledicto tibi ,” she says, and the shape flickers into being, branded into the air just like the scroll and dagger. “I hold your magic in my hands, Iris Duval. I strip you of your name and bind your gift to my will. Thus I twist your fate, and set your destiny on another path.”
The pain I felt before was nothing. This is agony, as if someone has taken a giant melon-baller to my center and is scooping out my very essence, ripping my soul free of its tendrils. I’m suffocating, strangling. My body is fire, it is ice, it is shattering and burning all at once and I am screaming, my tiny fists pummeling the air. I’m fighting but I’m so small and there’s no stopping this, not when Mina is chanting and my gift is winding back into itself like one of those old-fashioned cassette tapes, back and back and upside down and inside out and I’m wrong now, everything is wrong, I can’t breathe and the world is broken or maybe I am and my shrieks are ripping from my throat with such force, my mouth tastes like iron, like old blood?—
And then it stops. Everything stops. The chanting, the screaming, the pain. Mina is hovering over me, the helix fading from the air, and inside I am empty, a cold white room, the room I will see again and again in my premonitions for years to come.
“You are ruined,” Mina whispers, her lips against my ear. “You are Rune.”
I want to howl for all I have lost. To punish her for what she’s done to me. But the blue light is flaring brighter now, consuming her. Her face retreats down the tunnel of it, her voice fading as other sounds take its place: Georgia and Jill yelling. The Sinsters chanting. Cooper and Donovan competing to be heard over the melee. Charlotte, shrieking my name. And a cacophony of other voices, filled with horror and desperation. The voices of the residents of Sapphire Springs, all of whom have magic lurking in their veins.
I land back in my body with a thud that jars me to my bones, and find myself in the midst of chaos. The ground is splintered, bubbling with blue light. I struggle to raise my head and see, to my horror, that the members of the crowd have turned on each other. Jenny is shrieking at Mrs. Fontaine, who’s making a concerted effort to get her hands around Charlotte’s throat. Gracie Liu and D’Andre are wrestling in the grass, folding chairs scattered around them. Mrs. Garcia and Ella Campbell lunge at each other just as the ground between them heaves and cracks, glowing blue light erupting from the crevice. They snarl at each other from opposite sides of the divide, and then Mrs. Garcia leaps it, knocking Ella into the grass.
Cooper told me this would happen—that the release of the ley lines’ power would drive people mad. I try to think, to figure out what to do. But I can’t. Pressing my hands to my chest, I struggle to breathe. Something is broken inside of me. It feels like I’m cracking open, the same way the ground is. As if the pool of blue light inside me has caught fire, and my heart is a vacuum, sucking in that fiery light, setting me aflame.
Donovan. Is he still alive? Where is he?
It’s not easy to turn my head, but I manage it—and realize I’m lying at the epicenter of the ley lines’ explosion. The Blood Witches are on one side. On the other is the frenzied crowd.
The devastation on the Blood Witches’ side is far worse—maybe because of the magic they channel. They’re scattered across the grass by the arbor, some of them standing, others lying on the uneven, shattered ground. The light that emanates from the cracks is near-blinding, but I can make out Mina on her hands and knees yards away from the others, blood pouring down her face in sheets. Cooper lies next to her, unconscious but breathing. But Donovan?—
“Rune!”
It’s his voice, thick but unmistakable. Propping myself on my forearms, I catch sight of him crawling toward me, yelling my name. Behind him comes Jill, her expression pure hatred.
I want to tell him I’m all right. But when I try to speak, my throat feels like it’s been scraped raw by the blue fire bubbling inside me. My mouth opens and closes soundlessly, and terror etches its way across Donovan’s features—not for himself, but for me.
Through the blood that coats her face, I see Mina’s eyes lock on mine a moment before she pushes herself to her feet. “ Incantatio fracta !” she screams, her voice tight, pained. “I set you free!” And then she crumples, falling face-forward, and doesn’t move.
Inside me, the blue light roils, the sucking sensation intensifying. The earth heaves again, and a roar fills my ears: the sound of the ocean, of the rush of my own blood, of a thousand screams. And then it all goes still.
My body feels heavier than it should be, weighted and impossibly full. But right, as if for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m not off-balance. As if a piece I’ve always been missing has fallen into place.
I raise my head, that strange sense of peace pervading me. The residents of Sapphire Springs are still brawling. Mina lies dead on the ground. But Jill…in one hand she holds the knife that Cooper used to kill Ethan. Her other hand blazes with blue light. And as I watch, she fits it gently, neatly, around Donovan’s throat.
The other Blood Witches bellow in triumph as she squeezes. Donovan fights, struggling against her, but her strength is superhuman, driven by the ley line magic that floods through her. A maniacal grin spreads across her face, widening as he tries to peel her fingers off and fails. I scream Cooper’s name, but it’s no use; he’s still out. The other Blood Witches are closing in, surrounding Donovan and Jill, their bodies haloed with blue light. Begging the Sinsters for help does no good—the chains of light they’d tried to capture the Blood Witches with have run amok and are now sparking through the crowd of Sapphire Springs residents like downed power lines, igniting rage everywhere they land.
I do the only thing I can think of, useless though it is. “Stop!” I scream, as loud as I can—over the thump of Dave Cassady battering the owner of Sapphire Springs’ sole tattoo shop with a folding chair, the cackles of the Blood Witches, the groaning of the earth as yet another seam of light breaches the surface. “Don’t you touch him!”
I don’t know what I expect to happen. Maybe Jill to give me a mocking smile before she chokes the life out of Donovan once and for all. Maybe nothing at all.
But instead, she lets go.
Donovan staggers back, coughing but otherwise unharmed, his hands going to his throat in disbelief. “Rune?” he says. Says, not yells.
Because around us, everything has fallen silent. No one is screaming or fighting or even moving. Other than Donovan, every single person has become a statue.
Stop, I said. And they did.
It’s the opposite of my curse. Instead of no one believing me, they’re all doing exactly as I said.
Except him.