Chapter 58
Chapter
Fifty-Eight
“Holy shit, Rune,” Donovan says into the silence. “Are you okay?”
I’m about five thousand things right now—terrified, stunned, confused, relieved. Okay doesn’t begin to make the list. “Wh-what—” I gaze around me, trying to make sense of what’s happened. “Are you okay? She was ch-choking you…”
“You saved me.” He smiles, a huge, beautiful grin that lights his eyes. “I have no clue what’s going on here, except that you were telling the truth all along. You can see the future, Rune. You tried to warn me. And I’m so sorry I didn’t listen.”
“You believe me?” My voice shakes. It makes sense, though, right? Mina lifted the curse. But how did I freeze all of these people? How did my curse invert like this?
Donovan looks stricken. “I should have believed you from the start. I don’t understand why I wouldn’t listen. When I try to think of it, it’s all foggy…” He runs a hand through his hair. “I’ll apologize more later, I promise. When we’re not in the middle of the goddamn apocalypse. Mina—my grandmother —” His gaze roves over her prone body, then over the Blood Witches and the paralyzed crowd. “What the hell happened? And why are all of them…like that…and I’m fine?”
“I-I’m not sure. She reversed my curse. And I-I just wanted them to stop hurting you…” I wrap my arms around my body, trying to hold myself together. Around me, the exposed ley lines bubble and surge. Their pull echoes inside me, a magnetic draw that has me edging closer to them, away from my sanctuary at the epicenter of the quake.
Donovan’s eyes narrow. “Where are you going?”
“I just want to touch them.” My voice is low, filled with yearning. The lines call to me, their energy a crooning, alluring siren song. If I could dip my hands into them, let that energy flow through me, everything would be all right.
I’m meant for them, and they are meant for me. We are a perfect circuit. If I could only?—
“I don’t think you should do that. Whatever the hell is in these ley lines, they made everyone lose their shit, until you stopped them. Look.”
I tear my gaze away from the shifting blue light, taking in the Blood Witches and the residents of Sapphire Springs. All of them, including Charlotte, are still frozen. Only their eyes shift back and forth, glazed with panic. They may be unable to move, but they’re still in there. Trapped.
“I need to save Charlotte and the Sinsters,” I say, edging closer still to the ley lines that surround me. “To set them free, without doing the same to the Blood Witches. If I let the power of the lines run through me, I know I can do it. The lines will show me, Donovan. They’ll teach me. You’ll see.”
He shakes his head, taking one tentative step toward me, then another. Through the glowing light, I can see him setting his jaw, squaring his shoulders. No matter what the ley lines might do to him, he’s determined to reach me. And if he does, he’ll stop me from knowing what it’s like to bathe in that blue energy. From becoming what I’m meant to be.
“Your brother,” I blurt. “You need to check on him.”
“Shit, Cooper .” Donovan spins, catching sight of Cooper, who’s as frozen as the rest of them, eyes wide open, staring up at the sky. It’s ablaze with red and orange, the sun still above the horizon but sinking fast. “Don’t do anything reckless, Rune, okay? Just wait. I’ll be right back.”
He picks his way over the buckled ground, through the Blood Witches’ immobilized bodies—some on their feet, some on hands and knees, some on the ground—careful to step over the exposed ley lines as he goes. And I seize my chance.
Leaning forward, I plunge my hands into that glowing blue light. My fingers sink beneath the surface of the earth, into a wellspring of pure power. It shoots through me, traveling up my arms, heating me as it goes, until finally it connects with the pool of light that lives within me—filling it, overspilling it, flooding me with energy the likes of which I’ve never felt before.
My head goes back and I let out a roar that shakes my entire body. I can’t contain this power. It’s too much. I’m glowing, just like Cooper was—that blue light spilling forth from every single pore. I've become the light, nothing but a vessel for its power. And I understand what Cooper meant when he said it could drive people mad. The energy inside me is too big for my skin. It seeks an outlet. It wants to be used.
My head snaps left, as if controlled by a force outside of my body. Your mother was a persuasio , I hear Ethan whispering. And then I know.
I am a seer, yes, just as Cooper said I was. But I am so much more. I hold my mother’s persuasive power within me, and it is that power Mina bound when she cursed me years ago. When she lifted the curse, it didn’t just mean that people would finally believe me when I foretold the future. It meant that I could claim my legacy. The one that, with a word, has the power to bring the Blood Witches down.
This is why my mother’s murderers muzzled her, why they wouldn't let her speak. This is why my parents were killed.
I know this power is dangerous, that in the wrong hands it could do terrible damage. But with the blue light of the ley lines throbbing through every vein and artery, demanding to be used, reason eludes me. Dimly, as if from a great distance, I hear Donovan screaming my name. With my hands plunged deep into the closest ley line, I can feel his footsteps shake the ground as he abandons Cooper and runs for me. But none of that is enough to make me stop.
“People of Sapphire Springs!” I howl, wrenching my hands free and rising to my feet. The earth cracks beneath me, the grass tearing loose in chunks beneath the orange light of the setting sun. Every blade glows blue, every root illuminated with that uncanny light. Above the crowd, the sigil of the Blood Witches crackles and spits, blazing sapphire, then red, then sapphire again.
“Claim your power!” I scream, the words ripping free from my throat, amplified so loudly, they ring in my ears. “Rise, and stand against the Blood Witches once and for all!”
It's not my voice, but the voice of the ley lines themselves. The voice of the power that’s fed the witches of Sapphire Springs for centuries—that runs deeper and wider, branching out to supply the entire country. We’ve been buried for so long, the lines whisper. Set us free, Rune. Use us, as we were meant to be used. As only you can do.
For an instant, nothing happens. And then I see it: the blue power of the lines shooting like lightning across the grass, following an unerring path toward the crowd. I watch, caught between wonder and horror, as that blue light finds Charlotte and winds around her ankles, crackling upward until it encircles her entire body. It does the same to DeAndre, to Mrs. Garcia and Mrs. Hernandez, Mrs. Grant and Ella Campbell, Jenny and Gracie. And then, as one, they charge across the space that separates them from the Blood Witches, trampling heedless over clods of earth and glowing crevices. Except?—
I’d forgotten the fact that many of the residents of Sapphire Springs have Blood Witch heritage. And my command—it hadn’t been specific. Mad with the power of the ley lines, those who possess Coven heritage are attacking those with latent Blood Witch power. And the Blood Witches themselves—well, they live in Sapphire Springs, too . They’ve unfrozen and are flinging spells at each other left and right, cutting themselves with jagged rocks to channel the power of their blood, encased in the same blue light as everyone else. The air reeks of blood and fire.
“Rune!” Donovan screams over the melee, trying desperately to hold Cooper back from gouging out Georgia’s eyes. “You have to stop this!”
Why aren’t they attacking him? His father was a Blood Witch. Is it because he’s a null?
The power of the lines surges up my throat, making it hard to speak. “I c-can’t,” I manage. “The lines are hungry. They’re so, so hungry. All they want…is to feed…and I…”
The words end in a shriek as the blue light wraps around my throat, throttling me. Whereas before, the power felt good, flooding me with life and strength and energy, now it’s gnawing at me. It’s like I’m a wick, and the power of the external ley lines and the pool of blue light that glows within me are consuming me from both ends. Soon, there will be nothing left. I’ll burn myself out, a victim of their endless, inexhaustible hunger, and everyone in this meadow will go on destroying each other. Everyone but Donovan, who’s somehow immune. When they all lie dead, the ley lines’ power will move outward, seeking more people with magical gifts to control. Cooper was right—I’ve been a fool.
I fall to my knees, fighting for air. My eyes drift shut, the blue light illuminating the darkened world behind my lids. Premonitions flicker past like images on a movie screen: a tiny girl with brown curly hair and Donovan’s eyes, a meadow strewn with bodies, Charlotte’s daughters sitting with Jess around a table with an empty chair. Tears stream down my cheeks.
I can’t let this happen. “S-stop,” I try to say, but the invisible hand around my throat tightens and all that escapes is a puff of air. My body sparks, a column of blue fire.
I’m going to die. Right here, like this. And all of this will be my fault.
And then I see Donovan, striding through the chaos, backlit by the blue glow that emanates from the struggling bodies and bubbles up from the ground. Coming straight for me.
I want to tell him to stop. To stay away. But I can’t get out a single word.
He steps right over the crackling ley lines. The energy doesn’t reach for him, doesn’t touch him as he falls at my side.
“Rune.” His voice is inches from my ear. “I’m here. You’re safe. Now stop this.”
“I-I?—”
He wraps his arms around me, and I wait for the fire to take him too. To devour him and leave him a husk at my feet. But instead I feel myself start to steady, feel the grip of the ley lines begin to loosen just a little bit.
Sweet purple ponies. He is grounding me.
That electricity that has coursed between us since the moment we met—it’s been our energies, trying to equalize. Now, with the curse lifted?—
He’s not a null, not really. His gift is to render mine neutral. To keep me safe.
We were always meant to be.
“Stop this,” he whispers again, holding me close. “I know you can do it.”
I grip his arm for dear life, dig deep inside me for strength, and raise my voice, fighting the loosening chokehold of the light. “Stop fighting!”
All around me, at my command, people step away and let each other go. And in that moment, I feel it: Donovan’s energy moving through me, calm and cool as still water. It slips along the ley lines, moving toward the Blood Witches, seeking them out. With Donovan wrapped around me like this, I see the Witches’ energy in the network of the lines, red pinpricks in the web of blue light. And I feel it, too, when Donovan’s gift reaches them and neutralizes their power.
One by one, the red pinpricks wink out as the lines absorb the Blood Witches’ magic, gathering it back into its source. One by one, the Witches howl in agony, crumbling to the ground. And one by one, the ley lines settle under the influence of Donovan’s energy, the blue light sinking back into the earth and the crevices knitting themselves together.
We sit at the epicenter of the destruction, clutching each other, as darkness falls on the meadow at last.