6. Chapter 6
6
W hen the flare of their combined power softened around the braided coupling ribbon in their hands, now stretched taut between them, Rebecca closed her fist around her end and held on with all her strength for what came next.
She would need it. Every last ounce.
Rowan’s whispered plea in the blended tongues of Xahar’áhsh and their long-gone ancestors heightened, picking up speed and intensity, and the power between them heightened with it.
Energy and strength surged through her before being pulled right back out again to mix with other forces. The rest of Rowan’s spell pulled into their casting circle. Exactly what it was and to whom it had once belonged and where it would go when they were finished with it, she would never know.
But in this moment, until the spell completed, it was hers for fleeting moments. Then it was Rowan’s. Then it was both of theirs, together, like mixing different dyes by pouring the contents of one cup into another, back and forth, mixing and churning and creating something entirely new with each new vessel it entered.
It would be so easy to forget herself entirely within this churning storm of ancient power, fueled by blood ties and history and the birthplace of magic itself.
A tempting thought indeed, but no more possible than forgetting who she was while pretending to be someone else.
She focused on herself, on the knowing not within her mind or her deepest heart but within the very source of her magic.
Within her blood.
As if the thought of such an essential component of life had been forced into her mind by an unseen master, the very same seemed to have been forced into Rowan’s mind as well. His fist clenched furiously around his end of the braided ribbon, trembling in his effort to maintain the connection.
Rebecca didn’t tremble, but her body did give in to the woozy swaying back and forth as the churning power pumped through her, and the smoke filled her lungs, and her head reeled, the whole world spinning around her despite the utter stillness of the trailer.
Still whispering the incantation, his lips moving in a zealous blur and the words no longer distinguishable from incoherent rambling, Rowan reached for the ritual dagger with his other hand. He missed his mark at first, then scooped it up off the floor with a fumbling clatter and scrape.
His constant chanting never broke, never wavered, even when it seemed he could barely raise the dagger for the next step.
Rebecca felt the heaviness in his arm, the strained and trembling muscles, the weakness seeping in to fill the spaces left behind as the coupling ribbon drew the strength of both his physical body and his own unique brand of magic into the spell.
It mirrored her own growing weakness and the dizzying speed with which every steadfast, independent part of her siphoned into the ribbon.
Despite the obvious toll it took to do so, inside and out, Rowan lifted the dagger above his own head, preparing himself for the final act with the whispered old-world incantation Rebecca could no longer hope to follow.
Then he shifted on his knees, which clearly cost him a great deal of effort and energy, until he faced her enough to bring the dagger’s blade up toward her.
A hesitant but still cautiously threatening growl rose behind them for the first time during the ritual. On top of everything she felt within herself and within Rowan, mixing and coalescing and drawing out of them both, her connection to Maxwell made itself known once more.
Anger and alert caution surged against her from behind. Every muscle in her back, from the base of her skull all the way to her tailbone, tensed in readiness. A physically mirrored response to Maxwell’s discomfort.
He thought Rowan intended to harm her with this dagger.
Of course he did. What else could he possibly think?
There was hardly enough room inside her for the emotions and physical sensations and energetic reactions from all three of them at once. But she did her best to focus solely on the shifter while Rowan chanted and held the dagger’s blade with a trembling hand above her head.
If she didn’t do something, Maxwell was sure to break his promise and intervene on her behalf. She recognized his intention to do so with perfect clarity.
She could not let that happen.
Wanting to turn her head and look over her shoulder at her Head of Security, she could only manage a brief, twisting twitch of her head, caught as she was within the spell’s strengthening snare.
She focused her thoughts. On calming Maxwell. On reassuring him that she was unharmed and would remain so. Reminding him that he’d given her his word he would not get involved.
Any sort of thought process in specific words, even in warning, were impossible to conjure, but the meaning and intention behind them would have to be enough.
With her mind hazy and blurred by the smoke and the powerful movement of so much magic within the spell, she couldn’t tell how long anything lasted. Seconds felt like an eternity, and yet, they might have been here for four hours without any of them even knowing it.
Finally, though, the sensation of Maxwell’s need to protect her faded in her muddled awareness, leaving behind the constantly waging battle between the shifter’s concern for her and his renewed hatred for the Blackmoon Elf beside her.
He growled again but remained perfectly still, never having taken the step toward her he’d already been on the verge of taking.
She’d gotten through to him, reminding him of their agreement that had probably made no sense at all until this very moment.
Her muscles relaxed again into the smoke, and the spinning of the room around her, and the constantly whispering background of Rowan’s unending chant. She might have been relieved if she’d had the room left inside her, but she recognized the sensation.
As long as the spell remained intact, all would be well. If they encountered any interruption at all, especially this far into it, the odds of a lot more damage being done to both Rebecca and Rowan, halfway through a ritual like this, were insurmountable.
There was no telling what kind of new hell might be unleashed by their combined power if it was kept from completing its only purpose now—this spell.
Then, finally, Rowan lowered the dagger from above her head and slipped the handle into his other hand, closing his fist around both the cold grip of elven steel and his end of the coupling ribbon at the same time. When his free hand trembled again, it had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the increasing effort of maintaining control over his physical body until it was complete.
He swept his open palm across the blade, slicing a long, dangerously deep crimson gash from one side to the other. The patter of the first few drops of blood hitting the trailer floor crashed through Rebecca’s awareness as if someone had dropped a bomb right outside.
Then the dripping rhythm changed tones, from warped and dust-covered linoleum to the ping of his lifeblood falling, drop by welling drop, into the copper bowl in front of them.
Rebecca was hardly aware of herself anymore as she reached across her thighs to offer Rowan her hand next. Her other fist still clenched around her end of the braid had since gone numb, but she knew she still gripped it.
If she let go, their necessary connection would follow suit.
Rowan’s blade slid across her palm like a dream. No pain. No surprise. No welling of blood within the open wound, at first, before a waterfall of crimson poured from her hand. She almost couldn’t manage holding it above the copper bowl.
The second the first drops of her blood entered the vessel to mix with Rowan’s, all physical sensation returned. The ache in her muscles. The constant throb around her knees after having knelt like this far longer than she’d thought. The sharp, piercing fire of the open wound in her palm. All of it came rushing back at once, along with most of her strength and ability to think.
Her head stopped spinning enough to remind her of what she knew came next, that the rest was up to her, and that it had to be done now.
Drawing a deep, stabilizing breath, she squeezed her hand into a fist as Rowa did the same. Streams of thick crimson fell from both of them into the spell’s final vessel.
So much power within the blood, all of it pouring from inside her with unnatural speed and thickness, as if now this bowl siphoned it from her body like the ribbon had drawn at her magic.
It occurred to her now that if anything went wrong, if she wavered, this vessel would end up draining every ounce of blood from her body until she was nothing but a dried-up husk on the floor.
When Rowan finally stopped squeezing his own fist, she did the same, as if she’d had no choice in the matter anyway.
Then he grasped the bowl in one hand, maintaining their connection with the rope, and the whispers of his chanting exploded into a booming gong of command and power in a voice that was no longer his own.
The words crashed through the trailer in a way that made it seem as if the solid walls, floor, and ceiling were made of water rippling beneath the erupting power.
In one swift motion, Rowan rose up on his knees, shouting the final words with the tone and timber of someone else’s voice, and raised the copper bowl toward the mirror. When he upended the vessel over the top of the antique frame, more blood than Rebecca remembered offering—more blood than there should have been from the two of them combined—cascaded over the delicately curved copper lip and down the front of the mirrored glass in a wash of thick, glowing red.
The river of blood became a pond of it on the floor, spreading several inches in a perfect circle but spreading no farther than the containment line Rowan had drawn in chalk to keep it penned in.
And still, there seemed to be more blood coating the mirror than what had already streamed to the floor.
They were almost finished.
Rebecca rose off her heels as well and joined the Blackmoon Elf, each of them using the fingers of their cut hands—the wounds no longer bleeding—to draw the necessary symbols across the crimson-washed glass, all while maintaining the coupling ribbon’s ever-present connection between them.
She knew which symbols to draw and exactly where to place them despite never having performed this ritual herself. She knew every step of this spell she’d promised herself never to cast.
The knowledge returned to her as if she’d spent her entire life studying how to do such a thing.
At one point, so long ago, she might have said she’d done just that.
The second they finished drawing the final symbols together in sync, as if with one mind, the roaring crack of Rowan’s final invocation and command filled the trailer like roaring thunder, shaking the crooked walls and the warped, peeling floors.
The flimsy ceiling shifted, loosing a showering cascade of gathered dust, dry leaves and twigs, and chips of splintered wood. None of it landed on the spellcasters or anything beside them inside the bounds of the outer casting circle.
Before the unnatural echo of Rowan’s last word in ancient elven fully faded, she knew it was over.
The ritual was complete.
Rebecca sagged backward onto her heels again with a heaving sigh of relief and effort, her strength and awareness fully returned to the here and now once more. Hers and hers alone. The grip of the burning fiti’iní smoke and the spell and their intentions released its hold over her, and she was herself again. Present. Alert. Her heart still pounding against her ribs in the ensuing silence.
The only indications that the spell remained in effect were the pool of blood around the base of the mirror, contained within an unnatural boundary of thin lines of chalk, and the still-glowing braid of the ancestors stretching from her closed fist to Rowan’s.
Though it no longer drew at her magic in the same way, nor pulsed with the light of their magic combining for such an explicit purpose, she had to keep her grip on the macabre ribbon made of the dead, to maintain that connection until they were completely finished.
The spell had been cast, but they had yet to see the product of it, and that was the most important part.
Beside her, Rowan also sat back on his heels again, his eyes closed as he focused now on calming his breath and regaining his composure after their ordeal.
The trailer filled with a pregnant silence of expectation. Even Maxwell waited where he stood, without sound or movement, watching everything and listening. Just as she’d instructed.
He made no noise, but she felt him there all the same, ready and alert for whatever came next.
What came next was the greatest risk of all, completely out of their control now.
The spell was complete, but the hardest part was waiting for the call to be answered.
She couldn’t imagine the call would go unanswered . The Bloodshadow Court had been looking for her for so long, they would drop everything and jump at the chance to speak with her face to face—or as close to it as this spell provided. None of them could resist the notion of finally making contact to learn exactly where Rebecca had been hiding all this time.
She had no doubt that once it was over, the Council would take all the credit for having made the connection in the first place, despite their side of the spell requiring zero effort of their own in comparison.
They would respond, because after centuries of waiting and searching and convincing themselves the Bloodshadow Heir still remained under their control despite their inability to find her, they wouldn’t hesitate for a second to pull out the big guns and use every trick in the Bloodshadow book to bring her home again.
They just didn’t yet understand that Rebecca’s proverbial guns were bigger, her book of tricks vastly more complex after everything she’d experienced and learned over the centuries. She’d learned from the best.
And all the while, the Court and the Council had wallowed in their own stagnant view of reality in her absence and called it fate and duty, maybe even victory, congratulating themselves for it at every turn.
This line of thought rankled in the back of her mind until the swelling urge to release her and of the coupling ribbon and call the whole thing off just to spite them made her force her attention to the streaks of blood across the mirror. To the ancient symbols she and Rowan had drawn there instead.
They’d already come this far. The spell was done and had taken effect. There was no turning back before they had their answer.
The seconds ticked by with such agonizing slowness, adding more and more tension to the room and this interminable wait, that when her pulse finally stopped rushing in her ears and even the slightest tremble of her exhausted muscles quieted beneath her fully returned strength, a new fear wormed itself into her mind.
It wasn’t supposed to take this long.
If the call remained unanswered, this had all been for nothing.
And if that were the case, it meant the Court and Council had already made their decision and would uphold it, no matter what.
It meant Rebecca had sacrificed too little, too late. That she’d missed her opportunity to hold them at bay for even just a little longer.
But a little could go a long way for her right now. All she needed was a little more time to come up with a new plan for keeping Shade safe and holding most of the damage at bay. This was the only way to buy herself that time, but if she didn’t get it, she had nothing.
And neither did the task force under her command and her protection.
The burning ache of concern and anticipation morphing into anxiety and tightening around her chest would have brought her to tears any second now, but then something along the mirror’s blood-streaked surface moved.
Maybe it was wishful thinking. Maybe she wanted so badly for this to work, as her last resort, that her mind had conjured movement all on its own.
But no…
That first rippling swirl in the center of the red-coated mirror was no hallucination or wishful mirage. Then the ripples spread like growing waves moving ever outward across the surface of a pond, away from the original disturbance.
When the blood across the mirror and the mirror itself began to glow, Rebecca’s fear vanished.
It had worked. They’d cast the spell, they’d made contact, and the call was being answered right here, right now.
She felt Maxwell realizing the same, or at least understanding that something new was happening, before his alert concentration intensified.
It reminded her with painful clarity of what still lay ahead. The shifter might still think the worst of it was behind them now, and as far as Rebecca’s physical safety was concerned, he would have been correct.
But though Rebecca did have her fair share of physical scars from the old life she’d fled, some scars could not be seen or felt from the outside.
Some scars left no visible or palpable mark behind at all. Most of hers, in fact.
When that mirror stopped rippling and swirling in front of her to reveal what awaited her on the other side, all those scars—unseen but no less devastating, whether fresh or centuries old—would be ripped right open again and offered up on display for everyone.
And if she wanted anyone to survive the experience, she would have to grit her teeth and bear the agony of it for all of them.