Chapter 33 #3
“The curse is too complex,” Iris said. Her hands were shaking over the bark. “I thought with the convergence point clean, with the blood and the right spell… but it’s been active for too long. It’s integrated too deeply. I can feel it. It’s woven into your magical core. Into your sense of self.”
“So what do we do?” Zara’s voice was sharp. “We can’t stop.”
“There’s no time,” Iris interrupted. “Look at the bark. It’s starting to regenerate.”
She was right.
The edges of the bark that had been burning away were growing back. Healing. The curse was fighting their attempts to break it by literally rebuilding its anchor.
Silence.
Except for the sound of the bark crackling. The cold fire dying. The curse winning.
Ramona fell to her knees. Hers. She was worthless, even without a curse.
She didn’t really think removing the curse would fix her life, did she?
She’d messed up her entire life all on her own.
A curse hadn’t made her ex-wife have an affair, it didn’t make her try to hex her best friend.
She was a bad person, deep down, and she deserved—
Movement at the edge of the clearing.
They came through the woods like a procession.
Witches in ritual robes. Emerging from the darkness. Silent. Solemn.
Some Ramona recognized from Thornwood Coven. Others she’d never seen before. Except none of them were the inner circle. They weren’t the powerful, prestigious Council members.
They were the outcasts.
The ones who’d been expelled or demoted. The ones who’d questioned the Council’s decisions. The ones who’d been pushed to the margins for being too loud, too different, too much. She recognized them from classes, from The Grimalkin, from Mystic Moon.
“We heard,” one of them said. A woman Ramona vaguely remembered — she’d taught botanical magic until she’d been fired for teaching methods the Council deemed too radical. “Not a call. Just… we felt it. The cleansing. The ritual.”
“We wanted to help,” another added. A man who always wore a low hat in The Grimalkin. “All of us.”
They took positions around the circle.
Ten of them.
Then fifteen.
Then twenty.
And then, as Ramona knelt on the ground, her mouth hanging open in surprise, the High Priestess of Thornwood Coven walked into the clearing. Ramona’s breath caught in her throat. Choked there.
The woman she’d accidentally hexed. The woman whose judgment had expelled her from Thornwood. She walked stiffly, pausing at the edge of the circle.
But here.
“High Priestess,” Eleanor said. She bowed her head. Respectful. Surprised.
“Eleanor.” The High Priestess’s voice was warm.
Gentle. She looked at Ramona. “You’ve done good work here.
The cleansing was expertly performed. The ritual structure is sound.
But you’re right — this curse is too old.
Too complex. Too deeply integrated.” She paused.
“It requires the full strength of a larger coven than your own.”
“I—” Ramona couldn’t find words. Her throat was too tight. “I don’t understand. Why are you helping me?”
“Because my coven needs a strong leader.” The High Priestess moved to the head of the circle.
Slowly, carefully, and with absolute conviction.
“The Council should have investigated your magic. Should have questioned. The Coven should have protected you.” She looked at Ramona with something that might have been regret.
“We failed you. All of us. The whole magical community. We saw you struggling, and we blamed you instead of looking deeper. Let us help you now.”
The witches joined hands.
Twenty-three of them. Twenty-three voices. Twenty-three more sources of power.
Felix stood, cradling a still limp Gerald under his arm. Kashvi and Posey were hunched on either side of him — but standing. “Ramona, the unbinding spell is the only thing strong enough for this kind of curse. Trust me,” he said.
Ramona nodded.
They began to chant an unbinding spell. All of them. Her mother, her sister, the Thornwood Coven, the outcasts, her own coven.
The sound was overwhelming. It wasn’t loud, exactly, not in a volume way. It was overwhelming in its strength, its presence, like the air itself was vibrating, singing.
The power hit Ramona like a wave.
Twenty-three witches channeling energy into the curse-breaking. Amplifying Ramona’s words. Supporting Iris’s unweaving. Feeding magic into the ritual like kindling into fire.
The bark blazed white hot.
Ramona felt the curse beginning to crack. Only small fractures at first. Hairline. Barely there.
Then, gradually, the cracks became bigger, spreading. The magic that had held her down, had bound her for her entire life, was finally — finally! — starting to break apart.
But there was something else.
Something pulling at her. A second binding, intertwined with the first so closely she hadn’t seen it.
The tether.
Felix had been right. An unbinding was stronger than a dissolution. The binding to Zara was unraveling automatically.
Ramona looked across the circle, still frozen in place.
Zara was staring at her. Her face was pale. Her eyes were wide. She was terrified.
Through the tether — still there but fraying — Ramona felt everything: Love like drowning, terror like falling, grief like dying, acceptance.
“Ramona—” Zara’s voice cracked. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”
“I know.” Ramona’s tears were hot on her frozen cheeks. “I know.”
The tether was unraveling fast now. Ramona could feel the threads snapping one by one. Dozens of them. Hundreds. The connection that had been constant for seven weeks, that had let her feel Zara’s presence every moment, that had become as natural as breathing…
It was all disappearing.
In minutes, maybe less, it would be gone entirely.
Zara would be pulled back to Hell.
Ramona would be alone.
“I don’t want to leave you,” Zara said. Her voice was breaking, cracking around the words. “I don’t—”
“I don’t want you to go.” Ramona’s whole body was shaking now. Not from cold but from realization that this was the last time she’d see Zara.
Zara took a step toward her across the circle. “I swear, I’ll find a way.”
“I know.” Ramona’s voice was barely audible. “I know.”
The coven’s chanting grew louder. More insistent. The power was building. Ramona could feel it pressing on her from all sides. The bark was disintegrating. The curse was breaking. The tether was snapping.
Everything happening at once. Everything happening too fast.
Zara reached toward her, and she willed herself to move, even a fraction of an inch. Zara’s knuckles went white around her own. Grasping hands wasn’t enough — she wanted to hold Zara in her arms, but she couldn’t move.
She stared at Zara, trying in vain to memorize her face, the sharp line of her jaw. The way her hair fell around her ears. The exact autumn shade of her eyes. The way she looked at Ramona like she was something precious. Something worth fighting for. Worth crossing back to Hell to save.
She had to believe that last part was true.
“I love you,” Ramona said. The words felt too small, so insufficient, but they were all she had. “And that’s why I have to let you go.”
Zara dipped her chin in understanding.
She spoke the final words of the curse-breaking. Poured everything she had left into them. Every ounce of power. Every drop of will. Everything.
I sever the root from the tree. Her voice rang clear. Strong. I free myself from this burden. I choose my own fate.
The bark exploded.
The sound was deafening, a crack like lightning striking. Light shot straight up in a beam from the center of the circle, white and gold and so bright it seared through Ramona’s closed eyelids.
The curse shattered.
Ramona felt it — twenty-seven years of suppression breaking apart. Finally dissolving. Her magic surging back not like a trickle but like a flood. Like a dam breaking. Pure and clean and so powerful it terrified her.
It was hers.
Finally, actually, hers.
She’d never felt anything like it. Had never known magic could feel like this — responsive, immediate, as natural as breathing.
And then the tether snapped, the connection between her and Zara severing completely.
The constant presence she’d had for seven weeks — the awareness of Zara’s emotions, the knowledge that she wasn’t alone, the feeling of being tethered to someone who chose her — it was gone in an instant.
It was replaced by emptiness. The absence was deafening, worse than any noise.
The darkness started at Zara’s feet. Shadows pooling where there was nothing to cast them, dark and liquid, rising.
Not falling — consuming. They moved like smoke and water, spiraling upward around her in a column that had no source and no end, and Zara stood in the center of it with an expression Ramona had never seen on her face before.
Fear. Real fear. Not the careful professional concern she brought to problems. Something older and more animal than that.
“Zara—”
The shadows were at her waist. Her hands.
Zara’s arm shot out through the dark, reaching. Her fingers stretched toward Ramona across the circle, certain and desperate all at once, and Ramona lunged for her — felt the air where Zara’s hand had been, almost, almost—
“Ramona.” Her voice came from somewhere inside the dark, swallowed at the edges. “I love you. I promise—”
The shadows closed.
Her hand was gone. The circle was empty. The air where Zara had been standing was perfectly still, as if nothing had disturbed it at all, as if she had never been there.
Ramona’s hand was still outstretched. Still reaching for nothing.
She was faintly aware that she was screaming Zara’s name as a pair of arms wrapped around her middle, pulling her back. She kicked and flailed, feral and broken, not caring, not able to care.
Her magic was free. Unfettered. Powerful beyond anything she’d imagined. She could feel it responding to her will, no longer fighting her, no longer sabotaged. The curse was broken.
She didn’t care about that either.
She was finally whole.
And she’d never felt more broken.
A hand was on her brow, and darkness came over her.
The last thing she thought was:
She’s gone.
Zara’s gone.