Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Be careful what power you take and what power you forsake. One will crown you, while the other will curse you.
The nervous murmurs of the crowd floated around us, but all I could see was the woman who treated me like a tool and a weapon, never as a granddaughter.
She raised a perfectly plucked brow. Eloise Roberts oozed class and elegance, but that didn’t make up for her lack of humanity. “Hosting the solstice and not inviting your grandmother is poor manners, Cora.”
Power radiated from her, one I now recognized as Donn’s. Don’t get too comfortable, Eloise. Soon, that borrowed power will be back with the god you made a deal with.
I shrugged. “Must have got lost in the mail.”
She didn’t stop to think about what Donn’s intentions might be or the ramifications of such an exchange.
She had her sights set on becoming the ultimate ruler and had convinced herself of her own lies.
Eloise Roberts truly believed in her wicked soul that she was uniting the world under her guidance to usher us into a better future.
I’m sure historical dictators also felt the same way.
She took in her sister and daughters. “Yet the rest of the family is here.”
I gave a slight nod to Dayna. Let’s get this show on the road. Hudson prowled around the circle, keeping in the shadows as his beast rose to the surface, ready to intervene should this go sideways. Spoiler alert—it always went sideways. The real trick was in how you handled it.
I’d lowered the wards to let in all the people tonight, which left my property, myself, and my family and friends more vulnerable than I liked. But it was a calculated risk. Before this night was over, Eloise Roberts would be untethered.
My grandmother squinted at me. “What are you planning, Cora? You cannot compete with a god.”
I grinned as the gleam of blades surrounding us shone in the moonlight. I pulled my own from my thigh. “I’m not competing with a god though. Before me is a weak woman who is trying to grasp power from any source, consequences be damned.”
Eloise tilted her head. “If I were weak, I would be dead already. Not even Lucifer can touch me. You can’t fight against the power of darkness.” She tipped her head back to the sky and closed her eyes. “It’s raw, connected to something ancient and forgotten, but ready to be unleashed.”
“You are correct. But your core power is in your bloodline. Funny how we stumbled across a grimoire with the musings of a once logical and rational woman who genuinely wanted good for the world. That woman was honest and raw.”
My grandmother went still, and the silence surrounding us stretched taut. “Impossible. My personal grimoires are in my private collection. I took you for a lovesick fool, not a liar.”
Liz tutted. “You can’t erase history, Mother. Surprise, surprise, your insistence on punishment led to a photographic memory of the words you wouldn’t let us recite.”
“But we learned the hard way to store armor for a rainy day, to gather the weaknesses of our enemies,” Dayna added.
Eloise spun in a circle and pointed at her sister and daughters. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Dave handed Liz the grimoire in question, and she held my grandmother’s gaze as she recited the passage in question. The crowd took a collective step back, recoiling from the power swirling in the air but unable to look away.
“The Roberts curse, born from a jealous woman, ensured that any person a Roberts woman fell in love with could hold her power in their hands and ultimately make her powerless if they wished.”
Eloise scoffs. “Old news.”
Liz ignored her. “But Eunice Roberts changed the course of the curse, reversing the power exchange. When she became pregnant, that child drained the power of her father instead, who perished at her birth. Her name was Eloise.”
“Still no new revelations, daughter. What is your point?”
Liz’s eyes flicked up, and she lowered the grimoire. “My point is, you were the beginning of a separate bloodline, and when you further twisted the curse so that it was replicated in the firstborn of each generation, you began the process of severing the ties to what makes a Roberts a Roberts.”
“I am the strongest Roberts,” Eloise snapped.
I straightened my spine and snapped my fingers to get her attention.
“Actually, you are the weakest. You relinquished your generational magic for greed, and now it’s time for us to clean house.
Being born a Roberts doesn’t entitle you to our power.
It is about upholding the morals and values of our bloodline—the one you rejected with your twisted manipulations. ”
My wings unfurled from my back, casting shadows over the ground. Eloise’s throat bobbed as she witnessed the true extent of them for the first time.
“I can squash you like a fly, Cora. Do not test me.”
Her power arced in a sizzling wave, and it fell across my face like a whip. My tongue snaked out, tasting blood. Indigo lifted her head and narrowed her gaze, her revulsion clear as she examined Eloise’s soul and confirmed what we already knew. My grandmother was rotten to the core.
Liz lifted her hand and made the first cut across her palm. My grandmother froze. “Eloise Roberts, I denounce you from the Roberts bloodline. I sever ties with you, and you alone.”
Eloise shook her head. “You wouldn’t dare,” she snarled.
Dayna sliced her hand in the same manner. “Eloise Roberts, I denounce you from the Roberts bloodline. I sever ties with you, and you alone. You are no mother of mine.”
Eloise growled, and a pulse of dark power crawled in from between the trees, taking advantage of the weaker wards.
Aunt Stella and Aunt Anita repeated the action, each dropping blood onto the freshly cut flowers at their feet.
Sophia was the final Roberts on the pentagram.
Her silver hair shimmered in the moonlight as she pressed the blade to her palm without flinching.
“Eloise Roberts, for every sin you have stitched into our name, for every drop of blood you’ve spilled in its pursuit of power, I sever you from the Roberts line.
You are no longer a sister to me.” The last words struck like thunder.
The pentagram burned white, then gold. Light exploded outward, rolling over the crowd in a shockwave that rattled the windows of both houses.
Eloise screamed, the sound splitting the air. Her features faltered, and I glimpsed beneath the glamor. Her eyes blackened, her veins pulsing with the foreign power she’d bartered for but could not wield. It consumed her from the inside out. No mortal was meant to house a god’s power.
“You think you can cast me out?” she hissed. “You will beg me to take you back when you realize I am the only one who can save us all.”
“We wouldn’t need saving if it weren’t for you,” I snapped while I scored my palm. “Eloise Roberts, I sever—”
Her hands rose. The ground cracked, and lava burst through the earth and headed straight for me. I flung up a wall of water that hissed as it met her fire, the collision sending steam roaring through the night.
“Cora!” Hudson shouted from beyond the circle. Keverin’s snarl rippled through his chest as his beast fought to break free.
Eloise cackled. “Even with your family and your friends, you are no match for me.”
I held my ground. Power surged from the pentagram, feeding me through the link of our bloodline.
Indigo’s voice rippled through me, ancient and hungry, coming out multilayered and utterly terrifying.
“Eloise Roberts, I, the last of your line, sever all ties with you and rejoin my blood. You no longer have access to family or power. You are alone, adrift, and abandoned.” I drove the blade into the center of the circle, releasing a blast of light that sent Eloise staggering back.
The flowers burst into flames, joining the spilled blood and beginning the process of the severing.
Eloise laughed, wild and terrible. “Foolish girl. Did you think I came alone?” The air ruptured, and dozens of spectral forms spilled from the night, half-formed shadows with hollow eyes and screaming mouths. The remnants—souls Eloise had caged and twisted to her will.
They poured toward us, trailing the stench of burned ozone. The crowd scattered, screams echoing across the lawns. Hudson shifted mid-stride, his body fracturing into fur and fang as he met the first wave. Sebastian’s blade flashed beside him.
I threw out my arms and called to the river. Water answered, ripping through the broken wards like a living serpent, crashing into the remnants and scattering them like ash.
Eloise strode through the chaos untouched, her gaze fixed on me. “You can’t win, child. I carry his power.”
I smiled, blood streaking down my cheek. She hadn’t realized yet that while she manipulated the remnants, I could command them. “That’s the difference, Grandmother. You carry borrowed power while I own mine. Yours can be taken. Mine cannot.”
“Like hell.” Her snarl split the night, and then she was on me, her hands crackling with black fire.
Pain lanced through my ribs as she struck, sending me skidding across the dirt.
My wings flared instinctively, catching me before I hit the ground.
There was something holding me back from lashing out, a genetic quirk that made hurting family almost impossible.
Liz, Dayna, Stella, Anita, and Sophia stepped inside the pentagram and joined hands, their cut palms glowing gold.
Their combined power surged through the spell, striking Eloise in the chest. She screamed as the light consumed her, her silhouette twisting and warping until, with a sound like breaking glass, she vanished.
Silence fell. Shattered, smoking, holy silence. The pentagram pulsed once and dimmed. My aunts dropped to their knees, breath ragged. I stood in the center, heart hammering, tasting iron and salt on my tongue.
Hudson crashed through the circle, his claws half-shifted, his eyes wild as he reached me. “You okay?”
I nodded, though my vision swam. The first part of our plan had been accomplished. “It’s done. She’s severed.”
But even as the words left my mouth, the air around us shivered. A whisper curled through the smoke—Eloise’s voice, distant but unmistakable.
“You’ve cut me from your bloodline, little girl, but you can’t cut me from destiny.”
The moon dimmed, the temperature plummeted, and every flame on the grounds guttered out.
Hudson met my gaze as the last light died. “She’s still here?”
I shook my head. “No, that’s not her. That’s something entirely different.”
The night answered with a single echoing heartbeat that wasn’t mine.