Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Free will is not the freedom to rule. It is the obligation to answer for what you choose.
Choice, free will, and humanity were gifts.
Sometimes we got it right; many times we didn’t.
The news was full of power-hungry people who thought nothing of trampling on others if it got them their desired outcome.
But if you looked closer, deeper, beneath the greed, there was hope.
Threads of wonder and small acts of kindness.
The trick for the future was to nurture those moments, to hold them up to the generations that come long after us as a way of guaranteeing our future survival.
Eloise stood for everything that was wrong in this world and had successfully created a ripe cesspit of fear, terror, and uncertainty.
Nobody could deny the presence of the supernatural now.
It was clear that it was too late to put the monsters back in the box.
Governments have always known we existed, and it’s been a long, uneasy truce that we would stay in the dark to protect our peace and theirs.
Eloise turned all of that on its head. I had no idea what lay ahead, but I couldn’t allow what she had planned to come to pass.
I stared at the women in a loose circle around me, who had shaped my life and my values, given me strength, and gifted me acceptance.
This is what my grandmother had turned her back on.
For me, losing them would wrench something so fundamental in my core being, I would be untethered in an unstable world.
I didn’t understand, but then again, I didn’t have designs on ruling the world.
“Are we absolutely sure?” Stella asked. “Once we do this, it cannot be undone.”
I stared at Liz, since the weight of this impacted us both. For me, less so given my mother had long since passed, but it would affect my own children. However, if we didn’t intervene, there wouldn’t be a world left for them to come to anyway.
“I’m sure,” I declared.
Liz swallowed and nodded. “Yes.”
We stood in my garden, the lawn still stained with Roberts’ blood. We didn’t want to hide what we were doing—we wanted it felt, answered, and understood.
“Then let’s do this,” Sophia said with a rub of her hands like she was warming up her magic.
“Wait,” I whispered. I closed my eyes and tugged on the borrowed magic linking me to a god.
“Now?” he asked in my mind.
“Yes.”
“I won’t interfere,” he warned.
“Understood.”
“Is that the god of death? Because, damn,” Dayna said.
My eyes fluttered open, finding Donn stalking toward us from the tree line, his silver eyes flashing in the moonlight. He had shed his regular clothes, opting instead for the billowing black fabric, which twisted with his shadows as he moved. He was lethal, precise, and utterly terrifying.
“Now, we are ready,” I told them.
Liz stepped into the circle, and we tightened our unit, not quite touching but enough that our magic could connect. It didn’t fight us, and that was the first sign we were doing something right.
We didn’t gather candles or chant words stolen from dead languages. We stood barefoot on the ground that had witnessed the severing of the blood bond and was fed by the dead I had protected.
Liz lowered to her knees, spine straight, hands resting on her knees. She looked calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that came from having already accepted the worst possible outcome and deciding to proceed anyway.
This could go so badly, with the consequences being death. But inaction would be so much worse.
“Repeat it,” Liz said. This was part of the declaration. The universe had to be sure of our intention here, and restating it would avoid any confusion and unwanted results.
I met her trusting gaze. “This doesn’t undo what’s passed. You drained your father, and that remains true.”
Her jaw flexed. “And my mother?”
“She no longer has a claim over you, but the bond remains. You can’t sever motherhood; you can only redirect it,” Dayna said, voice steady as she wove the magic tight.
Sophia’s hair lifted with the power settling around us. It was the quiet call of ancestors to witness our call. “You’ll be given a choice,” she said. “Not obligation. Not inheritance. Choice.”
Liz exhaled slowly. “And that choice points upward.”
“To Eloise,” I confirmed.
Stella’s head tipped back, eyes unfocused, gaze flicking through timelines only she could see. She remained silent, a scribe for the future and a caution from the past. She was our anchor, a warning if we took a wrong turn.
Liz rolled her shoulders once and nodded. “Do it.”
I pressed my palm to my heart, mirroring Stella, Dayna, and Sophia. We drew upon our Roberts’ power, the stacking of elemental magic that made us. The magic moved between us like a hinge unlocking.
Liz gasped, her body jerking as something inside her twisted sharply, violently, then aligned. It wasn’t power flooding in—it was direction changing paths, a compass needle snapping north.
Her breath shuddered. “I feel her,” Liz whispered.
The ground beneath our feet groaned, and wards flickered along the boundary. Spirits stirred and turned to watch what was unfolding.
“And she felt that,” Sophia muttered.
Stella spoke. “Yes.”
The temperature dropped. The air misted with our breaths. Shadows stretched, pooling where they shouldn’t, curling like fingers around the edges of reality.
Eloise appeared, but not in the flesh. Hers was a stolen essence, her form shifting with each of her steps as she closed the distance between us with her face a picture of thunder. She knew.
“You’ve been busy,” she said, voice echoing around us. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you rearranging my inheritance?”
The souls she had trapped whispered in my mind, a plea for help and release. Their tethers shuddered as Eloise lashed out, agitating them, shaking the bindings that held them hostage.
Memories lashed out.
Dayna screamed, clutching her head. Sophia dropped to one knee, breath tearing from her lungs. Stella bled from the nose, eyes still fixed on futures unraveling too fast to catalogue.
I stood still and tall, displaying the granddaughter she’d shaped with cruel words and punishment. I didn’t shield myself, allowing Eloise to hit me full force. This was part of the plan.
Donn leaned forward from the shadows, the silver in eyes shifting like the tides as he waited for the destruction of me, of her. One of us would not leave here tonight.
Her power slammed into me, oily and invasive, crawling over my senses like rot. I tasted blood and heard the dead whispering in overlapping voices, accusations and pleas tangling together. I locked my knees in place. Come on, Grandmother, you know what you need to do to win.
Eloise glowered, and her form sharpened and solidified. That’s right. You’re winning. The living can’t touch you.
“You thought you could bind me with my sins?” she whispered. She’d incorrectly read what we’d done tonight. Good. “Child, I am made of them.”
That’s what I was counting on.
I caught Donn’s gaze. He nodded once, and a slow smile crept over his face. It was a thousand times more terrifying than anything Eloise could say or do.
Liz cried out as the altered curse answered her call. Eloise staggered at the same time Dayna whispered a spell, locking Eloise in reality. No running. No retreat. This ends now.
The stolen souls sucked in a breath as Donn’s power leaked from Eloise to me. I welcomed in the dark and yanked on their restraints.
They turned, focused, rage built and twisted into readiness.
Eloise screamed as Liz pulled from her mother, draining her of the power she had abused for too long.
“Elizabeth Roberts, how dare you?” Eloise snapped.
Liz’s head snapped up, her eyes glowing as generations of Roberts women lent their stacked power to a worthy vessel. One not corrupted by greed and evil.
“I made you,” she snarled.
“Then you only have yourself to blame,” Liz growled back as she rose on shaky legs.
Eloise lowered to the ground, her hands grasping the grass. My heart paused, a moment of hesitation for an act which would leave a stain on my soul no matter the justification.
Eloise’s aura fractured, cracks of ghost light spider-webbing across her form as the veil tightened like a courtroom closing its doors. “This isn’t over,” she snarled, fury bleeding through the cracks.
“No, it’s only just begun,” I murmured. It wouldn’t be our power that slaughtered her. Rather, she was to be judged by the sins she thought couldn’t touch her.
I reached through the veil, my power winding around the thousands of glass jars.
With a scream, I shattered them into millions of pieces.
The souls hurtled toward their imprisoner and attacked.
Each one passed through Eloise’s chest, taking back what she had stolen, and inch by inch, the powerhouse of a woman we had feared became an accumulation of her crimes.
Hudson appeared from the shadows, his scythe swinging in a deadly and final arc as he sent those robbed of their afterlife into their next destination.
My grandmother’s face never showed a single sign of regret, only resentment for falling for the trap we set. She was vulnerable, powerless, and stripped of anything that ever made her extraordinary.
I swallowed thickly as I merged my angelic half with my elemental side. Indigo became me, and I became her.
My footsteps were sure as I closed the distance between us, and I lifted my grandmother’s chin, ensuring our eyes met.
My wings flared out, casting us in light, not shadows.
Death was an inevitable part of us. It was as much a wonder as life was, and therefore not something that existed in the dark.
No one was perfect. By our very nature, we made mistakes. It was our intentions that we were judged on.
“You had the gift of choice and the position to champion for change,” I said, my voice settling with layers of power I would never take for granted. “Instead, you abused both. Now you shall answer for your sins.”
Her soul put up a fight as my power curled around it. Every sin, every win, every emotion, every intention—I lived it all in the space of a heartbeat. She was born like all of us, with so much potential for both good and bad, and she chose the latter.
“You don’t have the balls,” she spat.
I smiled and shook my head. “I don’t need balls. As you know, it’s not the males who hold the power in this world.”
She tilted her head back. “Do it.”
I closed my eyes and connected with my father. He answered my call, and the woman I once admired screamed as true terror overtook her.
She was the architect of her own demise.
“Goodbye, Eloise.”
She clawed at the ground, nails tearing into the earth. Her mouth opened, releasing a strangled gasp of fury and disbelief. “You,” she rasped, and for the first time, her eyes looked frightened. “You needed me.”
“I needed you to stop,” I corrected, voice calm and final. “And you never would.” I lifted my hand, and the air shivered around my fingers, veil magic humming like a taut wire. “You are made of your choices.”
Her body convulsed once, twice, then went unnaturally still as if the universe had finally decided it was done bargaining. Eloise’s essence wavered at the threshold, caught between the mortal plane and the darkness beyond.
For a split second, I felt her reach. Not for me, but for anything that would keep her from being judged. Then the veil opened like a mouth, and she was gone.
The world snapped back into place. Wind rushed through the gardens as if the earth had remembered how to breathe. The wards steadied. The stars sharpened. Somewhere far off, a wolf howled, and silence fell over Summer Grove House.
Dayna wiped blood from her lip with the back of her hand, her eyes wild. Sophia stared at the grass where Eloise had kneeled. Liz stood still, chest rising and falling as if she’d run a marathon through hell. She didn’t look triumphant. She looked free.
I glanced down at my hands. They weren’t smeared in blood, but death clung to them all the same. Deep in my ribs, something settled.
A mantle.
A weight.
A truth.
I didn’t want this, but the magic in my veins answered, quiet and absolute.
Cora Roberts—Angel of Death.