Chapter 9
A fter fine-tuning the magic circle—the incantation and the spell itself—I still feel that something is off. Unable to put my finger on it, I check and recheck everything, squinting my eyes at my notes, but I just don’t see it. In the end, I just sit there, staring down at the papers with my hands in my hair and ready to scream.
“The starting point of the incantation in the circle is off by a few degrees. With a regular spell it wouldn’t matter, but with a custom spell like this one, even the slightest mistake can make the whole thing blow up in your face. I’ve been there, and I can promise you that it isn’t a pretty sight.”
He stands behind me, looking down at my notes over my shoulder. I let out a yelp and almost topple out of my chair. How did I not notice him sneak up on me? I’m constantly so aware of his presence, and now it leads me to almost fall down face-first.
He chuckles in return, clearly amused by my reaction. He moves to the side of the desk and gathers the papers. He then proceeds to take my pen from my hand, his fingers touching mine and making my breath catch. He seems to hesitate for a fraction of a second before he casually corrects the mistake that I overlooked. It's such a stupid one at that; I almost feel like an idiot for not picking up on it myself.
I’m startled, unable to speak. He gives me a wicked smile while he hands me the pen back, and my chest is about ready to explode.
“You’re not going to stop me?” My voice comes out like a squeak, and I wince at how pathetic it sounds.
“I’m too curious to see what will happen,” he replies truthfully. His hand touches my shoulder, lingering for a brief moment, and my cheeks heat. The usual pull is a gentle nudge, but one that persists far longer than seems possible.
When I finally look at him, he’s gone as quietly as he appeared. “Looks like that is as much of a blessing as I’m going to get,” I mumble to myself. My shoulders sag, and a breath escapes me.
As far as I know, my bathroom has the only standing mirror large enough to double as a portal, so that’s where I head off to. On my way there, I find Sophia at her favorite spot in the center of the garden, reading.
“You figured it out?” she asks, looking up from her book.
“He helped me,” I explain.
“He did?” she questions, her mouth falling open in astonishment, as if she finds this as unbelievable as I did.
“Yes,” I reply with a wide grin. “I’m going to do a trial run first, but I was wondering if you’d want to be there for that as well?” Safety in numbers is what I tell myself for wanting her present for any of this. But the truth is that perhaps she’s slowly starting to get past my defenses after all.
“Of course,” she says, her hazelnut eyes sparkling, and she gets up to follow me. “What are you going to use as a conduit—as a portal?”
“The mirror in my bathroom.” I laugh nervously as impatience tries to take over.
“Perfect indeed.” She chuckles.
Standing in front of the mirror, my mouth feels dry and my hands are clammy. Which doesn’t help with the grip I need to have on the knife for this next part. Sophia looks at me with a pasted-on smile and an expression that asks me if I’m absolutely sure about this. I can’t find it in me to tell her that I’m not. Not really, and I probably never will be. She doesn’t need to know that, I remind myself. She’s only here in case something goes wrong. Even if part of me is glad that I don’t have to do this completely on my own.
I cut the palm of my hand with the knife and use my blood to carefully draw the circle on the surface of the mirror. With one eye on my notes, I carefully speak the spell while already feeling the cut close itself.
With every word that I speak, the circle starts to glow and absorb the blood. The modifications that I made seem to be effective, as the front door of my old home comes into view. The spell itself is strong enough to not need a second circle. Or, at least, that’s the case for the trial run.
Curling and uncurling my fingers, I take a deep breath and try to clear my mind. Acutely aware of how very wrong this could go, I stick my hand through the mirror before I can change my mind. The cold air on the other side feels harsh against my skin. The pressure that I felt last time isn’t present, so I carefully touch the wood of the front door with the tips of my fingers. It feels rough against my skin, and I almost chuckle when I realize that Henry clearly forgot that the wood needs to be sanded every now and then.
Next, I make my hand into a fist, knock on the door, and retract my arm back into the portal. After an ample amount of time passes, a woman opens the door and looks around. There’s a frown on her face, and the woman slightly shakes her head when she clearly concludes it must have been a child playing a prank. It’s what the boys in our neighborhood would do when we were children, after all.
“Looks like it works,” I say as she steps back inside and closes the door with a click. The image starts to fade, and the mirror returns to being just a mirror.
“Do you have any idea how much time you will have?” Sophia asks, her brows pulling in while she clasps her hands together in front of her.
“No.” I avoid looking at her out of fear that I might change my mind and clear my throat. “I’m hoping that whatever time I have will suffice.”
“When do you want to do this?”
“Now?” My reply comes out as more of a question, and I curse silently. I keep my eyes on the mirror in an attempt to not let her see how nervous I am.
“Are you sure?” Sophia sounds as uncertain as I feel.
“Never, but I don’t want to risk him dying if I wait longer than needed.”
“Sounds reasonable.” Sophia sighs, unable to keep the worry out of her voice any longer. “And the sacrifice?”
My hand clenches around the knife. “I know what, I just hope that it will be enough. Can you”—I pause, biting the inside of my cheek—“give me a minute?”
“Of course.” Sophia leaves the bathroom, giving me some space.
So many thoughts race through my head, making it difficult to think straight. I lean my hands against the porcelain sink and close my eyes, taking a few deep breaths to try to focus. Even though I know what I’m going to do—what I have to do—it doesn’t mean that it’s easy.
After a few more seconds, I open the door and gesture for Sophia to come back inside.
“Are you ready?” she asks.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
For the second time in just a few minutes, I cut my hand and redraw the circle with my blood. My voice shakes when I recite the spell, knowing what comes after.
“Fargt ip uran como bliort.
“Dlugar iadnamad adpan.
“Gi gi pah butmani parm rumvi cnila zomeng.”
My raised hand holds the knife tightly, but it’s as unsteady as my voice. Switching the knife over to my non-dominant hand, I turn to the vanity behind me, where the spoon I left there rests. I retrieved it from the storage room earlier when I realized I needed something that wouldn’t risk me ending up with permanent brain damage.
The silver reflects the light almost ominously as my right hand closes around the handle. My heart races, and it takes a few more deep breaths for me to somewhat calm down. I focus on my reflection in the mirror and try to channel all that I have toward the next part of the spell.
With a swift movement, I bury the spoon in the tissue right underneath my left eye. I exert as much pressure as I can manage to make it go as fast as possible. Blood immediately streams out of the wound and all over my face. I fight to hold back my screams and desperately try not to faint from the hot, sharp pain. Sinking to my knees, I continue using the spoon to vigorously scoop out my own eye. The blood and the pain make it nearly impossible to see what I’m doing.
A scream escapes me when my eye pops out of its socket, the spoon clattering loudly onto the tile floor. Carefully, I use the knife to sever the nerves, cutting the eye loose. My blood-soaked hands tremble when I drop the knife as well. Sophia hands me a towel and, with the eye held in one hand, I manage to partially clean up my face. My breath comes out in ragged pants, my heart practically ready to beat out of my chest.
Scrambling to my feet, I try not to look at the wound or to notice the burning pain. My whole body feels sluggish and weak, ready to give out. The magic circle is already starting to show me my destination, so I stick out the hand that holds my eye and place it in its center. Then I briefly close my remaining eye, trying not to collapse as relief washes over me.
My voice is weak when I repeat the spell, my words barely audible over the rushing in my ears.
“Fargt ip uran como bliort.
“Dlugar iadnamad adpan.
“Gi gi pah butmani parm rumvi cnila zomeng.”
It takes all I have not to faint, but I regain some energy from seeing the effect of my sacrifice. The blood that I used to draw the circle spreads out across the whole surface of the mirror. In the middle sits a darker spot that seems to spin and turn, until it opens itself up and my eye stares back at me. The front door lies behind it, creaking open as if to invite me in. A flicker of doubt has me hesitating for a second. A wave of cold washes over me as I briefly wonder what I’m doing. What I’m going to do once I step out on the other side. What if this is a mistake?
Sophia hands me the knife back, a weak smile on her lips. “Just in case,” she says in an attempt to comfort me, and I nod, looking from her to the mirror and back. Some doubt continues to linger, hard to ignore.
“Wish me luck?”
“Good luck,” she says.
I lean into her and give her a quick, soft kiss. “Thank you,” I whisper.
Without waiting for Sophia’s reaction, I turn around and step into the mirror. Passing through it feels cold and unnatural, like stepping through a waterfall of ice-cold water without getting wet. I emerge on the other side and find myself in the hallway, the front door shut firmly behind me.
It’s strange to be back again. The hallway looks mostly the same, perhaps just a little bit more run down than the last time. The wallpaper is slightly more faded, and the table next to the door is gone, telling me it finally gave out after all. There is a gasp, followed by a name that I never expected to hear again. A name that I wouldn’t recognize if it came from anyone else.
I turn around while I swallow down my tears. Henry stands in front of me, clearly even older than the last time I saw him. Where I found that it suited him before, now it only makes him look weak. He’s blinking rapidly, his hands hanging loosely at his side while he takes me in.
“You… You’re alive? After all these years?” His eyes linger on the bloody wound on my face before he quickly looks away, a sneer of disgust on his face. “Where have you been? I have been looking all over for you. I?—”
My heart turns to stone upon hearing his words. His blatant lie. “Have you been looking for me?” My voice is as cold as I feel inside, and I practically feel myself change. My magic runs through me like live energy, feeding on the sudden, almost violent, change in my emotions. It urges me on, whispers in my ear that I shouldn’t let him get away with this. He utterly and completely destroyed me, and he has the audacity to lie about it?
Aware of the knife in my hand, my grip around it tightens. By the flicker in Henry’s eyes, I know that he notices the weapon. He gulps and takes a step back, sweat forming on his forehead. Yes, I can easily believe the image I must make in his eyes, with the white-knuckled grip on the weapon and the blazing anger clear for all to see on my face.
“I can’t believe that you’re actually surprised to see me alive.” I start toward him, and Henry backs away in response until he’s pressed with his back against the wall. “Or was that lousy assassin you hired too chicken to admit that he hadn’t finished the job? That, instead, he raped me and sold me off?” Saying it out loud cements my resolution toward what I plan to do. It makes it real, so very real, but the pain that I expected never follows the words.
“Wh-what are you talking about?” Henry looks away from me, and it only angers me more.
“You know damn well what I’m talking about!” My voice is harsh, unwavering, years of emotional and physical abuse about to burst free through my words.
Henry is so startled by my shouting that he stumbles and falls. I look down on him, feeling nothing for the frail, pitiful old man at my feet. Hatred blinds me.
“Darling, are you okay? What’s going on?” She comes down the stairs and screams as soon as she sees me.
She turns to run back up the stairs, and I go after her. My hand tangles in her hair, and I drag her down, placing her in front of me. I push the blade of the knife against her throat, my eyes snapping to Henry’s once more.
“You know, I understand why you did it,” I say while she kicks and screams in my arms. “You wanted children, and I was unable to give them to you. Even after I finally conceived, the child still died. It didn’t matter that I gave you everything, and continued to give you everything even when you started to abuse me. I was broken. You had a problem that needed to be fixed, and so you fixed it. Till death do us part… how beautifully you worked that to your favor.”
Henry starts to laugh nervously. “I-I knew you would understand it—why I did what I did. I had no choice. I had to?—”
“But, certainly,” I continue, cutting him off, “there must have been another solution that didn’t involve having your wife murdered. And even if that really was the only way”—I push the knife harder against her skin, cutting her—“why her? Why my sister?”
“Please, please don’t,” my sister cries, her fingers digging into my skin as she desperately tries to free herself.
My eyes fall on the ring around her finger, the wedding ring that was once mine. It’s a simple gold band engraved with flowers and a small translucent stone set in the center. Nothing all that special, really, but it was his mother’s before me, and her mother’s before. Seeing it around my sister’s finger has me seeing red.
Keeping the knife firmly pressed in place, my hand grasps her finger. I tug at it with such force that she whimpers in response. All it takes is a single word for ice-blue flames to erupt from where I touch her skin. She screams as the fire burns through her in a matter of seconds, blackening the bone underneath and slowly melting the ring around her finger.
She’s about to faint, so I run some healing magic through her. It’s not much, but it will keep her awake as the fire consumes the piece of jewelry right off her flesh. Her voice breaks, and her screams trail off as she redirects her energy to keep breathing through the pain and the fear. The smell of her burned skin fills the hallway, and tears track down her cheeks.
After a few more moments, the ring is gone and the flame dies out. My sister pants heavily, and I give her a final splash of healing magic to take off the edge. I don’t want her too numb from the pain, after all. Her ring finger is nothing but a burned piece of bone, crumbling as I let go of her hand, and it drops unceremoniously to her side.
I give it one final look, then redirect my gaze to Henry. He cowers in the corner, disgust and fear waging a war on his face. Yet he finds himself unable to look away from the scene in front of him. Despite what I did to his wife, my sister, he just sat there and watched as it happened, seemingly unable or unwilling to even try and stop me. Always taking the easy way out, never one to risk putting himself in harm’s way.
“You know what,” I say, already fed up with the whole ordeal, “it doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t matter anymore why I had to die for you to remarry my widowed sister. She already had a child of her own. You knew that she could have at least one more. It doesn’t matter anymore because it ends here.”
With a single movement, I slit my sister’s throat and throw her in front of him. Henry screams, the sound toe curling yet unable to break through the coldness that has taken hold of my heart.
“You should have let your bloodline end with me, for now I’m going to end it for you.”
My sister grasps at Henry’s clothes, gurgling, spilling blood over both herself and him. The air fills with that unmistakable tangy, coppery scent, and I find myself almost reveling in it. Henry takes her in his arms, the gesture almost loving, sobbing through his panic. If only he had held me like that the night our son died. Perhaps things would have been different now.
My sister reaches for him and tries to say something, but then she goes still. Her blood stops flowing, and her eyes become glassy and distant. As I stand over them, a voice squeaks from the top of the stairs. “Mom? Dad?”
My head snaps back to the boy standing halfway down the stairs. He sees his mother lying in a puddle of her own blood, and he freezes in place. He is about thirteen, and I’m pretty sure that he’s my sister’s oldest, the one she had a year before I… left. He has her dirty-blonde hair and the dark-brown eyes of her first husband. I don’t bother to remember his name.
“Take your sister and get out of here, quickly!” Henry shouts at him.
To his credit, the boy doesn’t hesitate. I’m equally impressed that Henry still has the clarity of mind to warn him. The boy turns around and runs back up the stairs. I find myself conflicted for a moment since the child is innocent in all this. But Henry mentioned a sister and my magic runs wild, unable to bear the thought that even a single one of them might survive. So, I tighten my grip around the knife and follow him upstairs.
Henry yells, the sound raw and full of emotion, and I turn around to face him. He pushes my sister’s corpse aside, manages to get up, and lunges a fist at me. The stupid fool is already too old and weak. It takes almost no effort for me to simply sidestep his punch. He trips over his own feet because of this, stumbling as I flip the knife in my hand and slash at him. I cut his stomach open from side to side, so deep that his guts partially fall out onto the floor in front of him.
Henry turns white as a sheet. He starts to bleed as his knees give out and he falls to the ground. His hands frantically grip at his guts, trying to push them back inside. I chuckle at the sight of him. It’s pitiful watching this man desperately trying to put himself back together. To think that I adored him, once upon a time. That I would die for him.
“Stay here,” I say, pointing the knife at him, then going for the stairs once more.
I easily find the boy in one of the bedrooms. He holds his younger sister in his arms, both of them crying. Locking the door behind me, I let my magic clear my mind and take over so that I won’t hesitate in what I am about to do. Will I regret it later? Perhaps. But right now, it feels right. Wrong, but so very right.
H enry leans against the open door frame that leads to the living room. He’s already starting to look gray, barely hanging on. Blood leaks from the corner of his mouth, and his shaking hands are still trying to put his intestines back inside. He’s mumbling something, but I don’t bother to try and make out what he’s saying. He looks up when he hears me descend the stairs, paling even more when he realizes what this means, what I did.
“Thank you,” I say, and his look of disgust changes to bewilderment. “Your selfish actions have given me the strength to do what I needed to do, so that I could become who I’m meant to be.
“It’s funny, in a way, how the old me was willing to die for you. It’s as if you knew that was exactly what needed to happen. With this, I’m returning the favor. Though I honestly doubt that you’ll be coming back from it.”
Henry makes a final gurgling noise, and then his eyes gloss over.
After a few minutes of silence, I let out a breath of relief. I casually shove him aside and step into the living room. My eyes wander around the room, and I’m uncertain why I felt the need to come in here. But the ice around my heart starts to melt, my magic receding yet also pushing me forward. To find something.
Turning around, my eye falls on a framed picture on a bookcase. A frown creeps up on me, and I reach out to take a closer look. Just when the tips of my fingers touch the frame, I’m violently transported back through the portal. My body is catapulted through the mirror and into my bathroom.
The mirror shatters around me as I’m thrown to the floor. The fall rips open the wound from my missing eye, and shards of glass cut my arms. Something wooden slides under the cabinet to the side, disappearing from sight. The last of my strength leaves me when I try to get up, fail, and fall down again. Sophia’s touch is gentle as she helps me up. Her soft voice whispers words that I don’t understand, but they seem reassuring.
The wound from my eye is painful and itches. It’s bleeding again and makes it difficult for me to focus my other eye. Sophia says something, her voice high now, almost shrill. There is a thud, and then her hands no longer support me. I fall a seemingly endless distance before I hit my head, and everything goes dark.
M y head pounds when I slowly manage to gain full consciousness. The first thing that I see is Sophia, her eyes wide, scared, and glassy. My knife is stuck in her chest, her lifeless hands clasped around it.
A hazelnut-colored hand appears, grabbing Sophia’s necklace and brutally yanking it away from her. The fire-like color from the jewel immediately fades when it’s no longer touching her skin, turning into a translucent white. My eyes follow the hand as it goes up. Isra laughs happily as she holds the necklace close to her face, studying it carefully.
She doesn’t notice that I’m no longer unconscious and filled with white-hot rage.
“Finally,” Isra says while she puts the necklace around her neck, “claiming my rightful place.”
Her hands are coated in blood that isn’t hers, and I lose the ability to rationalize. My hands dart out to grab her legs, and I drag her to the floor. She lets out a scream and hits the tiles. I yell at her in rage, my voice raw and guttural, even to my own ears.
Isra kicks at me but, despite her valiant effort, she’s unable to keep me from dragging myself on top of her. She curses upon seeing my face, and I snatch the necklace from her, so violently that my nails catch on her skin and rip into her. In retaliation, Isra starts to claw at me. I swat her hands away, my patience growing thin.
She continues to struggle under me, clawing, kicking, and screaming. I growl at her and reach for something, anything. My hands find the nearest shard of the broken mirror, and I proceed to repeatedly stab her in the neck. Even when she’s dead, blood smeared around us, I uncontrollably stab her more and more and more, unable to stop myself. My rage is completely out of control.
Isra’s neck is nothing but a bloody pulp by the time I finally come to my senses. I sit up on top of her dead body, panting and coming down from my rage-induced high.
“I hope this is what you wanted,” I whisper once I notice that she’s not healing, at long last.
Looking around, my eyes catch on Sophia. She lies with her back to me. Isra didn’t only stab her, but also bashed her skull in.
Some other emotions finally return to me, and I desperately try not to cry, though the tears are already welling up behind my eyes. I catch my own reflection in the shard in my hand and flinch. The wound in my face looks horrible, monstrous. Where my left eye should be is nothing but a gaping, bleeding hole in my face. But the thing that draws my attention the most is my hair. It has turned completely white.
My grip around the shard involuntarily tightens, and the sharp edges cut into my hand and fingers. The pain brings me back, and I drop it. The sound of shattering glass is deafeningly loud in the otherwise quiet bathroom.
I turn to Isra, looking her over and lingering on that pair of perfectly fine emerald-green eyes. Gritting my teeth, I search around for the spoon. My hands close around it, the silver stained red from my blood, and I carefully pop out one of those beautiful orbs. My hand grows steady as soon as the piece of silverware pierces her skin. Concentration takes over while I set to scooping. In a gruesome way, I’m almost grateful that I was able to practice on myself earlier.
The eye pops out of its socket and I use the knife that’s still sticking out of Sophia’s chest to quickly cut it loose completely. Then, I place both the spoon and the knife on the tile floor next to Isra. Carefully, I close my hand around the eyeball. Using the walls as support, I get up and stumble out of the bathroom, past my room, through the hallway, and under the archway around the garden. I’m pushed forward as if in a daze, not sure where I’m going yet knowing without a shadow of a doubt where every single step takes me. For once, I find myself glad for the pull that wants nothing more than to take me over completely.
I’m barely holding it together. The blood loss is taking its toll, and shock starts to settle in. Eventually, I find myself guided back to those black doors. Yet as soon as they come into sight, I wonder if I’m brave enough to go behind them. Shuffling on my feet, I turn away, finding that I’m not.
The doors open with a creak and a voice comes from my left, from my blind side. “How did it go?”
I turn to find him utterly unimpressed by my demeanor and by the blood that coats both my body and my clothes. Not to mention the wound in my face that’s clear for all to see. It’s almost as if he’s smiling.
I tremble and start to feel sick. I know that I’m about to pass out, so without saying a word, I hold out my hand to him. It’s shaking violently now, as is the rest of my body, and I get more lightheaded with every passing second.
He takes the emerald-green eye from me and nods in understanding. A relieved sigh escapes me as my eye rolls back in my head, and I collapse.