CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE || DANIEL #3
Micah continued his chanting, straining himself, his fingers splayed out. Which meant he was actively holding the spell, fighting against the tempest I’d conjured.
But it was working. Elemental power began to flow out of the cardinal points again. It struck Hunter and Lee from all directions, causing both of them to cry out in pain.
My mind raced. My parents were almost to the catalyst.
What could I possibly do?
I knew a counterspell—every witch and warlock learns at least one in the course of their magical training—but it was doomed to fail.
I’d be pitting my power against theirs. I had never been strong enough to stand against them.
It might even burn me out to try—the way I had nearly died back at the bar, trying to perform the Sword of Helios on my own.
But then Hunter let out another gut-wrenching sound, doubling over. And Lee gasped with pain a moment later. My spell—the ritual I’d written with my own two hands—was hurting them.
What happened to me now didn’t matter.
I couldn’t let this happen.
Summoning my courage—and every scrap of power at my disposal—I launched into the counterspell. It was written in Koine Greek, ten words long. A spell of absolute refusal.
My mother’s eyes widened in alarm. But I was certain it was her fear for me, of what I was about to recklessly do to myself, rather than any sort of worry that I might overcome their magic. Her chanting faltered.
My father apparently was willing to take that chance. His expression hardened and he began chanting more forcefully, picking up his wife’s slack.
I sent every bit of my magical power into the spell I cast, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
It was two Henbanes—the two most powerful Henbanes—against me.
The math was impossible.
Then Rowan stepped up beside me. When I glanced over at her, she met my gaze and held it. I saw the fear in her eyes. But she steeled herself, took my hand, and began copying my words, saying the spell along with me.
Her power joined with mine and spread across the clearing.
The elemental powers pouring into Hunter and Lee began to sputter.
Our parents both stared at her with identical expressions of outrage.
Rowan had disagreed with them, she’d tried to negotiate and reason with them, but she had never, not even once, tried to openly defy them.
Tears prickled in my eyes and gratitude surged through me. Our voices threaded together into one—the math becoming almost even.
Working together, Rowan and I had a shot at stopping our parents.
Then, with a triumphant roar, Micah screamed out his incantation one last time, his hands sweeping down violently.
In the same instant, I felt my storm dissolve completely, withering away to nothing. There was nothing I could do to stop it—not without giving up the counterspell.
The thick black clouds overhead vanished an instant later. The rain and lightning stopped and the wind died, leaving a shocked hush in its wake.
Then Micah joined our parents in their incantation, his gaze, filled with malice, locked on me.
The elemental power began to rush in again, striking Hunter and Lee.
Dizziness swept through me. My vision started to gray out and my stomach turned.
For an instant, I thought I’d be sick.
Or maybe that I’d collapse then and there.
It was all over now.
Maybe it was foolish to keep going. I had never been able to stand up to my family. And once they had defeated me, weak as I now was from overexertion, I wouldn’t be able to stop them from doing anything they wanted to me.
And they would, without question, punish me for my defiance.
But that barely mattered. Hunter and Lee were what mattered. I couldn’t give up. If my mates were going to be unmade against their will, the last thing they’d ever see would be me fighting for them.
I forced myself to keep speaking the counterspell, to keep pouring my power into it.
Dimly, I heard running footsteps behind me. Then a warm hand slid into mine. I looked over to see Lacey standing beside me, her expression fierce and determined.
Then she did something impossible.
She copied the words of the counterspell—badly, because her pronunciation was terrible, especially given that she’d never cast a spell before.
But that wasn’t the impossible part.
What didn’t make any sense at all was that I felt a thin thread of power flow from her and into me from where her hand had joined with mine.
From the way her eyes widened, I knew she felt it too.
Beside me, Rowan straightened up. Her words became more forceful than before.
The elemental power my family was conjuring began to falter again.
Micah and my parents all wore matching shocked expressions, but they didn’t stop.
Then, a moment later, Reed and Harris stepped out of the forest, their hands joined. Their eyes were glowing molten gold and their lips were moving as well. Just like Lacey, they were copying the words of the counterspell. As he chanted, Reed took Rowan’s free hand.
Impossibly, it was working.
It wasn’t as powerful as it would’ve been if another witch or warlock had joined us, but the thin thread of magic they contributed was enough to cause the power raised by my family’s spell to sputter.
Then Hunter and Lee pushed themselves up onto their knees. They were both pale and furious. They traded a fierce look. And then Lee began speaking the counterspell as well. Hunter followed his lead, taking his twin’s hand.
Then the rest of the pack joined us, coming out of the forest, joining hands with us in an unbroken line of power, and adding their voices to our spell—to our flat refusal to allow my family to take Hunter and Lee’s choices away from them.
Not again.
Never again.
The thin thread of power gathered in strength as all of us joined together and spoke as one. As a pack.
All at once, my family’s spell shattered.
The elemental powers they’d summoned winked out of existence. And the magic they’d conjured sank into the earth, spent and useless.
Micah sagged to his knees, pale and shaken, breathing hard, his hand on his chest.
The fight went out of my father next. He tried to speak the spell one last time, but even the illumination spell hovering above my journal vanished, plunging the clearing into darkness, save for the silver light of the moon.
My mother alone—who was the most powerful spellcaster in our family—stood ramrod-straight, glaring at us with open fury. But she’d ceased her chanting of the spell. And she didn’t try to stop them when Hunter and Lee lurched up from the ground and staggered across the clearing.
I broke ranks at the same time.
We collapsed to the ground together, the three of us clinging to each other.
My tears broke free again, hot and steady down my cheeks, twin tracks of burning emotion on my cold skin. But, for once, I didn’t care. The men I loved were still here, they were still okay—or, at least, they would be. They were still themselves.
It was over. We had won.