CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As Nyssa stepped over the threshold into the attic, her eyes landing on the candelabra in the centre of the altar, her stomach gave a strange lurch.
Nyssa released a heavy sigh. Ever since childhood, her path had been clear.
Now, there was a fork in the road, and she couldn’t tell which route was the right one.
I’m not sure I want to leave Nighthaven.
She hadn’t meant to admit it to herself. Had barely even allowed herself to acknowledge the feeling before the previous night, outside the tavern with Elowen. But now that she’d had the thought, the truth of it was growing harder and harder to ignore.
And yet she wasn’t ready to give up on her coven just yet.
She knew what her grandma would say: Trust your instincts. Follow your heart. That was all well and good when one’s instincts weren’t blocked and your heart wasn’t plagued with fear.
For now, all she could do was keep moving forward.
The Mirror Spell required three things to work: the first, of course, was a mirror.
Nyssa crossed the attic to the far eastern corner, where a large piece of furniture lay propped against the wall, covered by a sheet.
Dust motes caught in the pale November light coming through the attic’s large circular window, and Nyssa let out a cough at the same time as Nyx emitted a loud sneeze.
The familiar glared accusingly up at her, tail swishing.
‘Sorry,’ Nyssa sniffed, clearing her throat.
The mirror looked the same as it had in her childhood: tall and oddly unsettling.
The glass itself was clear, bringing Nyssa’s reflection into sharp, harsh focus.
In the grey afternoon light, her skin looked paler than usual, the shadows beneath her eyes more pronounced.
And she looked … older. Not physically, but …
there was something about the weight to her shoulders and the seriousness of her expression.
The last time she’d looked into this mirror, she’d barely been a teenager.
Nyssa could almost imagine her younger self staring back at her.
Could almost see the ghost of her in the dimple in her cheek and the intensity of her stare.
She’d been so filled with wonder back then, before the pressure of expectation had taken over.
Wonder that, during her time in Nighthaven, had slowly started to creep back in.
What happened to you?
Nyssa shook her head. There was no point dwelling on it now; she needed to be in a good head space if she wanted to pass this trial, and mourning her childhood self was not the way to do that.
Leaving Nyx still staring at herself in the mirror, Nyssa returned to the circular table and read over the list of ingredients the spell required.
Retrieving them from her recently stocked altar drawers was oddly soothing, a familiar, almost instinctive act: a sprig of lavender to calm the mind; rosemary for mental clarity, and elderberry to help one connect with one’s higher self.
Despite the soothing ritual of it all, the memory of what had happened the last time she’d created a potion of any kind had her double-checking each ingredient three times before she began to mix them, along with some honey and water, into a paste in her grandma’s old pestle and mortar.
Once the concoction was complete, Nyssa placed two crystals on either side of the mirror – amethyst on the left, clear quartz on the right – and began to smear the mirror’s frame with the mixture.
‘I seek the truth, I seek the light,
Enhance my soul, make it bright.
Guide me on this path I take,
And allow my true self to awake.’
Nyssa’s voice trembled on the final line, her breath catching as she stared, unblinking, at her reflection.
At the breeze lifting her hair and the smoke forming behind her.
Her reflection tilted her head, a smile curling her lips, while Nyssa remained still, and then the smoke was curling around her.
It filled her senses, blocking out all shapes and light until there was nothing but an endless, hazy void and the scent of her magic mixing with the concoction she’d made.
When the smoke finally began to clear, the mirror – and her reflection – were gone, along with Nyx. With a small gasp, Nyssa realized she was no longer in her attic.
She was in the ritual chamber at the covenstead. And she wasn’t alone.
The members of The Coven of the Sacred Owl stood around her.
Edith directly opposite, on the other side of the large, bubbling cauldron, taking the southern cardinal point.
Prim, with her familiar shock of silver hair and sharp chin, stood at the eastern point, while Kilan took the west. And next to him, his hands clawing at his throat, was Noah.
Nyssa tried to run to him, to help him, but it was as though someone had glued her feet to the floor. ‘Help him!’ Nyssa commanded her coven, her voice a wild, desperate snarl. It echoed through the ritual chamber almost mockingly, and if the coven heard her, they made no move to obey.
‘This is your fault,’ Edith said. ‘You must fix it.’
Nyssa tried to move to Noah again, her stomach lurching at the sight of the dark liquid pooling from his lips. His skin was turning blue now, and Nyssa still couldn’t move. ‘I can’t!’ she sobbed. ‘Please, he’ll die. You have to do something!’
No one made any move to help. They simply stared at her, eyes accusing, as the sounds of Noah’s dying breaths grew further and further apart.
‘You did this.’ Black liquid spilled from Kilan’s lips as he spoke. His dark eyes widened, the veins in them turning red. His hands went up to claw at his throat. ‘You … did … th-this …’
This isn’t real, Nyssa told herself, forcing her eyes shut. This isn’t what happened.
‘But it will be.’
The voice caused every hair on the back of Nyssa’s neck to stand on end. Deep and monotone, Morven sounded as real as he had that night in her café. She could even smell his magic, rich and cloyingly sweet. And despite herself, despite knowing that this wasn’t real, Nyssa opened her eyes.
He stood in the centre of the ritual circle now. The cauldron was gone, and the coven members … Nyssa’s heart lurched at the sight of their lifeless bodies, their lips stained with black liquid.
‘You’re a failure, Nyssa. That’s why you work so hard – because you know you have to.
And even then, it isn’t enough. Should you pass your trials and return to your position as head mage, it won’t be long until you make another mistake.
Until this’ – he flung his arms out, gesturing around him as if this were a stage and he the conductor – ‘will become reality.’
‘You’re wrong.’ The words came out weak, and the magic Nyssa was trying to coax into her fingertips was even weaker. She could no longer sense her own power, or her grandma’s; all she could smell, all she could feel, was Morven.
‘I know you, Nyssa. Better than anyone.’ They were words she’d once used to describe their friendship to him, when she’d been high on the discovery of a new spell.
She remembered the rush of confiding in him about leaving her grandmother behind to join the coven.
About her largely absent mother and the father she’d never known.
About how she wanted to become the greatest head mage of her time and prove to the mother she never saw that she was worthy of her attention.
Morven had been there when Nyssa had waited to hear from her mother after she’d graduated from initiation.
And then again, when she’d been hand selected to join the prestigious Coven of the Sacred Owl.
He’d seen how devastated she’d been when no word came.
How much harder she’d worked because of it.
As if he could hear what she was thinking, a predatory glint appeared in Morven’s eyes.
‘Perhaps if you’d joined me, your mother would have noticed you.
Now, when she hears your name again, it will be because of your failures.
Your coven will be wiped out, and so will the inhabitants of this pathetic town, all because you were not strong enough to keep me imprisoned. ’
The space around Nyssa changed from the ritual chamber to Nighthaven’s town square. Buildings were on fire. Screams echoed throughout the night. And in the midst of the chaos were her friends.
Nyssa saw Liora first. The bard was slumped against the wall of the apothecary, her face dirtied with blood and ash.
Her lyre lay broken in half at her side, and there was no sign of life in her usually vibrant body.
Alaric lay a few feet away, his hand outstretched towards her, a pile of still-smoking rubble atop his back.
And Elowen … Elowen was curled on her side, clutching at a bleeding wound in her abdomen.
And then Nyssa saw herself.
She wasn’t injured. She simply stood off to the side, watching events unfold. ‘Do you see?’ this other-Nyssa said. ‘Do you see what our failure will cause? Everyone here would be better off if we left and never looked back.’
She was right. Ever since Nyssa had returned to Nighthaven, things had been going wrong: the chaos in Teas and Tales, Morven, the owl. And if she couldn’t imprison Morven for good, then the scene before her would become reality.
‘That isn’t true.’
Through the smoke, a third version of Nyssa appeared. The version she’d been searching for in her reflection before the spell had begun.
Thirteen-year-old Nyssa glared at her older selves with a fire fiercer than the one which raged around them. ‘If we run away now, Morven will still hurt the people we love. They need us to protect them.’
‘We cannot even protect ourselves,’ the other-Nyssa said. She sounded so … resigned. So willing to accept that she couldn’t help that she didn’t even have the will in her to try any more. ‘We should leave. Before we make any more mistakes. Before we fail again.’
‘That isn’t who I am.’
The words came out quietly at first, the real Nyssa hardly aware that she’d said them.
A kiss of a whisper against the crackling flames and screams of Nighthaven.
But they were enough to cause her magic to rouse, for her to reach inside herself and feel that spark of power in her core.
There was nothing she could do about the past. No spell she could weave to rewrite history.
But if she ran away from her mistakes now, she’d also be running from her chance to fix them.
‘That isn’t who I am!’
The shout cut through the chaos. Her magic surged with it, blasting through the town in a flare of golden light and devouring everything in its path.
The fires. The crumbling buildings. The bodies of her friends and the silhouette of Morven looming over them.
And finally, the first version of herself.
The one who had been so willing to accept defeat.
In the aftermath, Nyssa was left with only her childhood self. The younger version of her was smiling, a wide, gap-toothed grin that made something in Nyssa’s heart crack.
‘Thank you,’ she said, her words already starting to fade, ‘for not giving up on us.’
The reflection of her younger self vanished then, and the golden light around Nyssa began to fade. Through her tears, Nyssa saw the familiar shape of the mirror before her, and then the reflection of the attic at her back, and Nyx at her side, pawing desperately at her calf.
Nyssa knelt down beside her and cradled her tight to her chest. ‘It’s all right, baby girl, I’m back. I’m okay.’
The words had barely left her mouth when the third and final candlewick burst into flame.
And yet when Nyssa collapsed into bed that night, the dream that put a smile on her lips wasn’t one where she was welcomed back into her coven.
Instead, it was of her younger self, eyes wide and heart filled with wonder as she cast her first spell and discovered the joy of magic for the first time.