Chapter Fifty-Seven
FIFTY-SEVEN
I STARE INTO THE TURNING sky, the edges tipped in pink as the sun slowly rises. Kai and Missy are on my right, Daisy and Sam on my left.
We’re at the base of Hanging Rock.
I ignore Kai. I haven’t quite processed all that’s happened between us. But I can feel him, in a way I think I always will now. And I know that his heart is broken, just like mine. Only in a different way.
My friends haven’t said a word since I told them about Fiona. Missy has her back to us all, her shoulders shaking as she cries.
It dawns on me that I’ve been surrounded this entire time by people I should have trusted—and I’ve failed them. Now they’re embedded in this mess just as I am.
I find Polaris.
Centuries of guidance. For the Mother and all the mothers before her.
For the Daughter. For the original twelve witches who gave their lives for this power that overwhelms me.
For Mama Mae, her life stolen before she could live free, for Nora and her visions of a better future for us all. For the sacrifice made anew.
For me, and Kai, and the prophecy we are destined to fulfill.
Natural enemies, bound together, whether we like it or not.
I am made of stardust, just like all the women before me.
And for now, that has to be enough.
I look over and watch as a tear slips down Daisy’s cheek. “I’m so sorry, Harper. I’m so, so sorry.”
Turning, I pull her toward me. “What? Why are you apologizing?”
“I should have found you sooner. I should have done more to help you.”
My brows pull to the center of my face.
“Daisy, you can’t blame yourself for this.
I—listen, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.
For what I said. For pushing you away. I just…
this is exactly what I wanted to avoid. I didn’t want y’all to get hurt because of me.
” My voice is hoarse. “Why—I mean, how did you guys know? How did you find me?”
“It’s a long story,” Sam mutters.
Daisy shifts. “Well, I guess it really started after the tarot reading. That’s when I knew for sure that something was going on with you. Although I couldn’t have ever imagined what.”
Her eyes cut to Kai.
“But then when you started distancing yourself from us, I knew you would never ask us for help. I started to follow you, see where you were going when you’d disappear. I still couldn’t put the pieces together.
“Then during the séance, it’s like you hijacked it. I couldn’t see anything. I was just sucked into some dark, liminal place. When you left campus, I turned to Spirit for help. I knew you needed us.
“So I broke into your room looking for clues as to where you might have gone. I found some papers in your desk.” Tears spring to her eyes again. “The women hanged outside the old school… Something about it didn’t sit right with me, so I brought them to Sam and Missy.”
Sam reaches over and grabs Daisy’s hand.
“We did another séance. We asked Spirit to help us find you. For a while now something has been wrong with my visions. Since coming here, something has been clouding them. This time I could finally see you, but I couldn’t see what was happening.
It didn’t make any sense, but I knew that I needed to get to you somehow. ”
Sam cuts in, “For the record, I didn’t know about any of this either before that fight in your room.
No one tells me anything! Everyone pulls me into their unhinged schemes, but no one wants to tell me that witches and witch hunters and spirit-mediums and whatever-the-fuck Lucas is exists?
!” Their voice gets higher pitched with every word.
Missy snorts through her tears, but she doesn’t say anything, just meets Daisy’s eyes before turning away again.
Lucas. I fight against the flashes of him limp in the arms of my enemies. Of him standing over Maureen, confusion and fear warring across his face.
Syphon, Maureen had whispered as she took her last breath. She’d said syphons were creatures that feed off the powers of others.
A pit forms in my belly. All those times I craved his touch, desperate for the reprieve he gave me from the tumultuous power inside me. I thought that he calmed me, that we had a special connection, but in reality… was he… feeding on me?
I shiver. “I know,” I say, guilt pouring out of me. “To be fair, I didn’t know either until it was already happening. And I could barely believe it myself.”
My friends came to help me, and it could have gotten them killed.
“This is why I didn’t tell you. I never wanted—”
“If you think that we were just going to sit by and watch you get murdered, then you’re dumber than you look,” Missy finally chimes in.
“Or,” Sam tries, “you don’t know us at all. You weren’t the only one with secrets, Harper, but at least now we’re in this together.” Their voice is steady as they say this, and a lump forms in my throat.
“Although you still have, like, a lot of explaining to do,” Daisy adds.
A small chuckle falls from my lips as I grab Daisy’s other hand, and we lapse back into silence.
I mull over everything I’ve just learned.
Kai hasn’t said a word this entire time, though I’ve heard something. A murmur in the back of my mind, like Fiona’s whispers, but different somehow. I turn my head and look at him, tracing his profile with my eyes.
The familiar shape of it settles something in my core.
The Midnight Guard have the Air. I am the Water.
Where are the Earth and Fire?
There are four of us. Four pieces of a prophecy. Four fated witches, sent from the stars to return the balance between our kinds.
I close my eyes and see Gigi’s face.
I wish the resentment that floods me at the thought of her wasn’t there, now that I’ve survived, now that I have my friends by my side. But it’s still simmering beneath it all.
I hope it fades with time. If I have time.
But this was never just about me. This is about us. Zodiac Witches. And how far I’m willing to go to save us.
Despite it all, under the dawn-pink sky, next to the boy who broke my heart and the two (and a half) friends who have risked their lives to save me, I make peace with my grandmother and with the prophecy that has led me here.
With the fact that I am the prophecy.
Just as I’m thinking this, a glowing speck floats across my field of vision. Blinking in and out. A lightning bug. A much sweeter sign from Gigi than the cardinals with their beady little eyes.
This time, when I’m flooded with emotion, I have no tears left to cry. In their place, a steel resolve and the crumbs of a new plan begin to grow.
Kai might have saved me, we might be bound by this prophecy, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive him.
I mull over the words I want to say.
Rolling onto my side, I rest my face on my palm. He watches me curiously with bloodshot eyes and a face to match. Tears stream down his cheeks.
I’m scared, but I’m not alone.
He reaches up and tucks a frizzy curl behind my ear.
The sun shines in tangerine against the freckles that burst along his skin.
There’s nothing we can say to each other to make this better.
Nothing we can do to change what’s happened.
I still hate him. With every fiber of my being.
For the lies. For the bloodshed. For the future he made me dream about that I’ll never, ever get.
Against my better judgment, against all logic, against the past that has followed us here, against the miles of distance that have formed between us—I wish I didn’t need him.
But I do.
“So,” I say. “How do we rescue Fiona?”