Aaron
The book drops out of my hand the moment more of them start coming through the windows.
They pour in over the sills, hauling themselves into Eric’s study on too many limbs—what’s left of the witches who lived here, manifested into the shapes their own nightmares carved out of them.
The snake-warlock from before is still coiled in the middle of the room, rearing over the wreck of the desk.
I throw a wall of blue-gold and it slams the nearest one flat into the shelves.
Kade meets the next as a blur of vampire speed, right up until a creature plucks her clean out of the air and flings her into a case of journals hard enough to bring the whole thing down on top of her.
She claws up out of the spilled books, spitting curses, and the one after that takes her legs out from under her again.
Josiah hasn’t so much as raised his voice. “I’m already formulating a plan to rehabilitate all of you.” He strolls through the middle of it with his hands clasped behind his back, in no hurry at all. “We’ll start small. Some structure. A little honest work, a sense of community—“
The window behind him caves in, and what comes through it used to be a man, still is from the waist down, but his chest has split open from the inside.
Out of the gap unfolds a nest of thin gray arms, more than I can count, every one ending in a grasping human hand.
It hits the floor running and throws itself at Josiah’s back.
“Josiah!” My magic’s already up, blue-gold sparking across my fingers—but he doesn’t so much as turn his head. He just lifts a hand, palm out, and the creature stops dead in the air. It hangs there mid-lunge, over his shoulder, all those gray arms still grasping at nothing.
“What the—“ I don’t get to finish it. The snake takes the opening, its tail coming around in a gray blur and slamming into my chest. The room tips, the shelves rush up at my back, and the hit drives the air clean out of me.
“Aaron!” Mara’s voice tears across the room. I shove up onto an elbow with my ears ringing, and the snake’s already done with me, its head swinging around, those filmed-yellow eyes finding Mara, its tongue tasting the air between them.
She doesn’t run. She drops into the crouch I’ve watched her hunt from, claws out, her tail lashing low behind her. She’s all lioness now. The snake rears up over her with a hiss. She answers it, lower and meaner, and then it charges.
I get my feet under me and haul everything I’ve got up into my hands, but Josiah’s quicker. One hand stays raised, keeping the many-armed thing pinned in the air. The other lifts loose at his side, and he snaps his fingers.
The snake-warlock blows apart. Pieces of it splash all over the room, same as the others—but this time, none of it lands on Mara. My blue-gold shield drops over her before she can pounce, and the spray hits the dome instead of her.
She comes up out of the crouch furious—not at the creature, at me. She slams a fist against the inside of the dome, and the blow rings down through my magic. I had it, the look says. I didn’t need you. “Stay in there.”
“Jo.” Kade hurls a creature off her back and it crunches into the wall. “What the fuck are you doing? Stop playing and help us get out of here.”
“I don’t kill them unless they make me.” Josiah hasn’t dropped the many-armed thing. It hangs there over his shoulder, working all those hands, and he doesn’t spare it a glance. “These ones could use some love. Don’t you see it under all of that?” He tips his head, almost wistful. “I do.”
More of them burst through what’s left of the windows.
I blast the closest one and throw another wall up across the doorway, but they keep coming, too many to hold back.
The ones already inside go for Mara’s shield, clawing at the dome, raking gray fingers down the gold.
My magic holds. But if even one of them gets a claw through to her, I’m going to fuck all of this up.
We’re getting swarmed. Even Kade’s buried under them, throwing one off only to get hit by the next.
Josiah sighs, bored with the whole thing. He watches the pack charge at Mara and me, shrugs, and brings his fingers up to his thumb. “Oh, well. I think most of these can still be reached.” His mouth pulls into a small frown. “But your mate, I’m afraid, is about to lose her patience, and so—“
His fingers never close. Every creature in the room locks up at once, heads turning toward the windows, and then they’re scrambling for the broken sills—retreating, all of them, as if something worse than us is coming.
Josiah lowers his hand, and the thing he’d been holding drops to the floor.
It pushes up and bolts off after them. The room empties.
I drop the shield and cross to her, and her hands are on me right away, moving over my chest and arms, checking for bruises. “Are you okay, Aaron?”
“I’m fine.” I catch her wrists. “Baby. I’m fine. The bigger question is whether you are.”
She shrugs me off and goes back to checking me. “I don’t care about me.”
It lands wrong, and it stings. The heat climbs the back of my neck.
“You should care.” I take her face in my hands and make her look at me.
“About yourself. More than anything, Mara. That’s the whole point.
It’s the only thing I’m asking you for.” Her ears flick.
She doesn’t argue, but she doesn’t agree either.
“Okay.” Kade’s hauling herself out of the book-wreckage again, picking glass and splinters out of her hair, her shirt ripped off her shoulder.
“I think we need to get the fuck out of here.” She faces the windows, and for once, since we walked into this realm, there’s something careful in how she holds herself.
“Because whatever those things just ran from? That’s worse. And it’s coming.”
Josiah hasn’t moved from the middle of the room. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, plants his feet, and watches the broken windows, almost eager. “I’m rather curious to find out what decides to show up,” he says.
Kade rolls her eyes. “I am so fucking irritated with you right now.”
“Are they all like this?” Josiah asks, still facing the windows. “Was Eric the only warlock who never manifested?”
“I haven’t been in here in years.” Kade shoves wet hair off her face. “I don’t fucking know.”
That’s when two cloaked figures step in over the broken sills. Josiah grins, and I see why—hands. Human hands, ringed and folded at the waist, coming out of the sleeves. Whatever they are, they didn’t turn.
They push their hoods back, and Kade groans. “Fucking Ellie.” Her arms cross. “Of course you wouldn’t give me the pleasure of manifesting so I could finally take your ass out.”
“Nice to see you again too.” Ellie grins. “Sister-in-law.”
Mara watches her, wary. I’m doing more than watching. I remember Ellie from back when I was small. She wanted to keep me here in the Glen, and my mother wasn’t having it. Neither am I.
The other one I know too. “Hella.” She turns to me with a smile, and it’s the one thing about her I still recognize. The Hella I remember was tall and severe, a long blonde braid down her back, her eyes a cold pale blue. She carried herself like the rest of us were lucky to breathe her air.
The woman in front of me is none of that.
Her hair is a full gray-white now. Her blue eyes have washed out to gray.
Her face is wrinkled, the skin papery over the bones.
She’s aging fast, faster than a witch is ever supposed to.
Beside her, Ellie’s a little older too, lines at her eyes, but next to Hella she could be a girl.
Hella looks worn through, but she draws herself up to greet us anyway, lifting her chin with the last of that old regal poise.
“So.” Her voice still carries, even worn down.
“You decided to bring not one but two vampires into our realm, and you expected the ones who’ve manifested to simply not react? ”
“We had no idea how many of them had turned.” Kade’s arms stay crossed. “This shit is all new to us, Hella.”
“New to you.” Ellie’s smirk doesn’t move. “Because you discarded us.”
“I didn’t discard anything.” Kade doesn’t give an inch. “We tried with all of you. We offered you a home, a life that didn’t run on dark magic, and we held it out long after we should’ve stopped. You wouldn’t take it. You’d rather rot than let go of the thing that’s rotting you.”
That shuts Ellie up, and Josiah can’t help himself.
“It’s the strangest thing, with witches and warlocks.
” He steps in closer, head cocked, studying them.
“You loathe vampires. And yet every single thing you crave, everything you’d sell your soul to hold on to—it belongs to us.
Beauty, youth, forever.” He smiles at Hella, soft and terrible.
“You hate us because we already have what you sold yourselves for.”
“You are a lifeless wasteland,” Hella snarls.
Josiah laughs, delighted, and lifts one finger toward her. “And you,” he says warmly, “are aging beautifully.” Hella’s faded eyes flare.
“We need to get out of here.” Mara’s hand closes around my arm, her tail swaying, agitated, her voice gone low. “Aaron. This place. These people. We need to go.”
“I know.” I cover her hand with mine. “We will. I just need to handle something here.” I look back at Ellie. “Eric got out of the Glen. He’s loose in our realm with Henry right now. Did you help him?”
Ellie looks at Hella before she answers me. That tells me plenty. “No,” she says, dropping her eyes. “We didn’t get him out.” She’s slow getting to the rest. “But we didn’t stop him, either.”
“Your mother and King Amir imprisoned us,” Hella says, like that explains it. “Penned us in our own realm like animals.”
“Because you wouldn’t stop hunting dark magic.” Kade bites the words off. “It’s banned in Wintermoon, Hella. You knew that going in.”
Hella gestures at the rot around us, her hand trembling. “This is not Wintermoon.”
“You two have got me all the way fucked up.” Kade snaps back.
I turn to Hella. “You know exactly what dark magic does. The hold it’s had on all of us, old and new. And you’d go right back to it. Just to keep your youth and your immortality.”
She doesn’t answer. “Something tells me that’s exactly it.” I point at her. “You’re the only one in here who didn’t manifest.” Hella says nothing.
“You have to know Hella to understand Hella.” Kade’s watching her. “She throws rocks and hides her hands. She’s always been this way. And she had something to do with Eric getting out. I’d put money on it.”
“Shut your mouth,” Ellie snaps.
“Make me.” Kade’s smile is slow and awful. “Please. I’ve been waiting a very long time for you to try. Make me.”
Josiah looks between them, openly delighted. “This is fantastic. Mother Kade and her sister-in-law at each other’s throats. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this upset, Kade.”
“That’s because she’s the worst sister-in-law a woman ever had.”
Mara tugs at my arm, her tail swaying. I look down into those beautiful eyes and sigh. She’s tired. I rub a slow circle into her back, and she leans into my hand.
“There is nothing wrong with using dark magic.” Hella says it into the quiet. “So long as there’s a balance to it.”
“How long have you been using it?” My voice goes hard. She doesn’t respond. “Why are they afraid of you?” I tip my head at the windows. “The ones that manifested. Why’d they run the moment you walked in?”
Josiah laughs, and both witches look his way. He shrugs. “They’re afraid because they’ve already manifested. They’ve become exactly what was waiting under their skin. There’s nothing left in them to change.”
“Yes.” Kade snickers. “My sister-in-law is a purebred evil-ass bitch.”
Ellie starts forward, but Hella holds up a trembling hand. “Enough.” It cracks across the room, and even Kade shuts her mouth. When Hella turns back to me, there’s no venom left in her. Just fear. “Can a Blackwood restore this realm without dark magic?”
I stare at her. “What are you asking me?”
“We can only hold them off for so long.” She gestures at the broken windows, at the dark where the things ran. “Eventually they come back. The Glen was a rich realm once. Then it died.”
“It can’t thrive without dark magic?” Josiah’s looking around the rot with new interest. “How interesting.”
Hella’s mouth thins. “Was this vampire really necessary to bring here?”
“Yes,” I tell her. “He’s necessary. He carries Blackwood magic.”
It confuses her—a vampire with our magic. I don’t bother explaining it. “The answers you’re looking for are with Mother Fate,” I say. “You’d know that, unless you stopped praying to her.”
Ellie and Hella share a look. “You don’t have to help me find Eric,” I go on. “I’ll do it on my own. And you can take it up with King Amir yourselves. Do you even know what he’s planning to do with the Glen?”
Josiah chuckles. “He’s planning to destroy it,” he says lightly. “Such a pity. I happen to believe it could be restored. ‘There is no ruin so total that something can’t be planted in it. Only ground you’ve decided not to bleed for.’ Chapter nineteen.”
“What?” Ellie says.
“That’s just Jo being Jo,” I tell her.
But Hella’s not looking at Josiah anymore.
She steps forward, concern etched into her ruined face.
“Is that true? Amir means to discard us?” She turns to Kade, and Kade can’t meet her eyes.
“You cannot let that happen.” She comes back to me, faster now.
“You are a Blackwood. You’d allow this? Your mother would?
” She points toward the broken window, toward the dark where the things ran.
“The witches and warlocks in here may be lost. But they can be saved.”
“And what exactly,” I say, “do you expect me to do about it?”
“I can help you with Eric.” Her hand closes on my sleeve. “But in exchange, you spare them. They aren’t just my people, Aaron. They’re yours too. Don’t wipe us out.”
I look at Mara. Her ears fall flat, and I can see it in her eyes. She wants to help them.
I groan. “Alright.” I look back at Hella. “But Eric already has dark magic now. Did you really believe he was going to come back here and help any of you?”
Hella grins. “No. I didn’t. I know Eric. I’ve known him a very long time, and he’s always been selfish.” She steps toward me. “But I knew he’d be the key to saving us.” She raises a hand and points. At me. “Through you.”
“Okay.” Ellie’s already moving, pulling her cloak back up. “We’ve been in one place long enough. We keep moving.”
“Or,” Josiah says, “you let me talk to them. I really think I could make them understand—“
“We are not doing that.” Kade grabs the back of his collar and hauls him toward the door. “Let’s go. I’ve had enough of this realm. I want to go home.”
I take Mara’s hand and follow them out.