Chapter 17
Tegan did not hesitate.
She crouched in front of the box like it was a venomous animal pretending to be furniture, then ran her fingers along the iron bands. The runes shimmered under her touch and flared once, bright enough to cast pale light across the cave walls.
The box recognized her.
That was the first problem.
The second problem was how much it liked her.
The latch clicked open on its own.
Faith stiffened beside me. “That’s not ominous at all.”
Aurora’s mouth curved. “It’s adorable. Like a cursed jewelry box that wants attention.”
Tegan ignored both of them. Her focus narrowed until the rest of us could have been wallpaper. She lifted the lid.
Cold rolled out. Not the damp cave cold. Something deeper and older, like the memory of tombs and sealed stone.
Inside the box sat the relic.
It was smaller than I expected. Not a crown or a staff, not some dramatic movie prop.
It looked like a carved stone heart, dark-green shot through with veins of gold.
Its surface was engraved with tiny symbols that moved when you looked at them too long.
The relic pulsed, slow and steady, as if it were breathing.
When Tegan reached in, it pulsed faster.
The gold veins brightened.
It knew her.
It wanted her.
Tegan’s hand hovered for half a second, like even she felt the pull, then she grabbed it anyway. The moment her fingers closed around the stone, the relic flared bright enough to paint the cave ceiling in green light.
My stomach dropped. The bond with the egg shuddered like it had been yanked.
Eve swore softly. Greyson’s posture snapped tight. Nishi moved one step forward, blade angled down but ready.
Tegan sucked in a breath through her teeth. “It’s keyed to my vault wards.”
Aurora leaned closer. “Can you hold it?”
Tegan’s jaw clenched. “For now.”
The relic pulsed again, and the air outside the cave answered. A low vibration rolled through the ground, like the forest itself had felt the theft and wanted to complain.
Greyson’s shield device, still sitting near the seam behind us, began to whine.
“That’s an alarm,” he said.
The cave mouth darkened.
Not because the sun moved. Dawn was still hours away. This was shadow doing something deliberate.
Then Dagna stepped into the entrance like she was arriving late to a party she expected to host.
Her robe was torn at the shoulder where Eve had burned her. The fabric around the wound looked stiff and blackened, like it had been seared into a permanent reminder. Dagna’s smile was still intact, which told me it hurt her a lot more than she wanted to admit.
Drathar came in behind her.
His presence filled the cave, heavy and foul, like the air itself took a step back. He looked pleased, which was never a good sign on anything that wore death magic like perfume.
“You opened it,” Dagna said, voice bright with false cheer. “And you touched it. I was hoping you would.”
Tegan tightened her grip on the relic, knuckles whitening. “You stole it.”
Dagna shrugged. “Borrowed. You are so sensitive.”
Eve moved in front of Tegan instantly, hellfire flickering at her fingertips like a warning. “Leave.”
Drathar’s smile widened. “Little flame. How devoted you are.”
Behind them, movement surged in the trees.
Not the slow stagger I had come to expect. Not even the fast, aggressive rush from downtown.
These were worse.
Shapes slipped between trunks, some too thin, some too large, all of them animated with the wrong kind of energy.
A corpse with a deer skull where its head should be.
A body that moved like it had no bones, limbs swinging in ways that made my skin crawl.
A cluster of spirit-driven shells dragging themselves forward with that same poltergeist twitch I recognized from the hospital.
The forest had become a staging ground.
Dagna had brought reinforcements, and she had done it fast.
Nishi’s voice snapped through the cave. “Kill them all.”
Faith stepped to the mouth, weapon up, face fierce. “Come on, give it your best shot.”
Aurora’s laugh was short. “I like you more every minute.”
Greyson planted himself near the seam device, hands glowing. “I can keep the exit open, but if they shove us against it, it’ll tear.”
“Then don’t let them shove,” Faith said.
Eve’s hellfire ignited fully now, contained in her palms, bright and hot. She seemed as if she wanted to set the entire forest on fire, and only the memory of a hospital kept her from doing it.
Tegan stared down at the relic, then back up at Dagna. “You used this to call the dead.”
Dagna’s smile brightened. “And it answered. Like a good little bell.”
Tegan’s eyes narrowed. “It doesn’t control them.”
“It doesn’t need to,” Dagna said sweetly. “That’s what he is for.”
Drathar lifted one hand, fingers curling like he was pulling on invisible threads. The spirit driven shells twitched as a group, then surged forward.
My necromancy stirred in response, but it hit resistance immediately. Like trying to wade through mud. The relic’s pulse interfered, making the dead feel slippery and half out of reach.
I pushed anyway, reaching for the nearest corpse, trying to grab its animating force.
It bucked away, not because it was stronger than me, but because something was scrambling the signal. The relic’s call was still echoing through them, and Drathar’s control layered on top like a second set of hands.
I ground my teeth. “I can’t get a hold.”
Eve shouted without looking back. “Then pin bodies, not spirits.”
Easier said than done, but I tried. I thrust my hands outward and forced pressure into the nearest cluster, locking joints, freezing movement long enough for Faith to fire into skulls and for Nishi to slice through tendons and drop them into useless piles.
They kept moving anyway, twitching like broken marionettes.
“Fire,” I yelled. “We need fire.”
Eve obliged.
She threw a tight burst low to the ground, and the nearest spirit driven shells ignited. The shriek that followed was not a human sound. It was the sound of something angry being ripped out of its anchor. The corpses collapsed into ash and stillness.
Faith exhaled. “That’s more like it.”
Aurora stepped in beside Faith, fast and controlled, shifting just enough that her eyes flashed gold and her canines showed. She moved like she was built for a hunt, and the way she tore into a corpse made it clear she was.
Greyson kept the seam stable, his face pale with effort. The air around the exit rippled, but it held.
Tegan backed deeper into the cave, cradling the relic like it might try to bite. Her face was tight with concentration.
Dagna followed her with spells.
Not fire. Not lightning. Something colder.
Dagna’s hands flicked and twisted, and thin bands of dark energy snapped toward Tegan’s wrists like restraints. They didn’t land fully, but they sparked against the air, trying to latch onto the relic.
Dagna wasn’t aiming for Tegan. She was aiming for the stone heart in her hands.
Eve saw it. She moved again, stepping between Tegan and Dagna, hellfire flaring. “Try it.”
Dagna’s smile never faltered. “You can’t burn everything, Eve.”
Eve’s eyes narrowed. “Watch me.”
Drathar laughed, and the sound rolled through the cave like a curse. He lifted his hand again, and more shells surged forward, crowding the entrance.
For a moment, everything became simultaneous.
Faith firing and swearing and grinning like she lived for this.
Nishi barking orders, blade flashing, her hunters holding the line outside.
Aurora lunging and ripping and shifting back and forth between human and wolf in quick blurs.
Greyson straining to keep our escape open.
Eve burning what she could while protecting Tegan with her body.
Dagna casting and casting, trying to disrupt Tegan’s grip on the relic.
Drathar pulling threads, driving spirits into shells like he was stuffing rage into meat.
And me, stuck in the middle, feeling useless as my necromancy slid off the dead like oil.
Tegan’s voice cut through it, intense and focused. “I can destroy it.”
Dagna’s eyes flashed. “No you can’t.”
Tegan’s mouth tightened. “Yes. I can.”
The relic pulsed hard, almost desperate. The gold veins lit bright, and for half a heartbeat it felt like the thing was begging Tegan not to do it.
Tegan’s expression stayed cold. “You shouldn’t have activated it.”
She lowered the relic to the cave floor, set it inside the salt circle she’d scraped into the dirt with her boot, then placed both palms on either side.
Her magic rose.
Not loud, not showy. Dense. Grounded. Like stone deciding to move.
The symbols on the relic flared and spun. The air thickened. The cave walls hummed with pressure.
Dagna hissed something under her breath and threw a spell straight at Tegan’s hands.
Eve intercepted it with hellfire, burning the spell out of the air like it was paper.
Dagna’s smile finally cracked. “You stubborn witch.”
Tegan’s eyes stayed on the relic. “Thank you.”
She pushed.
The relic resisted.
I felt it in my ribs, a tension that tugged at the egg bond and made my lungs tighten. The baby reacted, a pulse of fear and heat. My vision wavered.
Then the relic’s pulse stuttered.
Once.
Twice.
Tegan whispered a phrase I didn’t recognize, something older than coven work. The salt circle flared bright-white.
The relic screamed.
Not with sound, exactly. With sensation. A spike of cold that shot through the cave and out into the trees like a shockwave.
Every spirit driven shell outside froze mid motion.
Drathar’s hand jerked as if his strings had snapped.
Dagna’s eyes widened.
Tegan shoved again, and the relic cracked.
A clean fracture split the stone heart down the middle. The gold veins flared, then splintered into sparks.
The calling that had been humming through the air stopped.
It didn’t fade. It was cut off.
Like someone had slammed a door on a scream.
My breath hitched.
The resistance in my necromancy vanished instantly.
It was like someone had removed a weight from my mind.
For the first time all night, the dead felt reachable.
Mine.
I didn’t think. I reacted.
I thrust both hands outward and grabbed the nearest cluster of spirit-driven shells like they were puppets and I was finally holding the strings. The sensation snapped into place with brutal clarity. Spirits snarling, corpses twitching, Drathar’s influence sliding off like grease.
Mine now.
I turned them.
Not gently.
The shells that had been surging toward our line pivoted in unison and lunged at Dagna and Drathar instead.
Dagna stumbled back, eyes flashing in fury. “No.”
Drathar’s expression changed, amusement draining into something panicked. He lifted his hand, tried to pull control back.
Nothing.
The relic was broken. His support was gone. The spirits inside the shells answered me, not him.
The nearest corpse grabbed at Drathar’s arm. Another slammed into Dagna’s side. She cried out, furious, and threw a spell that blasted two shells apart.
More came.
Faith saw the shift and barked a laugh. “Oh. I like this version.”
Eve’s eyes widened slightly, then she gave me a quick nod, approval and urgency rolled into one.
Aurora’s grin flashed. “Get them.”
I pushed harder, driving the shells like a wave, forcing them to swarm Dagna and Drathar, biting, clawing, dragging. The spirits inside them were not loyal, they were just angry and hungry, and now they had targets who deserved it.
Dagna’s face twisted with rage. She grabbed Drathar’s sleeve. “We’re leaving.”
Drathar snarled something in a language that made the cave walls feel dirty, then slammed his palm down. Shadow rippled, a sudden burst of darkness that threw several shells back.
It bought them a second.
That was all they needed.
Dagna threw one last glare at me, eyes bright with hatred. “This isn’t over.”
Then she and Drathar vanished into the trees, slipping away like the forest swallowed them.
Eve moved immediately. “Nishi. With me.”
Nishi did not hesitate. She turned and sprinted after them, hunters following. Eve’s hellfire flashed as she ran, lighting the path in brief bursts.
Aurora started forward too, then stopped when I made a sound I couldn’t control.
Pain hit my chest like someone had shoved a red-hot blade under my ribs.
I gasped and staggered.
The egg bond flared wildly, not fear this time, panic, like the baby felt my body failing and screamed silently for stability.
I clutched my chest, breath ragged. It felt like my heart was on fire.
I took one step, then another, and my knees buckled.
I collapsed onto the cave floor.
Faith was on me instantly. Her hands caught my shoulders, keeping me from cracking my head on stone. “Salima. Hey. Look at me.”
Aurora dropped beside her, eyes fierce, hands already checking my pulse like she’d done this before. “What happened?”
I tried to breathe. It hurt. It burned.
The fire wasn’t from the relic. It was from inside me, spreading through my chest and down my arms in searing pulses.
My vision blurred. The cave ceiling swam.
Faith’s voice went tight. “Is it the egg?”
I shook my head weakly. “No. It’s… Lucinda.”
Faith froze. “What?”
The words tore out of me between breaths. “She cut me loose.”
Aurora’s brows drew together. “Cut you loose from what?”
My throat tightened. I swallowed hard, then forced the truth out. “The coven. She severed me.”
Faith’s face went pale with fury. “She can’t.”
“She did,” I whispered.
The pain surged again, and I cried out. It sounded pathetic to my own ears, but I couldn’t stop it. It felt like my magic was being ripped out by the roots. Like every protective thread I had relied on inside the coven structure had been yanked away at once.
The egg bond flickered. I shoved warmth through it automatically, desperate. The baby answered with a weak pulse.
My eyes stung.
Aurora’s voice went low and urgent. “Salima, stay with us. Breathe.”
Faith’s hands tightened on my shoulders. Her voice shook with anger. “I’m going to kill her.”
I tried to smile and it came out wrong. “Don’t,” I rasped. “Not yet.”
Faith’s eyes glistened, and I hated that I was making her feel this. “You are not dying.”
I swallowed, the burn in my chest spreading like wildfire. My hands shook. My body felt cold and hot at the same time.
The words I had been refusing all night finally broke loose.
“I’m going to die,” I whispered.
Faith’s face twisted. “No.”
I looked at her, really looked, and for a moment the chaos fell away. No council. No undead. No relic. Just my friend holding me up on a cave floor.
I drew in a ragged breath and forced the last part out.
“Thank you,” I said, voice breaking. “For being my friends.”
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