Chapter 18 Cinder
CINDER
“Marshall!” Mom started toward him, but Hecate grabbed her hand. Her eyes glazed white as she slipped back into the same trance she’d endured in the Underworld.
The ground shook beneath my feet. The rift widened, groaning like a heavy, rusted door that hadn’t been opened in decades.
Storm clouds rolled across the sky, billowing above us, sinking downward like a dark ceiling as light flickered in the canopy, giving the atmosphere a static charge and turning my skin to gooseflesh.
A bolt of lightning struck a tree. Thunder clapped. The trunk split in two.
The shedim charged.
“Stop,” the demons commanded in unison, but the beastie ignored them and barreled toward Patrice.
“The worlds are unraveling,” Hecate said. “It has no master now.”
I shot a stream of fire at the creature, but it only added fuel to its attack. It swiped a taloned hand at Patrice, but she squealed and jumped backward, its claws only catching her shirt.
“It has two hearts,” Ember said, clutching her sword and circling the fiend.
“Believe me, I’m well aware,” I said.
She glanced at me, eyebrows raised, and I nodded. Yes, I had fought these suckers before. Apparently, she had too.
Another bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, striking the same tree. Crackling fire consumed its branches, and it crashed into the clearing between Patrice and us, limbs snapping and sparks flying everywhere.
“We’ve got this,” Shade said, jutting a hand toward the shedim. “Do your thing.”
The shedim screeched and froze to the spot, dropping to its knees as Shade appeared to suck the life right out of it. I’d ponder when and how he developed that power if we made it out of this predicament.
“End this,” the goddess commanded, and we had no choice but to obey.
“We will attempt our magic on this side of the veil,” Discord said. “Join your mother.”
My stomach did a backflip. The clearing was on fire, the air thick with the acrid scent of ozone and the heavy, vibrating hum of a reality that was literally falling apart at the seams. The rift, a jagged, pulsing scar in the veil, stretched fifty feet high, bleeding the dark orange light of the Underworld into our realm, and my dad lay utterly still on the ground in front of it.
“Now is the time, Holland sisters,” Hecate said, her silver hair flowing upward into the vacuum of the rift like she was standing in an invisible wind tunnel.
Ember, Ash, and I stepped forward, linking hands and forming a crescent in front of the goddess. Ash’s face was still pale from the curse, but the sheer gravity of the moment seemed to be holding her together.
I took Hecate’s and Ash’s hands, and Ember took Mom’s. The goddess’s magic surged through me like a blast of liquid nitrogen in my veins. I tried to gasp, but the air stuck in my throat.
“Holy Hec—” Ash started, but she thought better of using the goddess’s name in vain right in front of her.
“Eff me,” Ember muttered.
We closed our eyes and slipped into the trance. The world disappeared around us, until all we heard was the roaring wind and all we saw were the unraveling fibers of reality, whipping loosely, their ends snapping and cracking like electric whips.
I had no idea what the guys were doing, but on Hecate’s command, we sent a combined blast of gold, red, and silver vim toward the fraying edges of the veil, trying to stitch the fibers back together with sheer willpower.
In my mind, I grabbed a red thread and then a black one, pulling them together and pressing the ends against each other. The red one crackled, and the black burst into a cloud of obsidian dust.
“Like with like.” Hecate’s voice drifted in the void.
“Right.” I tried two red ones this time, pressing the ends together and willing them to become one.
They refused to join.
I imagined tying them into a knot, crossing one over the other, and looping it through. This time, it held. But the moment I let go, the knot untied, the threads crackling with energy, whipping this way and that.
“I knew I should’ve taken that basket-weaving class at the community center,” Ash said in our minds.
I tried two black threads and got the same results. “This isn’t working.”
“We’ve got this!” Ember shouted over the roar of the wind.
“Use my power,” Hecate said. “Mix my silver light with your gold.”
I focused on the super high vibration running through my veins and sent a pulse of it outward. Fibers wove together, solidifying in my mind’s eye and then unraveling as quickly as they had joined.
The energy around us shifted as our demons performed their magic. Violet flames and crimson shadows crashed against the barrier, but the moment their energy touched the goddess’s silver light, it scattered like sparks against a brick wall.
“It’s not sticking!” Mayhem said, his voice distant.
Hecate tightened her grip on my hand and then released us from the trance. “Your magic is a discordant frequency, demon. You are fighting the very world you wish to save. You must channel me too, or the weight of the void will pull us all under.”
“No!” My heart hammered against my ribs, my vision swimming into focus. I’d seen what the goddess’s magic did to demons…the violent way Discord’s body had reacted to her latent energy. To channel her in this close proximity… “That will kill them.”
“Then let it.” Her voice echoed with the finality of a death toll. “If the veil shreds completely, everyone dies—witches, demons, and mortals alike. There will be no realm left for you to mourn in.”
Discord looked at me, a silent, grim acceptance in his eyes that made me want to scream. He stepped forward, Chaos and Mayhem following his lead.
“We must do this,” he said, his tone steady despite the pandemonium around us.
“You can’t.” I tried to keep my voice from cracking, but I failed miserably.
“We have to.” He nodded solemnly, and the guys lined up in a row. Discord stood in the center, and they joined our circle, Mayhem, taking Ember’s hand, Chaos taking Ash’s.
My stomach roiled, and my pulse raced. There had to be another way.
The rift groaned, ripping open even more as a massive clap of thunder shook the earth.
“Now, Cinder,” Hecate commanded.
“We’ll filter it,” I said. “We’ll take the brunt of the goddess’s power and pass the tempered magic to you.”
A flood of silver light, pure and devastating, crashed into us. I felt the vibration through my teeth, a high-pitched hum that made my vision blur. I channeled everything I had, trying to act as a buffer for the intense power before pushing it into Ash so she could temper it even more.
It felt like trying to sieve a tidal wave through a window screen.
The power was too disjointed, our demons unable to find a rhythm that harmonized with the divine silver light, and we couldn’t slip fully into the trance.
Discord groaned. Chaos wheezed as frost began to pattern his skin, and Mayhem’s complexion turned a sickly, pale white.
The fragmented energy ground against the rift, causing more fibers to snap and crack.
A piece of the clearing vanished into the void, leaving a bottomless hole where a pine tree had stood seconds before.
“You are soul-bound,” Hecate said, her voice strained. “Stop fighting the connection and embrace it. I cannot pull you into the trance otherwise.”
“Change it up.” I dropped Ash’s hand. “Soulmate to soulmate.”
We scrambled through the electrical storm of magic. I grabbed Discord’s hand, interlocking our fingers. Ash took his other and clasped Chaos’s hand, while Ember slammed her palm into Mayhem’s before rejoining the goddess’s circle.
“Don’t filter it.” My stomach soured the moment I uttered the words. But we were soul-bound. Our connection, our tether, would keep Discord alive. If it didn’t…
Well, I’d die too. We all would, and no one would be around for it to matter.
I inhaled deeply and let go. The dam broke.
Hecate’s power rushed through me and into Discord without a buffer. My vision blurred, and the goddess yanked me into her trance.
The tether joining Discord to me tightened, and his energy surged across it…absolute, blinding agony. He felt the high vibration so intensely, it threatened to tear the atoms of his soul apart beneath the crushing, infinite weight of the goddess.
“Now!” Hecate shouted above the roaring wind.
Her silver light poured through us, frigid and sharp, stronger and even more all-encompassing than before. For a heartbeat, the jagged edges of the tear seemed to still. The unravelling slowed.
But it didn’t mend.
The pressure from the Underworld pushed back against our silver wall of magic, and the rift buckled inward. The fifty-foot-high rip in reality continued to widen at the top, mocking our efforts as the very fibers of the universe shredded before our eyes.
“It’s still not working!” My voice was a ragged howl in my mind.
Discord’s grip on my hand loosened. His energy began to fade.
A thunderous, guttural roar that could only have come straight from the bowels of Hell ripped through our souls.