Chapter 10 #2
“How much time is this going to buy us?” asked Trace, his dimples pressing in as he chewed his bottom lip.
Caleb’s hands stilled for a fraction of a second, though he didn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” growled Trace. “That’s not good enough, Caleb.”
“What do you want me to say? I’m fucking driving blind here, man,” snapped Caleb, his frustration breaking through the barely-there control he had over himself. “It’s not like there’s a playbook for this. I’m doing the best I can.”
I hated that they were fighting because of me.
Hated that Trace’s voice was breaking and Dominic looked like he was bracing for a loss he refused to even imagine, let alone name.
I wanted to tell them they didn’t have to keep tearing themselves apart on my behalf.
That I was already coming undone just fine on my own.
But I didn’t speak. Didn’t push. Didn’t beg for miracles that no longer existed.
Somehow, it already felt too hopeless to even try.
Caleb struck a match and lit the candles one by one. The flames caught quickly, burning unnaturally bright despite the lack of airflow in the room. He sprinkled the herbs into the bowl, and smoke began to rise in thin, fragrant tendrils.
He nodded to himself and then paused, lifting his head to eye the cuffs that were locking me and Trace together. “You need to uncuff her. You can’t be touching her, or the spell might inadvertently deviate.”
Trace frowned, his gaze jumping to Dominic, who was standing above Caleb like an overlord with his arms folded across his chest. “Is that safe?”
Dominic took one look at me and nodded once. He already knew that I barely had the strength to sit upright, let alone bolt for the door or give in to the pull if the voices surged again.
Trace hesitated only a second longer before reaching into his pocket for the key.
He unlocked the cuffs, one wrist and then the other, the soft clink of metal sounding far too loud in the quiet room as he freed us from each other.
“Is it going to hurt her?” he asked, rubbing gently at the red marks around my wrist.
Caleb didn’t look away from me. “I don’t know.
It might,” he admitted ruefully. “I’ve never done something like this before.
My spell is going to need to push through the rot to reach the damage, and even if it does, there’s no telling how her body is going to respond to more magic being forced into a system that’s already at war with itself. ”
Yikes. That definitely didn’t sound like a good time.
Still, I nodded anyway because what was the alternative? Refuse the spell, do nothing and wait for the rot to swallow me completely?
Trace slipped an arm around me and drew me into his chest. He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, holding me against him as if he wanted to memorize the feel of my body against him before reluctantly letting go.
The moment his support disappeared, the room tilted around me, making me wobble in my spot. Clenching my teeth, I braced a hand against the arm of the sofa, forcing myself to stay upright through sheer stubbornness alone.
“You ready, Blackburn?”
I nodded again, knowing I couldn’t trust my voice not to crack and give me away.
Caleb positioned himself in front of the bowl and placed both hands over it as I watched through a heat-soaked haze.
His chanting began low and controlled, the words moving through the air in what I was pretty sure was Latin, though the fever made everything sound distorted and strange, like the syllables were reaching me from a great distance.
Light bloomed between his palms. Soft at first and then brighter until it hurt to look at directly.
The glow spread outward, slowly winding its way away from the table as it reached for me.
I felt it the moment his magic made contact with my skin.
A sharp, pulling sensation that hooked straight into my veins.
I gasped, my hands clenching into fists.
Caleb’s chanting grew louder, more urgent as the light intensified, burning bright enough that I had to squeeze my eyes shut. The pulling sensation turned into a ripping one, tearing pieces loose and dragging them toward the surface.
Something inside me recoiled before pushing back.
Hard.
The light around Caleb’s hands flickered. His voice strained, the Latin words coming faster, more desperate. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his entire body trembling with the effort of channeling that much power.
And then, with a sound like glass breaking, the spell collapsed.
The light died. Caleb’s hands dropped to his sides as his shoulders slumped forward. He looked utterly spent and barely even able to hold himself upright.
“Why did you stop?” demanded Dominic with enough ice in his voice to make the back of my neck prickle.
He was still looming over Caleb with his arms crossed and his face carved in shadow, watching him the way a man watched something he was seconds away from dismantling.
Caleb shook his head, beads of sweat rolling off his forehead at the movement. “I don’t have enough power. I can’t get through—”
“Try again,” ordered Dominic, leaving no room for argument.
Caleb lifted his head to Dominic, staring up at him through grief-rimmed eyes. “I—”
“I. Said. Try. Again.”
A weighty silence moved through the room, thick enough to make me feel like I was choking on it. Caleb blew out a slow breath and then finally nodded, though it looked a lot more like placation than anything related to hope.
“Carly,” he said without looking at his sister.
She didn’t need to be asked twice. She scrambled to the coffee table before dropping to her knees beside her brother, grabbing his outstretched hand without hesitation.
The moment their skin connected, the light reignited.
Her face went pale as she closed her eyes, allowing her brother to draw from her power reservoir and siphon her magic to fuel the spell.
I could feel the shift almost immediately…more power flooding into the spell, more hooks sinking into my blood, more of that insistent, stripping pull digging deeper into my veins. A gasp broke out of me as my back arched off the sofa, my hands fisting in the cushions beneath me.
“Morgan!” called Caleb, his voice ragged around the chant he was still trying to hold together.
Morgan hesitated for only a heartbeat before she moved, kneeling on Caleb’s other side and gripping his free hand.
The connection snapped into place and the light blazed white-hot, so bright I had to look away completely, the glow burning through my closed eyelids like I was standing too close to the sun.
The three of them formed a chain now, power flowing from the twins and Morgan into Caleb, then channeling through him into the spell.
I could feel it working, feel the magic clawing at the toxicity in my blood, trying to rip it free.
My entire body went rigid as the sensation turned from pulling to tearing, like something was trying to drag my insides out through my skin.
A raw, strangled sound tore out of me before I could stop it.
My hands flew up to clutch at my stomach as though I could hold myself together through sheer will alone, but it was useless.
Whatever the spell was doing, it wasn’t waiting for permission, and every second of it felt like acid being poured over an open wound.
Caleb’s chanting reached a crescendo, his voice raw and desperate. The candles burned so bright they looked like miniature suns, the flames stretching upward in impossible lengths. The smoke from the herbs became a thick column, swirling around us in patterns that defied physics.
For one beautiful, terrible moment, I actually let myself believe it might work.
And then Caleb’s voice cracked and the light faltered like a dying breath.
His chanting stuttered, words breaking apart mid-syllable.
Carly made a small, pained sound beside him, her body swaying on her knees as the strain caught up to her all at once while Morgan’s face had gone completely white, her lips pressing into a thin line as she visibly struggled to maintain the connection, every muscle in her arms trembling from the effort of holding on.
And then the light went out completely.
A soundless pulse of energy ripped outward, slamming through the room like a shockwave, knocking Trace back against the arm of the sofa with a grunt and sending Dominic stumbling a few steps backward toward the fireplace.
All three Casters collapsed backward in unison, the chain breaking as they released each other’s hands.
Carly landed against the chair, her chest rising and falling in uneven bursts as Morgan sagged against the sofa with her head dropping forward like it had suddenly become too heavy for her neck to hold.
My eyes darted to Caleb. He was laying flat with his back against the floor and his eyebrows pitched as though the failure were a physical weight pressing him into the floorboards.
The healing spell hadn’t worked. I didn’t need to look down at myself to know it, but of course, I looked anyway, hoping against hope I was wrong and all their hard work hadn’t been in vain.
But it was.
The black lines hadn’t changed. If anything, they looked darker. Thicker. And now they’d spread to my hands too, branching down into my fingers in fine, jagged lines while we’d been distracted with the spell.
Caleb pushed himself up to his knees, staring at my arms like he could force the black lines to disappear through willpower alone. “That should have worked. We had enough power, the spell was clean, it should have—”
“It didn’t even make a dent,” whispered Morgan, her eyes wide with horror as she looked at me.
“Then try again,” said Trace, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and pulling me into him like he could shield me from anything so long as he kept me close enough.
Caleb shook his head, the defeat in his eyes making my chest constrict. “I gave it everything I have. Her magic is just too strong for my spell to penetrate. The spell rot is too deep.”
“That’s unacceptable,” snarled Dominic as he stood with his arms folded in front of the fireplace, his voice carrying the promise of violence. “Find another way.”
“Don’t you get it? There isn’t one!” Caleb’s voice cracked, the word breaking clean in half between his teeth.
“I’ve been through every grimoire my family has.
We’re talking centuries of spellwork. Divine magic.
Celestial binding. You name it, I’ve looked through it.
It’s not the kind of thing that has a counterspell tucked away into some dusty, old-ass book. It’s just…it’s out of my realm.”
I knew he was telling the truth. I could hear it in the hollow sound of his voice. See it in the way he looked at me like failing this had broken something in him that he would never be able to repair.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Jemma.” His gaze held mine, wrecked and hopeless. “I wish I could fix this. I wish I was enough.” He shook his head once, slowly. “But I’m not.”
And just like that, whatever hope we’d been clinging to was gone.