Chapter 11
The acrid tang of Caleb’s failed spell hung in the air, curling through the living room like a testament to everything that had gone wrong and just how completely out of options we were.
The candles had burned down to little more than stubs in the few minutes the spell had been alive, their flames flagging weakly across the coffee table as though spent from the magic that had ripped through them.
No one moved a muscle. No one spoke. The only sound was my own breathing rattling in my ears, too shallow and too fast against the faint crackle of dying wicks.
And then Dominic pounced.
One minute he was standing near the fireplace, and the next, he was in front of Caleb, closing the distance with that preternatural speed that still caught me off guard no matter how many times I’d seen it.
His hand shot out, fisting into the front of Caleb’s shirt and hauling him upright with enough force to knock him off balance.
“Do. The. Spell. Again,” he ordered, his voice cold enough to frost the air between them.
Caleb’s jaw locked, but he didn’t pull away. “There’s no point. It won’t work.”
“I’ll be the one to decide that.”
“The spell rot is too advanced. The more we keep trying to force the healing spell into her, the faster the toxicity is going to spread. I don’t know how to get around that—”
“Then find me someone who does.”
“There isn’t anyone! That’s the whole point!” Caleb’s frustration finally snapped loose, his voice rising as exhaustion and panic bled through. “Do you honestly think I haven’t been looking? That I haven’t already called every Caster I know and searched every grimoire I have access to?”
“Then perhaps you need a stronger incentive to get more creative.” Dominic’s grip tightened as he jerked him closer, hard enough to make Caleb flinch.
“Hey!” Morgan scrambled to her feet and shoved herself between them. “Back off! He’s doing everything he can.”
Carly rushed up to join her, sandwiching Caleb between them. “Let my brother go. He’s exhausted. We all are,” she pleaded, her hands trembling as she grabbed Caleb’s arm.
“Oh, he’s exhausted?” Dominic’s lips twisted into a snarl. “In case you haven’t noticed, she’s dying right before our eyes,” he bit out, painstakingly slow. “Exhaustion is a luxury we no longer have.”
“Come on, man. Don’t you think I know that?
” croaked Caleb as he finally tore himself free, staggering back a step.
“I’ve been working on this nonstop since we found out.
I’ve barely slept an hour. I called in every favor I had.
I tried everything I could think of, and it wasn’t enough.
” He dragged a shaky hand down his face, his eyes bloodshot and rimmed red.
“We need a miracle at this point, and I don’t know how to give you that. ”
“Then I suggest you learn quickly,” warned Dominic as he took a small, controlled step toward him again, “because I promise you with every fiber of my being, if she dies, so will you.”
Caleb went completely still, the last of the color draining from his face as Morgan made a sound of pure outrage and stepped forward, hands curling into fists like she was seconds from swinging at Dominic, vampire be damned.
I wanted to scream at them to stop. To tell them this wasn’t what I wanted.
That I didn’t want blood or threats or anyone tearing each other apart on my behalf.
That I didn’t want to be the reason this house and everyone I loved inside it burned to the ground.
But I barely had the energy to lift my head from Trace’s shoulder then, let alone find the words to calm the room. I was utterly and completely useless.
Now more than ever.
“Alright, you’ve made your point,” said Trace, his arm curling more firmly around me. “This isn’t helping. None of this is helping her.”
“Is that right?” Dominic turned to face him. “And what would you have me do instead, hm? Sit beside her and play nursemaid while she withers away from the inside out?”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” snapped Trace, his voice dropping into something I didn’t recognize. “You don’t want to go there, Goldilocks. Trust me.”
“Don’t I?” Dominic laughed, but it was a cold, broken thing. “Oh, how very little you know of me.”
“I know enough to know we want the same fucking thing, so do us all a favor and stop acting like you’re the only one in this room who gives a damn about her.”
“Then prove it,” spat Dominic, his expression darkening until he barely resembled the man I knew. “She’s slipping away right before our eyes, and you’re behaving as though your presence alone is going to save her.”
Trace’s body went rigid beneath me as every muscle coiled tight. “I’m keeping her calm so that her heart rate doesn’t spike again and trigger another episode. What the hell are you doing besides terrorizing the one person who’s actually trying to help her?”
Dominic’s lips curled back over his teeth. “That boy is useless.”
“Well, that boy just drained himself and two other people trying to save her life,” fired Trace, his demeanor switching from defensive to openly confrontational. “What exactly have you done for her besides stand there and watch like some kind of vulture waiting for her to—”
“Finish that sentence,” snarled Dominic. “I dare you.”
The room felt as though it were going to detonate. As though the house itself was holding its breath, bracing for impact. One more word. One wrong inflection. That was all it would take.
My fingernails dug into Trace’s hand, a silent plea for him to stop.
Trace. I tried to push the thought toward him, but I wasn’t sure if it made it through the noise. Please.
“Look, if you want to make this about me, then go right the fuck ahead,” said Trace, shaking his head at Dominic as though he were a lost cause. “But threatening Caleb or anyone else in this room isn’t going to fix what’s happening to her. It’s just going to make everything worse.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Nothing could be worse than this,” said Dominic, his voice fraying at the edges.
“Watching her slip away by inches while everyone around me wrings their hands and tells me there’s nothing to be done.
I can think of no crueler form of torment than this, so forgive me if I’m not interested in your lectures on keeping calm. ”
“You think I want to be calm? I can fucking hear her thoughts,” he reminded him. “Every single one of them. I know exactly how much pain she’s in, how hard it’s getting for her to think straight, how the voices are getting louder. I fucking feel it all—”
“Then do something about it.”
“I AM!” boomed Trace, loud enough to make Carly and Morgan recoil. “I’m doing everything I can! But unlike you, I’m not going to start breaking people to make myself feel better about the fact that I’m helpless!”
“Alright, that’s enough.” The sound of Gabriel’s voice sliced through the room and the argument in one fell swoop.
Everyone turned to find him standing in the doorway with my sister.
“Both of you need to knock it off. Every second you spend threatening each other is another second the spell rot has to spread. So unless one of you plans to magically reverse corruption with posturing and tearing each other apart, I suggest you all stand down.”
Dominic ground his molars and then stalked back to lean his arm against the mantel as Trace exhaled roughly, his hold on me never wavering though.
“I expected better.” Gabriel shook his head, his gaze moving between them. “From both of you.”
My attention drifted over his shoulder to my sister. She was still staring at me, her face going progressively paler as she tracked the black lines all over my body. I watched her gaze move from my hands to my arms, then across my collarbone and up toward my throat.
I imagined the corruption was making its way to my mouth next seeing as I couldn’t seem to form proper words anymore.
“Jesus. Why didn’t anyone call me?” she asked as she crossed the room to me and crouched down beside me.
She touched her palm to my forehead, her breath catching as she registered the heat burning through me.
“She’s burning up again. It wasn’t this bad this morning.
” She glanced up at Trace, then Dominic, then Caleb, her eyes wide and terror-filled. “How is it moving this fast?”
“Unfortunately, she’s the perfect conduit,” answered Caleb despondently. “The spell rot feeds on power, and Jemma has an unlimited supply of it. There’s no ceiling or cut-off whatsoever. At this point, it’s just compounding.”
“Then why are you just standing there? Do something!”
“I did. I mean, I tried,” he said, shaking his head in despair. “The healing spell failed. There’s nothing any of us can do.”
Tessa gaped at him. “Are you kidding me right now, Caleb? That’s not good enough!” she snapped, shooting back up. “I don’t accept that.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face as if to erase all the horror from his mind. “I gave it everything I had. It…it just wasn’t enough.”
“We all did,” added Carly as she tucked a strand of her chestnut hair behind her ear. “This is beyond what any of us can handle. We need the Higher Ups.”
“Hardly.” Morgan scoffed. “The Higher Ups are half the reason she’s in this mess,” she reminded her. “They’re not going to do shit to help her. If anything, they’ll find a way to make it worse.”
“She’s right,” agreed Trace. “If they didn’t force the anointing spell into her and overload her system, none of this would be happening right now.”
Carly blanched, her mouth pressing into a hard line.
“Then what?” said Tessa, the last word coming apart at the hands of a desperation I’d never heard from her before. “We just sit back and let this thing take her?” She looked around frantically, searching each face as though there was anything any of them could have done.
But there wasn’t, and I knew that.
My sister just hadn’t gotten there yet.
She rounded on Dominic as something raw and feral flashed through her expression. “You have to do something,” she hissed, the demand striking hard between them.
Apparently, it no longer mattered that she’d mostly hated him since the moment she met or that she’d spent years looking at him as though he was something she’d scraped off the bottom of her shoe.
“You’re the only one who can—” She stopped and swallowed hard, her eyes brimming with tears that were seconds from falling. “You’d burn the world down for her.”
Dominic didn’t blink. “Without question.”
“Then do it,” she choked out, her voice cracking open on the words. “Burn it the fuck down.”
My breath hitched. No.
She didn’t know what she was asking of him, what she was giving him permission to do. She was too afraid of losing me and wasn’t thinking straight.
A cold chill crept down my spine.
Or maybe she did know. Maybe she knew exactly what she was saying when she begged him to take this into his own hands. To stop playing by anyone else’s rules but his own. To take the leash off and let the monster decide.
Either way, it made the hair on the back of my neck lift. Because I knew that if he let his monster loose, there would be no leashing it again.
Gabriel started in about letting calmer heads prevail as Carly said something else about going to the Council—that if we just explained the situation, they’d surely help. They all seemed to be talking at once, their voices blurring together and becoming nothing more than white noise.
Because I wasn’t hearing any of them anymore.
I only saw Dominic.
The way the fury drained out of his face. The way he was looking at me like I was the axis upon which his entire world spun. Like every breath he took was measured by whether I was still taking mine.
His eyes traced the black lines across my skin, following them with a focus that felt almost reverent. The muscle in his jaw ticked as his fists slowly unclenched at his sides.
In that moment, I saw past the violence and the desperation that had driven him all night. I saw something truer beneath it. Something fierce and terrifyingly tender at the same time. It made my chest ache, even through the fog of pain and the suffocation of fear.
‘Hold on for me, angel,’ he said to my mind, his voice caressing the edges like a lover’s touch.
I wanted to tell him not to go. To beg him not to risk his humanity on a pipe dream for me. But he was already looking at Trace now, and I couldn’t muster up the strength to speak.
“Keep her breathing if you don’t want to find yourself in the ground next to Caleb,” he said calmly as he pulled his coat from the chair and slipped it on.
“And just where in the hell do you think you’re going?” asked Gabriel, stepping forward as if to block him.
“Where else, brother?” he answered evenly, almost jovially. “To light the match.”
Gabriel all but groaned at his brother. “We need clear heads right now, not chaos and destruction!”
“I beg to differ.” A slow smile pulled at Dominic’s mouth.
“It seems to me that if playing by the hero’s rules is what got us here, then perhaps what she needs isn’t another savior at all.
” He glanced back at me once more, the look in his eyes daring the world to try and take me from him.
“Perhaps what she needs now is a villain.”
And with that, he was gone.