Chapter 14 THE THREEFOLD CORD
The living room no longer felt like a place where good people lived.
It had been stripped of all its warmth and familiarity, every piece of furniture shoved against the walls until the center of the room lay bare and waiting, dark pools of shadow gathering there like they knew exactly what was coming.
Even the air itself felt different, stifling and oppressive, as though something invisible had moved in and claimed the space.
Candles ringed the room in careful formation, dozens of them burning in colors that didn’t look natural or real.
Deep violet that bled into molten silver.
Emerald so dark it looked bruised. They didn’t flicker like normal fire.
They pulsed, each flame moving in perfect synchronization with the others, as though breathing in time to some rhythm I couldn’t hear.
It was just me, Trace, and Dominic now. And, of course, the Roderick sisters, moving through the space with the kind of confidence that came from having dabbled in the dark arts for the entirety of their lives. From knowing exactly what they were doing, even if the rest of us didn’t.
I wished that made me feel better, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on me. If anything, it made me wonder how many people had been desperate enough to come to them for help.
And how many of those people were still even alive.
The sisters had wanted the room cleared out the moment Gabriel tossed the talisman in the fireplace and broke the deadly sins spell on us.
Tessa had been sent upstairs to rest while Gabriel went back on Jaqueline duty.
Neither of them had been happy about it, though they hadn’t tried to argue.
Especially not when the sisters warned them that their presence would put the spell at risk of interference.
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was relieved that my sister and Gabriel were safe and sound and nowhere near us when all of this went down. Some selfish part of me may have even been glad because at least they wouldn’t have to remember me like this if the spell wound up going wrong.
Anita was kneeling in the center of the cleared floor, her red hair pulled back into a severe knot at the base of her skull as she drew something onto the hardwood.
It looked like ash or crushed chalk mixed with blood.
The mixture left dark, wet trails across the wood, staining it in a way I knew would probably never come out. Not with regular soap anyway.
I tried to follow her lines as they curved and branched across the floor, but every time I focused on them too long, my eyes burned as though I weren’t meant to look at all.
There was no hesitation in her work. Each stroke of her fingers left a perfect line, as though she’d done it a hundred times before. Even the intensity of her focus felt heavy, like one mistake would make the whole thing collapse around us.
Annabelle stood near the fireplace, grinding something in a stone mortar with slow, circling movements.
The sound of stone against stone seemed unnaturally loud, ringing through the room and grating into my nerves and bones.
Whatever she was making smelled like copper and burnt sage and something else…
something that reminded me of graves and wet earth and things that shouldn’t be disturbed.
Each rotation of the pestle sent up small puffs of powder that wafted in the air as though they were too dense to settle.
The scent made my stomach turn, the taste of bile quickly rising in my throat, but I swallowed it down and tried not to breathe through my nose.
Tried not to think about what she was grinding in there or where it had come from.
I turned my attention to Arianna as she stood by the window, her eyes closed and her lips moving in a whisper I wouldn’t have been able to hear even if I wasn’t perishing from spell rot.
Whatever it was, it was making the space around her shimmer, almost distorting the air itself.
It took me a beat to realize she was casting.
Building layers of protection or concealment or something else entirely.
Her eyes opened briefly, meeting mine from across the room before slipping closed again.
There was no reassurance in that look. Just acknowledgment. Cold and mechanical.
I sat on the couch in the same position as before, only this time I had Trace on one side and Dominic on the other. Both of them close enough that our shoulders touched. Close enough that I could feel the tension radiating off them in waves.
Neither had said much since the others left. They just sat there, watching the sisters work, their bodies coiled tight like they were preparing for battle.
I supposed in a way they were.
The black veins had spread further while we waited. I could feel them crawling beneath my skin like something returning from the dead, branching out with every heartbeat that stuttered in my chest. My hands had begun to go numb, and my vision kept blurring at the edges.
When I tried to flex my fingers, they barely responded.
The corruption had reached deeper than I’d thought.
Faster than anyone had predicted. I could feel it in my chest now, wrapping around my ribs and squeezing.
Each breath took more effort than the last. Each heartbeat felt weaker.
I was running out of time and we all knew it.
The sisters knew it. Trace and Dominic knew it. And I knew it most of all.
Anita sat back on her heels, surveying her work. The symbol, or whatever the hell it was, stretched across nearly the entire floor now. A massive circle with smaller circles nested inside it, connected by lines and curves that seemed to shift when I wasn’t looking directly at them.
The whole thing looked wrong. Nonsensical in a way that made my head spin when I tried to trace the pattern with my eyes. But Anita looked satisfied, her mouth set in a thin line of grim approval as she studied it.
“It’s ready,” she said, cutting through the thick hush of the room.
Annabelle crossed the room with the mortar still cradled in her hands.
She knelt beside her sister and tilted the bowl so that Anita could see the contents.
It looked like crushed bone mixed with something rusty and wet.
Then again, it could have just as easily been flour and paprika for all I knew. I was hardly an expert on these things.
“Perfect.” Anita took it from her and began sprinkling the mixture along the outer circle, each pinch landing exactly where it needed to. With every sprinkle, the candles flared brighter, making my heart race and my stomach roil.
The flames grew stronger as the boundary took shape yet the temperature in the room seemed to drop.
My skin broke out in goosebumps, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or from the magic saturating the air.
Both, probably. Everything about it felt dark and unnatural, as though we were standing at the precipice of something vast and hungry.
Something that might swallow us whole if we weren’t careful.
“Lay her in the center,” ordered Anita without looking up from what she was doing.
I tried to move, to stand up on my own, but my legs wouldn’t cooperate. The numbness had spread too far.
Trace was already there, scooping me up into his arms like I weighed nothing.
He slipped one arm behind my back and one under my thighs, tucking me against his chest in that careful, protective way of his.
And for one small moment, I let myself sink into him.
Let myself believe this was actually going to work.
Despite the progress and the small sliver of hope we now had, I could still feel Trace’s heart racing against my side.
It was pounding so hard I was sure it was trying to jump straight out of his chest. But when I looked up at him, his face appeared calm and gave nothing away.
Just that unwavering determination I’d seen so many times from him before.
The one that said he’d walk straight into the Pits of Hell before he let anything happen to me.
God, I loved him. I loved them both so much that it hurt.
Worse even than the corruption eating through my veins.
He carried me to the center of the symbol and then gently lowered me down onto my back. My chest ached as he touched his hand to my cheek for a few seconds before finally pulling away.
“Get on either side of her,” directed Anita. “Close. You need to be touching.”
Trace and Dominic moved into position quickly, sitting down on either side of me as instructed. The moment they were inside the boundary, the air changed around us as the temperature plummeted further.
I doubted very much that was a good thing.
Arianna appeared above us, carrying three lengths of black cord braided together.
I couldn’t tell what the material was, and frankly, I was fairly certain I wouldn’t have wanted to know even if I could ask.
She didn’t say anything when she knelt before us and began wrapping the cord around our wrists—first Dominic’s, then mine, then Trace’s—binding us together until the strange rope connected all three of us.
I felt it immediately. A pull that went deeper than skin. I wanted to pull away from it, almost on instinct, but I couldn’t seem to move an inch.
“The binding holds you together during the ritual,” explained Arianna, her voice casual, as though she were reading instructions off a recipe card. “If it breaks, the Anchoring spell will fail, so whatever you do, don’t let go.”
I wanted to ask her what would happen to me if the spell failed. But I suspected I already knew the answer to that.
Annabelle began circling us, lighting something at intervals that sent up thin columns of sweet, rotten smoke as Anita stepped to the edge of the circle, careful not to pass the boundary she’d drawn on the floor.