Chapter 14 THE THREEFOLD CORD #2
“This won’t be pleasant,” she said, and for once there was no smugness in her tone.
Just a cold, hard fact. “We’re going to tether your souls together.
This will create a permanent bond that will allow the excess power consuming her to bleed into you instead.
” She looked between Trace and Dominic. “Once it’s done, there’s no severing it.
You’ll be connected to her—and to each other—for as long as you draw breath. ”
Wait. They’ll be what now?
“Do you understand?” she prompted, eyebrows raised.
What in the hell was she talking about? I didn’t remember her saying anything about this being permanent for them. I had understood this to be temporary. A stopgap until we could figure out something better. This wasn’t what we’d agreed to. This wasn’t what I wanted for them.
I tried to lift my head to say as much, to sit up and stop them, but Dominic pressed his palm to my shoulder, holding me in place against the floor with no more effort than you’d use on a newborn baby.
“We got it,” said Trace as Dominic brushed the back of his knuckles against my cheek.
I tried to shake my head. Tried to get the word out. No. Not like this. Not forever. Not for them. But Dominic’s thumb had already moved to my jaw, calming me, and I could feel Trace’s fingers tightening around my other hand. They weren’t asking me. They had already decided.
Anita nodded once. “Now this is where it gets tricky. For the spell to work, we have to strip all three of you down to your most basic essence,” she continued, her eyes darkening a shade.
“Everything else gets pulled away until there’s nothing left but the core of who you are.
That’s the part we bind. It’s going to be extremely painful.
It will feel like dying. Like you're being torn apart and put back together at the same time.” She paused.
“And once we begin, there is no stopping it.”
My throat clicked as I tried to swallow. The corruption had spread to my tongue, making it thick and useless.
“Understood?”
Dominic and Trace nodded as I lay there, weak and shell-shocked, terrified that the two people I loved most in the world had just damned themselves to hell with me.
They were offering themselves up without a second thought, as though my life was worth any price.
As though neither of them planned on surviving without me.
I wanted to scream at them. Wanted to tell them I wasn’t worth this. Wasn’t worth what they were about to sacrifice. To risk. But the words wouldn’t come. All I could do was lie there and feel the weight of what they were giving up closing all around me like a tomb.
The sisters took their positions around the circle with Anita at the north point, Annabelle to the south, and Arianna to the east. Without warning or ceremony, they immediately began speaking in unison, murmuring words in a language I didn’t understand.
Incantations that felt older than written word.
I wanted to cover my ears, wanted to block out the sound altogether, but I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t do anything but listen as the chant wrapped around every part of me, burrowing into my skin like splinters.
The candles surged higher, their flames stretching toward the ceiling like clawing hands as the symbols on the floor began to glow, faint at first, then brighter, pulsing in time with the sisters’ chant.
And then I felt it.
A hook sinking into my chest, piercing and merciless, burrowing deep into a part of me I didn’t even have a name for. It was deeper than my lungs and heart. More sacred. My back arched off the floor as pain unlike anything I’d ever felt tore through me.
And it didn’t move quickly either. It was patient and meticulous, as if it were taking its time pulling me apart from the inside out.
Unmaking and remaking me in slow, punishing increments, and all I could do was feel it.
Every second of it. Every agonizing moment as that hook dug deeper and deeper until it found something it could latch onto.
The cords around our wrists warmed, then burned.
Trace’s hand clamped down on mine, his entire body going rigid as Dominic’s grip turned bruising.
I knew they were in the same agony as I was, but somehow, theirs felt worse.
More honed, more serrated, as though they were being cut open instead of just torn apart.
I wanted to tell them that I was sorry. I wanted to beg them to let go.
To save themselves. But I couldn’t speak.
Couldn’t move. I was trapped inside my own body and drowning in pain that had no end.
The sisters’ voices grew louder, building the way a storm gathered strength.
The agonizing hook in my chest was suddenly replaced by the presence of something else.
Something foreign that was invading the space where the hook had lodged itself.
I tried to fight it at first. Tried to push it back out.
But it was too strong. Too decided. It poured into me like water through cracks, filling every empty space until there was nowhere left for me to hide.
Trace.
I could feel him there, bright and unwavering and achingly warm, trying to push himself into me.
Trying to become part of the foundation that was crumbling.
His heartbeat. His breath. The way fear coiled tight in his chest even as he fought to project calm.
His determination, fierce and unshakable, wrapped around me like armor.
And he wasn’t alone.
I could feel Dominic too, his presence filling the spaces Trace’s warmth couldn’t reach, anchoring me from a different direction entirely.
Power coiled inside him like a sleeping dragon, dark and endless, but beneath it, there was something raw and viciously protective.
A devotion so intense it stole my breath.
Instinctively, I knew they felt me too.
Every fracture.
Every whisper.
Every strand of corrupted magic clawing through my veins.
Every dark thought.
Every moment of self-hatred.
Every time I’d looked in the mirror and seen something monstrous staring back.
They felt all of it. All the ugliness I’d kept hidden. All the shame I’d buried so deep I thought no one would ever find it. But they did. And they didn’t pull away. They didn’t recoil. They just held on tighter. Pushed in deeper.
The pain intensified until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t tell where I ended and they began.
The spell rot inside me rose, fighting against the intrusion, pushing back with everything it had.
It didn’t want to share me or let go. It had claimed me first and it was fighting to keep what it had taken.
I could feel it writhing inside me, lashing out, trying to corrupt them the way it had corrupted me.
Trying to spread like a virus that had no cure.
But the tether held. They held.
Slowly but surely, I felt the agonizing pressure begin to ease.
The overflow of power that had been poisoning me started to bleed away, siphoning into Trace and Dominic through the bond the sisters were forging.
It no longer owned me completely. No longer had me cornered.
Paths were opening. Channels forming. Exits where there had once been only walls.
For the first time in days, I could feel my body again.
Not just the numbness and screams and the pain that had overtaken me, but everything.
My heartbeat evening out. My lungs expanding. The corruption losing its grip on me, inch by inch, as it drained away into them.
Trace groaned, every muscle in his body seizing as Dominic hissed sharply, the magic burning into them like lightning down a conductor.
But all throughout, their hands never let go.
Even as they took my poison into themselves.
Even as it seared through their veins the way it had mine.
They held on and refused to leave me alone in this.
The candles burned higher as the sisters chanted on, every word weaving around the next until I wasn’t even sure they were taking breaths anymore.
The flames were so tall now they were licking dangerously toward the ceiling, high enough to throw wild shadows across the walls and fill the room with the smell of death and burnt wood.
But none of us could move. None of us could stop it.
We were locked in place by the ritual, by the cords binding us together, by the magic tearing us apart and stitching us back together as something different.
The tether tightened, stabilizing as something inside me turned over.
This time it didn’t feel like breaking. It felt like a union, like I was aligning with them.
Not just their magic or their presence, but their souls, twining with mine until there was no empty space left inside me at all.
Forging us into something new. Something stronger. Something that could never be undone.
In that moment, through the haze of waning pain and cresting power, I didn’t know if what we’d just done was the right choice or if we would wake up tomorrow and realize we’d only traded one curse for another.
If someday down the line, I’d look back on this and realize it was the exact moment where everything had gone wrong.
But as the corruption drained from my veins and their souls wrapped around mine like a shield I’d never asked for but desperately needed, I couldn’t bring myself to wish it undone.
All I could feel was them, solid and alive inside me. And for the first time since the rot took hold, I could breathe. I wasn’t alone. Whatever we’d just become, whatever price we’d have to pay for it later, right then, it felt like salvation.
Even if it looked an awful lot like their damnation.