Chapter 40
“Oh no you don’t,” the female spellcaster said—she must have felt the surge of my icy magic. “You’re not in control here.
We are.”
The spellcasters hit me with everything they had, and it was so forceful that my own magic slipped beyond my reach. Energy
swelled inside until there was an explosion of power, ricocheting across the room in an echoing boom. It sounded as if storms
were rolling in, but it was just magic.
Out-of-control reaper magic.
A veil descended over my vision until the air was midnight ice, my breaths visible in front of my face as it turned to night.
I’d called a lot of monsters by accident before, these demons of Purgatory, but this was more than even that.
The spellcasters’ magic had merged our plane with Purgatory’s, thinning the veil and colliding two worlds that should never
meet.
“Shut it down!” Logan’s roar shattered the hold most of the council and spellcasters had on me, but he couldn’t take them
all. Especially not when one half of his mate bond was spiraling out of control.
The spellcasters released me and turned to take on a now free Logan. Even when their energy stopped blasting me, it wasn’t enough to return the planes to their normal separation. What they’d set in motion could not be undone.
My magic continued to drain, seeping from my essence, until I slumped forward, a sluggish pump of blood and power all that
kept me alive.
I felt Noah and Dad nearby, fighting to keep the council from me, but one of them had slipped through their battle: Elder
Monroe. He dropped down at my side, wedging his hands roughly under my arms to haul me up. He started to drag me across the
stage right as screams rang out in the hall, and that was when I felt the monsters arrive.
Unlike the graveyard, they didn’t pop in one at a time; they flooded through that thinning veil in the hundreds.
“Evil!” Elder Asshole screamed in my face. “Demon-witch. You did this, it’s all your fault, and now you need to die!”
“Dad!” Belle was on the stage, stepping around the battle between the council and my friends. He paused his assault at her
soft voice. “You guys forced her magic out and caused this. Paisley is the only one with a chance to fix the imbalance before
the demons destroy everything. You have to let her go!”
“What do you mean?” he rasped. His steps slowed as he shook me like I was a rag doll and shouted, “Call your beasts off now!”
He released me as if I were diseased, but Belle caught me before I could face-plant onto the wooden stage. “You’ve drained
all her magic,” she said, releasing a distressed moan. “And you never even gave her a chance to show you her control. This
isn’t what we discussed. You’re acting outside of our rules, and you brought these creatures by reblooming her magic. Your council needs to either figure out how to send them back or figure out how to give Paisley enough power to do it.”
Panic wreathed his features as he squinted out into the chaos of the assembly hall. The screams were getting louder, and there
was more magic blasting around than I’d ever felt as students and professors battled the creatures. “We can’t send them back!
Only a reaper calls the demons of Purgatory.”
Belle tightened her arms around me. “If you don’t figure it out and fast, we’re all going to die. You took out our one chance
to deal with them.”
Drawing on the flickers of magic left in my center, I tried to reach out for the creatures, but there were just too many.
It would require more magic than I’d ever held, even before they had drained me within an inch of my life. “Kill her!” a council-witch
shouted. “Rid us of this scum, and the demons will leave.”
“That’s not a good idea,” Belle said, sounding panicked. “If she’s our one chance to control them, maybe we should—”
I was yanked out of her hold, and Elder Monroe had me once more. “You’ll thank me for this one day, sweetheart.” He started
to mutter random jumbles of words, before adding, “You’ll thank me for the sacrifices I’ve made to keep you safe.”
Amazing sentiment. I loved when killers justified their evil actions by claiming they were to keep others safe.
Belle screamed as he wrenched me across the stage and slammed my head against a hard object. I was too drained to put up any
fight, barely keeping my eyes open. “Remove her head,” a witch said. “Byron will call fire so there’s no mistakes. Slice right
through.”
A surge of energy sent a shock into my limbs as fight or flight kicked in, but it wasn’t enough.
“Paisley!” Logan bellowed his rage, and I felt the brush of his power through our bond.
But we were both too drained.
What they’d done to my magic had impacted Logan’s as well, and he’d been fighting dozens of spellcasters and council members
from the moment they struck me with their power.
Flames caressed my cheeks, and as I sank into myself, I prayed that my execution would end all of this at least. It would
be comforting to know my death would save lives, but a part of me was pretty sure that wasn’t going to be the case.
There was an excellent chance that with my demise, the joining of the planes would be a permanent fixture, and the magical
world would find out what a life without any reaper witches was really like.
The fire increased, and as the witch gave the order to strike, I sent my magic deeper into my essence than I’d ever been.
I had no idea what I was searching for in the empty depths of my magical well, but in my last seconds I held on to that feeling
of familial magic I’d experienced in the crypt with Gran. If there had been more reapers here today, we could have dealt with
the council. A united affinity.
Come on, Gran. I really need your help.
The tiniest spark of blue flame surged in my chest, and I wrapped my essence around it.
Right as the fire-wielding warlock sliced through my neck to remove my head, those flames engulfed me, and everything went
dark.