Chapter Twenty-Eight
ROXY
My mom studies me for several heartbeats, ancient eyes searching for doubt, hesitation, or any sign that I don’t fully comprehend the magnitude of what I’m choosing.
Her gaze dissects me with clinical precision, weighing conviction against fear, measuring certainty against the very human instinct to cling to what’s familiar even when it no longer fits.
But I meet her stare without flinching, magic stirring stronger now despite its depleted state, responding to my conviction with the first genuine surge of power I’ve felt since collapsing the portal.
Finally, slowly, she nods once. “Very well.”
She moves to the center of the room with grace that suggests she’s existed long enough to forget how humans walk, each step deliberate and weighted with purpose that transcends simple movement.
Her hands lift, fingers beginning to trace patterns in the air that leave glowing sigils in their wake, symbols that predate language forming in the space between her palms.
The temperature doesn’t drop or rise, but power builds with each gesture, ancient magic responding to her call in ways that make the air vibrate with potential.
The brothers shift uneasily, instincts screaming warnings about forces beyond their comprehension gathering in their space, but none of them move to interfere.
They’re witnessing something fundamental.
Something that will change everything.
“This will hurt,” my mother warns, pale green eyes meeting mine one final time, giving me this last chance to reconsider, to step back, to choose the safety of what I know over the terror of transformation.
“The magic must burn away what you were to make room for what you’ll become.
Your mortality isn’t a coat you can simply shed.
It’s woven into every cell, every breath, every memory of what it means to be human. Breaking those bindings requires fire.”
“I understand.” My voice comes out steady despite fear clawing at my throat, despite every survival instinct screaming that this is madness, that changing yourself at this fundamental level is the kind of hubris that destroys people.
But I’ve already made my choice.
Already committed to this path the moment I looked at Raze and understood that losing him would hurt worse than any transformation ever could.
Raze moves closer, his presence at my back solid and grounding, fire and ice spiraling together beneath his skin in patterns I can sense without seeing. “I’m not leaving you,” he says quietly, and it’s not a question or an offer but an absolute statement of fact.
“I know.” I reach back without looking, finding his hand, twining our fingers together. Ice and potential warmth, balance incarnate, the physical manifestation of everything we’ve become to each other.
My mother begins to chant words in a language older than dragons, older than the first courts of fae, older than anything that walks this earth except perhaps the primordial forces she’s now calling upon.
Magic rises in response, wild and fierce, building with each syllable until the air trembles with accumulated power.
Around us, the brothers fall into a silence so complete it feels sacred. Not fear or submission, but something heavier, the stillness reserved for moments that reshape destiny when power moves, and even monsters know better than to interrupt.
My mother lifts her hands.
Violet light threads through the air first, thin as lightning caught in slow motion.
Dull gold sigils unfurl behind it, ancient symbols folding over one another until the space around me hums with pressure.
Obsidian sparks scatter through the glow like fragments of night breaking loose from her fingertips.
Then the magic hits.
Pain detonates through me.
It isn’t heat.
It isn’t cold.
It is unmaking.
Every nerve ignites at once, a violent surge that tears through bone and blood as if mortality is being peeled away layer by layer. My vision fractures into shards of violet and gold, shadows bending at the edges of the world while my body locks rigid under the force of it.
A scream claws up my throat.
I swallow it down.
My knees give out anyway.
Raze catches me before I hit the floor, his arms locking around my waist, holding me upright as my spine bows and every muscle seizes. I feel him shaking behind me, fire and ice crashing beneath his skin, his dragon roaring in fury at something it cannot fight.
“This is her choice,” my mother says quietly, her voice threaded through the magic like a command etched into reality.
The power surges harder.
Obsidian light bleeds beneath my skin, violet currents racing through my veins, dull gold runes flaring across my wrists before dissolving into flesh that no longer feels entirely human.
My heartbeat stutters, slams faster, then slows with terrifying precision until each pulse lands heavy and eternal, no longer bound to mortal rhythm.
Agony splits me open.
And beneath it, something else rises.
Power.
It floods through my bloodstream like molten starlight, reshaping, strengthening, and burning away the fragile limits that once defined me.
I gasp as my lungs expand with air that tastes older, richer, threaded with magic I never had the senses to feel before.
Every breath carries whispers of ley lines, forest roots, ancient laws humming beneath the earth.
My vision sharpens.
I hear the brothers’ heartbeats one by one, layered rhythms echoing through stone. I feel the pulse of the mountain beneath the clubhouse, the echo of spells lingering in the walls, the faint scar left behind by fae magic like frostbite against reality.
Pain rips through me again, sharper this time, as if my bones are being reforged from the inside.
I arch against Raze’s chest, fingers clawing into his arms, not to push him away but to anchor myself as the transformation climbs higher, deeper, stripping away the last fragile threads of mortality.
Violet light erupts around us, shadowed gold sigils spinning in widening circles, obsidian sparks scattering resembling embers across the floor.
My heart stops.
For one suspended, terrifying beat, there is nothing.
Then it starts again.
Stronger.
Slower.
Infinite.
Magic roars through me fully now, no longer fragments or accidents, but inheritance realized.
The witch’s bloodline sings in my veins, every cell humming with power that had waited generations to awaken.
The agony shifts, becoming something almost holy, a pressure that threatens to split me apart even as it fills every empty space inside my chest.
I can feel the forest beyond the walls breathing with me.
I can feel the ley lines bending toward me like they recognize their own.
And beneath it all, steady and unbreakable, is Raze.
His presence threads through the chaos like an anchor, fire and frost pressing against my back, his arms tightening as if he can hold me together by sheer will alone.
The magic crests.
Violet light flashes blindingly bright.
Gold sigils collapse inward.
The obsidian glow sinks beneath my skin, mirroring a brand sealing shut.
And suddenly, the pain breaks.
It doesn’t vanish.
It transforms.
What remains is power, vast and endless, coiling through my veins like something that has always belonged there. I inhale sharply, lungs filling with air that tastes alive, and when I open my eyes, the world is different.
Clearer.
Louder.
Real.
Not mortal.
Not fragile.
Mine.
Fire and ice spiral through both of us now, our magic intertwining in patterns that speak of balance, partnership, and two forces that should annihilate each other but instead create something neither could achieve alone.
I feel his power like a second heartbeat, steady and fierce, and absolutely mine in ways that transcend possession or claim.
We’re bound now.
Not by curse, law, or external force, but by the fundamental compatibility of our magic, by the way fire, ice, and wild witch power recognize each other and choose to work together instead of fighting for dominance.
The pain crests like a wave breaking against stone, reaching a peak that whites out everything except the burning certainty that I’m being unmade and remade in the same breath, then begins to recede.
The magic settles into my bones like it was always meant to be there, no longer fighting against mortal limitations but integrated completely, part of what I am instead of something foreign trying to exist in a body that can’t properly contain it.
I sag against Raze, gasping for air that burns going down but in a good way now, in a way that speaks of lungs that will never fail, weaken, or stop drawing breath for as long as this world exists.
My hands shake as I lift them, watching in fascination as magic dances across my skin in visible patterns, violet and gold light weaving through my fingers like living things.
It’s beautiful.
Terrifying.
Absolutely mine.
“It’s done,” my mother says, and there’s something in her voice that might be pride, or satisfaction, or the acknowledgment of a plan executed perfectly across centuries of careful manipulation.
“You are no longer human, Roxanne. You are a witch. Full magic. Immortal. The bloodline runs true in you now, undiluted by mortality.”
I look up at her, vision still slightly blurred from the intensity of transformation, and for the first time in my life, I see my mother clearly. Not through the lens of hurt, abandonment, and years of estrangement, but with the understanding that comes from perceiving the scope of her existence.
She’s not cruel.
She’s not indifferent.
She’s simply operating on a timescale that makes human emotion seem fleeting and inconsequential, manipulating centuries like chess pieces to achieve outcomes she’s already foreseen with the kind of patience that can only come from existence measured in millennia.