Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Destiny Sphere hums around me, its crystalline walls refracting light into a thousand dancing prisms. I stand at the center, feet planted on the polished marble, my stance widened to absorb my weight in case I get dizzy like last time, my hands hanging loosely at my sides.
Dr. Thorne assures me I should be good. Although, I don’t think he’s totally confident because he slotted me in at the end of the session this week, letting everyone go before me, so they could leave.
No need to scare the townsfolk, I suppose.
“Ready, Miss Hallowind?”
I nod, my throat too tight for words.
The first time he removed a layer of my magical onion, I woke up hours later with Wylder hovering and my body feeling like it had been turned inside out.
This time, I know what’s coming. I’ve been preparing for a week—training, meditating, grounding myself, learning how to let my affinity flow through me instead of fighting it.
“Here we go.” I hear the tension in the man’s voice and try to haul air into my lead lungs.
The magical seal blocking my powers cracks. A surge of energy floods through me.
It’s not a trickle. Not a stream. It’s a full-on tidal wave.
My knees shake, but I lock them, forcing myself to remain upright.
The magic rushes through my veins like liquid starlight, hot and brilliant and vast. It fills every cell, every nerve ending.
Where before it felt foreign and like I was being invaded by a never-ending rush of nettles, now it settles into me with a rightness that makes my chest ache.
This is mine. This has always been mine.
I breathe through it, using one of Wylder’s tricks to visualize roots extending from my feet to anchor me to the earth below. The energy spirals through my core, burning a path through my body until it dissipates, and I feel the coolness of the marble floor beneath my feet.
The Destiny Sphere absorbs the excess, its crystalline structure lighting up like a constellation of sigils all around me.
When the surge finally eases, I’m still standing.
“Well done, Miss Hallowind.” Dr. Thorne rounds the edge of his viewing wall to face me, his silver eyes assessing. “How do you feel?”
I flex my fingers. Magic sits beneath my skin like a second heartbeat, strong and steady. “Good. Really good.”
“No dizziness? Nausea?”
“Nope. Nothing.”
He makes a note on his ever-present tablet. “Wonderful. Your integration speed is impressive. Given that so much power has been bottled up for so long, your system is handling the reintegration much faster than I expected. We’ll monitor for any delayed reactions, but this is very promising.”
Pride swells in my chest. A week ago, I couldn’t manage a personal shield and was Blackout Betty when he removed a layer of the block holding back my powers. Now I’m standing upright, have another layer gone, and there’s power thrumming through me like I was born to it.
Which, I suppose, I was.
“Same time next week?” I ask.
Dr. Thorne inclines his head. “Indeed. Until next week, Miss Hallowind.”
I practically bounce out of the Destiny Sphere.
Wylder waits in the corridor, leaning against the stone wall with his arms crossed. He straightens when he sees me walking instead of being carried.
“Look at you, still conscious. You’re not even bleeding.”
“Right? When you start by assplanting, there’s nowhere to go but up.” I can’t keep the grin off my face.
He falls into step beside me as we head toward the training grounds. Rowan and Orion are supposed to be finishing up their afternoon sessions and will be joining us. The grounds of Arcana seem even more brilliant today.
Maybe it’s just me on an energy high, but I’d swear everything feels sharper. The colors of nature surround me in a verdant embrace. The ley lines feed this entire pocketed world, pumping power and awareness through me like veins of light.
“I can’t wait to show Rowan the new trick you showed me with the…”
The world tilts, and my reality shifts.
Power slams into me from nowhere, a crushing wave that has nothing to do with my magic. It’s external, wrong, and the force of it drives me to my knees.
My vision whites out.
I hear Wylder shout my name, feel his hands on my shoulders, but everything is distant and muffled. The power keeps coming, pouring into me from some unseen source, filling me past capacity until I’m drowning in it.
My last thought before darkness swallows me is that this isn’t my magic.
Then, the manicured lawn rushes up to meet my face, and everything goes black.
I wake to the smell of sulfur and ash.
My eyes snap open. The training ground is gone.
Instead, I’m sprawled out on a slab of black stone that pulses with veins of molten red, heat radiating through cracks in the rock and into my palms. The sky overhead—if you can call it a sky—roils with crimson clouds shot through with silver lightning that never quite strikes.
“Welcome, Poppy Hallowind.”
The voice scrapes across my consciousness like claws on bone. Not one voice. Many. All speaking in unison, layered and discordant.
My scramble to get to my feet is uncoordinated, my heart hammering against my ribs.
The nightmarish landscape stretches endlessly in all directions.
Jagged obsidian spires pierce upward. Rivers of fire carve channels through the wasteland of stone.
The oppressive air hangs heavy and tastes of decay, burning, and hopelessness.
And standing before me is something that shouldn’t exist.
The demon before me is tall. Too tall. His limbs extend at angles that make my eyes water to track them, his frame skeletal beneath taut, blackened, leathery skin marked with glowing red script that shifts and writhes.
Where his face should be, there’s only a smooth bone mask, and a vertical mouth that splits it from crown to sternum, lined with teeth that move independently of each other.
My magic surges.
But not in defense.
It reaches toward him like a flower turning toward the sun, eager and hungry in a way that makes my stomach twist with revulsion. Something inside me hums in recognition, pulling against my control as if trying to answer a call I can’t hear.
“What the hell?”
“Close.” The mouth curves. “But not quite.”
I stumble back a step, wrapping my arms around myself as if that might contain the power straining beneath my skin. “What’s happening? What are you doing to my magic?”
Why does it want him?
The thought barely forms before the slit in his sternum widens, revealing more teeth than any mouth should hold.
“Ah, you feel our connection.” He moves closer, each step deliberate, each footfall shaking the ground beneath my feet. “You are remarkably like your mother. She and the other witch attempted to seal me away. They thought themselves clever, believed they could banish me and walk away unscathed.”
It clicks then. This isn’t my spirit affinity taking hold. It’s the demon mark.
The red script beneath his skin flares brighter.
“But I am Tharuzel the Soul Thresher, and I do not bend to the will of witches.” His voice drops, the chorus of stolen souls whispering through every word. “So when they challenged me, I marked them. Blood and bone. Spirit and soul. I made them mine.”
“My mother is dead.” The words come out sharper than I intend, edged with grief I haven’t fully processed. “She was killed during the ritual that night.”
His mouth curves wider, impossibly pleased. “And that, dear child, is the beauty of my mark. It’s more than tainting a bloodline. The claim doesn’t die with the witch. It lives on. And now that you have come into your power, you will do my bidding.”
I scoff. “Like hell. I agree with my mother. You don’t belong free in our world. I’ll never help you gain access to feed upon humanity.”
“Then, if not you, perhaps one of your sisters. Do you think young Lily will be able to fight my will, or do you think I will consume her?”
Horror crashes through me, shattering like glass and spearing me with a thousand shards. “No, you can’t. She’s just a kid.”
“A bloodline marked. Through daughters. Through granddaughters. Through every generation that carries the mark I carved into your mother’s essence. There is no scenario where I don’t get what I want.”
I swallow, my head spinning with the pounding rush of blood in my head. “Yeah, well, like the Rolling Stones say, You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
He extends his long, leathery fingers, ending in dagger-tipped talons. With a flick of his hand, my body flies backward, slamming into the obsidian wall behind me with enough force to drive the air from my lungs.
Invisible bonds lock my arms and legs in place, and when I try to speak, my throat seals shut.
Tharuzel prowls closer, the world shuttering with each step. “I will be free, young witch.” Each word lands with the weight of prophecy. “The seal your mother helped create weakens with every passing day. Soon, I will walk your world, and when I do, those who bear my mark will serve me.”
My magic thrashes inside me, trying to break free, trying to do something—but it’s still drawn to him, still singeing with that terrible recognition that makes me want to claw my skin off.
“Fighting me accomplishes nothing but getting you killed like your mother.” He tilts his head, the bone mask reflecting the hellscape’s crimson light. “And if that happens, I will take your sisters. Both are marked. Both are mine.”
No, I can’t let that happen. I can’t let him taint them.
“Life is all about choices, young witch. Do you value your life over the lives of your sisters? Shall I keep you as my prisoner and continue down the family line?”
Hot tears sting the rims of my eyes. I don’t remember my sisters, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love them.
I’ve seen the family photos around my house, and know what being the oldest sister, and now the oldest of my family, means to me.
It means there’s no way I’m letting this freak show anywhere near Violet and Lily.
I fight the invisible pressure on my throat enough to breathe as the first tears fall down my cheeks. “What do you want?”
Tharuzel extends his hand, and a scroll materializes, hovering in the air between us. The parchment is old, the scarlet ink gleaming darkly. “When I call, you will answer. When I command, you will obey. Do this, and your sisters remain untouched and untainted.”
My mind races. There has to be a way out. A loophole. Something.
But all I can see is Lily’s bright smile, and Violet’s sassy smirk. I can’t risk them. Not for anything.
“Fine,” I force out. “But you leave them alone. Completely.”
The scroll drifts closer, and then the demon swings forward. The slice of claw through flesh sears my forearm, and then the parchment dips to catch it. Three splattering drops of blood splash onto the contract and sizzle.
“Signed and sealed with your blood. Poppy Hallowind, our pact is done.”
Every instinct I have screams inside me. Signed in blood? That has to be bad. So bad. “How do I know what I’m bound to? I want a copy of that to take to my lawyer. Those are my terms.”
For a heartbeat, the world seems to hold its breath. Even the rivers of fire seem to pause.
Then Tharuzel laughs.
It’s the sound of breaking glass and screaming souls and something vast and terrible being genuinely amused. The noise reverberates through the hellscape until my bones ache with it.
“You invoke contract law? Here? In this moment?” He waves his hand, and the scroll vanishes. “How delightfully unexpected. Very well, little witch. I am many things, but I am not without honor in my dealings. I have sent a copy of our agreement to your precious solicitor.”
The bonds holding me dissolve, and I collapse forward, catching myself on my hands and knees.
“It has been a pleasure, Poppy Hallowind.” His voice wraps around me like smoke. “Until we meet again.”
The world fractures.
Reality rushes back in a dizzying surge, and I’m suddenly on the manicured lawn of Arcana with Wylder’s panicked face hovering above mine and Rowan racing toward us, dragging Dr. Thorne.
I can still smell the sulfur.
Still feel the heat of that hellscape burning against my skin. And my magic still hums with that terrible, traitorous recognition.
Oh shit. What have I done?