Chapter 23
She didn’t know how long they stayed in that place together.
Just lingering with soft touches and kisses that felt a little like farewell, even though she had to believe their plan would work.
Still, something in her soul feared there would soon come a time when she would not see him again.
Like a whisper in her heart telling her to savor every second with this man.
So she did. She laughed with him as they both shared stories from their childhood.
“Oh, no, I was the secret spider hunter,” she said, a laugh already building in her chest. “No one in the castle knew who kept gathering spiders and putting them in the same closet, but it grew out of hand fast. There were over a hundred spiders. Every time someone went to clean it, they were so terrified of what was inside that they ended up just shutting it.”
“Are there still spiders in that closet?”
“Oh, probably! I don’t think anyone got around to removing them. Which, now that I think of it, someone really might want to do. A spider army must have formed, and we should probably make sure they don’t grow even stronger.”
Elric rolled his eyes but was still grinning where they lay in her meadow. “I don’t think anyone before you has ever uttered the words ‘spider army.’ ”
“I’m certain that has been said before. It would be a highly intelligent thing to employ.
After all, there are a large portion of people who are terrified of spiders.
” Jessamine rolled onto his chest, staring down at him with a maniacal grin.
“Why haven’t you thought of that, oh great and powerful Deathless One? ”
“I have employed shadow spiders, but never real ones.” His hands framed her hips, and he nudged her down closer for a kiss. “But now perhaps I will, thanks to your genius.”
“That’s all I ask for, really. An army of spiders to do my bidding, and the recognition that I am far more intelligent than the average person.”
They were silly conversations. Thoughts that would never have taken flight without the added calm of this realm, and the darkness that allowed them to be a little more truthful than they had been moments before.
It was during quiet times like these that she really appreciated everything he offered her.
Quiet, peace, love. All the things that she had always wanted as a child, but had never been afforded until him.
But eventually, all good things must come to an end. They needed to return. They needed to prepare for all that was soon to happen, and they needed to be willing to do it.
She leaned down and kissed him one last time. “I will prepare the others. Where would you like us to meet you?”
“Sybil will know.”
She kissed him again, this one tasting a bit like desperation. “We’re going to be fine. We’ll get all the energy we need. I just soaked it up from the pool with you. That should be enough, right?”
She knew him well enough to read that careful glassy expression. He was hiding something from her, and she suspected what he was hiding was fear. He knew something. Or perhaps he suspected something.
“Elric?” she asked. “We are going to be fine, aren’t we?”
“Of course we are.” He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’re going to be the queen this kingdom deserves. I promised you that, didn’t I?”
Something unnerving settled in her chest. The anxiety sank claws into her belly, dragging deeper into her flesh until she couldn’t think of anything else. But he’d said it would be fine. He’d said they would both be okay, and that meant…
She realized that meant nothing. Because he was the Deathless One, and though his word was binding, she had no power over what he said.
Wrapping her hand around his throat, she gave him a little shake. “You and me. Together. That’s what we said we would always be, and I’m holding you to that.”
He said nothing at all. He just stared into her eyes, looking lost and haunted, almost like he was the same man she’d met in this realm all those months ago. And then he sighed and kissed her one more time. “It’s time for you to go, nightmare.”
She was shoved out of his realm so forcefully there wasn’t a chance she could fight it. One moment she was straddling him, holding on to his neck as though her life depended on it, and the next, she was blinking her eyes open in the meager sunlight of her old bedroom in the castle.
It was hard to wake from moments like those. It was a dream she wanted to dive back into. Perhaps if she did, she could convince him to change his mind or perhaps show him there was another way than whatever he was planning.
But it was already too late. Elric had made up his mind, and she knew without a doubt that he would get her and the coven where they needed to go. She just wasn’t all that certain how he intended to get them there.
Rolling onto her side, she curled in on herself for a few moments.
“It’s okay to break,” she whispered to herself. “Just as long as you put yourself back together again.”
They were words her mother had said to her more times than she could count.
When times grew difficult or when Jessamine had been overwhelmed with the expectations laid upon her shoulders, this was the room she would sneak off to.
Her mother had never made her feel guilty for crying or even needing the space.
Break, but don’t stay broken.
When the knock came on her bedroom door, she was ready for it. Jessamine pulled herself together, forcibly putting the pieces back where they needed to be until she was almost a semblance of herself. She was strong. She was capable. She was the queen they needed her to be.
Jessamine stayed where she was and called out, “Come in!”
She already knew who it was. The only person who ever knocked so politely was Sybil. The others would either pound on the door or knock so lightly that she couldn’t even hear them. Few witches were so confident to come to her room, anyway.
Sybil entered, and the quiet sound of disappointment filled the room. “Oh, dear one. I thought you’d be much more awake than this.”
“It feels like a day of mourning, not one of hope.”
Sybil remained standing in the doorway for a few moments, likely trying to figure out how to get Jessamine out of this funk. But she didn’t need to think long. Jessamine had been lying there with her heart in her throat for too long. She would make this happen, even if it killed her.
Still, it felt nice to stay in bed while Sybil headed over to the windows and threw the curtains open so light could flood into the space.
“Rotting in your bedroom might be part of the problem,” Sybil scolded. “You’re going to get up, wash your face, and put some clean clothes on. That will help. This is a day where we will fix what has been broken. It is not a day of mourning.”
“Do you really believe that?” Jessamine whispered. “Because I spoke with Elric and it didn’t seem… Well, I don’t think it was all that good. There’s something going on in his mind, and I don’t know what it is.”
“The Deathless One has his reasons.”
“The Deathless One doesn’t tell me everything, and neither do you.
” The comfort of the bed clung to her. She wanted to stay a few more moments curled up in a ball, then she would feel better.
Surely all she had to do was linger underneath the covers, and the rest of the world would fix itself.
“Sybil. I just… He couldn’t even tell me everything would be all right. ”
The dark witch hesitated as well, and that was when Jessamine knew without a doubt that they both knew something she didn’t.
But unlike the dark god, who sometimes hid everything he could until the very last moment, Sybil had never been a liar. She was a friend first, and a coven witch second.
So Sybil sat down on the edge of the bed and sighed.
“No one can promise you everything is going to be fine, because none of us know that it will. A spell like this has never been done before. We have a way to get magic from Elric. Siphoning it through you is something we’ve never even tried, so we don’t have any idea what it will do to either of you. ”
“So, should we do it?”
Jessamine held Sybil’s gaze, waiting for the reassurance that this was the right thing.
That yes, they should go through with this.
It was the only choice they could make, after all.
They were ensuring that there was enough power siphoning into the coven.
They had their kingdom back. Inverholm might be sleeping, but all they had to do was destroy Ajax and get the souls of all those who had been stuffed into their homes back.
They could make this work. It would be hard, but they could do it.
Except… none of those reassurances came. Instead, Sybil just reached out and patted her hip. “I think we need to get you out of bed, fed, and ready to face the day. That’s what I think.”
Tears burned in her eyes, but she’d already had her breakdown this morning. Sybil was right. Jessamine needed to be the queen they all expected her to be.
This coven needed a leader. She’d made her choice.
But as she planted her hand against the bed to sit up, she found she couldn’t. There was no leverage to push herself upright, and that… that was concerning.
“Sybil?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from showing the panic that suddenly rocked through her. “Can you help me sit up?”
“You need help?”
“Yes, please.”
Sybil reached for her waist and helped her sit up, and then the two of them stared at the mess of Jessamine’s hands.
There was just darkness from her wrists down. The more she looked at them, the more the shadows looked like Elric’s magic. But it was leaking out of her body. Dripping where there should have been fingers but where it was now just an inky mess. Like her body was starting to disintegrate.
Jessamine lifted a hand, watching as a drop of that liquid beaded up at the tip of her pointer finger and then dripped off. Beneath the dark magic, for the barest hint of a second, all she could see were her bones.
“What is happening to me?” she whispered, her voice shaking in fear.
“I don’t know,” Sybil replied, but her eyes didn’t linger on the exposed skeletal frame. Almost as though she couldn’t stand to look at what was happening.
“I was… I was in Elric’s realm just a few moments ago.
He had me absorb his magic so that both of us were as glutted as we could be for the ceremony that would follow.
I didn’t think… I didn’t think it would do this.
” She stammered through the words, trying to find some semblance of reasoning for what was happening.
But there was no reasoning. Her hands were gone. All that remained were delicate, fine bones.
“My eyes,” Jessamine asked. “Is it coming out of my eyes as well?”
“No, princess. It is not.”
“Sybil, what the fuck is happening to me?”
The witch stood abruptly, staggering across the room to the window that she flung open, and shoved her head out.
There was the faintest sound of gagging before Sybil finally pulled herself together.
“Magic has a cost, I suppose? It could be that. It could be that you’re not supposed to house so much magic, and it’s eating away at your form. ”
“I’ve had magic before. This isn’t the same as that. I feel fine.” She lifted her hands, watching some of the liquidy magic slide down and reveal the tips of her skeletal fingers. “But it’s never done this before.”
Sybil gagged again and looked back out the window. “I need you to not do that.”
“It’s my body. Don’t you think I’d be the most horrified one in this room?”
“Princess, you’re falling apart at the seams. We need to figure this out. And quickly. If that spreads…” Sybil covered her mouth, likely trying to hold another gag in. “Whatever is happening to you, we need to get control of it.”
Yes, they did.
But the other reality was that they couldn’t.
Ajax had cast a spell on her that was unrecognizable.
No one had seen this magic before, and therefore, no one knew what it would do to her.
Maybe this was just the spell continuing to work.
Without adding a goddess to her body, perhaps the only other option for her form was to disintegrate.
It wasn’t ideal, obviously. She wanted to still be here to see her kingdom flourish.
Jessamine looked down at those skeletal hands once more, seeing the white reflecting in the sunlight that broke through the shadows of Elric’s magic.
If this was her reality, if this was how it had to be, then she wanted to make sure it was done right.
She wanted to ensure that her kingdom would be fine, even at the inevitability of her own destruction.
She would see this through until the end. No matter what that end was.
“Sybil,” she said, after watching her fingers somehow move. “I don’t wish to alarm you, but we both know I may not be fixable.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth, and we’ve been avoiding that as much as possible, but you know as well as I that Ajax might have damaged me. Irreparably. Now, I do not want that to be the case, but we both can see what is happening to my body. I am rotting away.”
“You are not rotting.” Sybil spun around, glaring at her with more anger than she’d ever shown before. “Don’t say that about yourself.”
“I’m already dead.” Jessamine hated to say the words. “I have been dead for months now. It is only natural that some magic would try to return me to that state. In the case that this magical spell we are crafting goes awry, I want you to take all the magic you can from me.”
“Jessamine—”
“Don’t interrupt me.” She sounded like her mother.
Hard, sharp, and commanding. “You will make this promise to me. You will drain all the magic from me, if that is what it takes. Drain me dry, until there is nothing but a husk. I don’t care if it kills me.
Fill the coven with magic and save this kingdom. No matter what you have to do.”
With tears in her eyes, Sybil nodded.