Chapter 24
He knew the coven had gone ahead of him.
Sybil had taken them to the cave hidden beyond vines, readying them for what they would soon have to do.
After all, they were here in Inverholm. The coven was officially building and growing in power, and why would they not perform magic where the coven always had?
It was time for them all to return to the old ritual site and witness the madness and the beauty of their own history so that they could see for the very first time what it truly meant to be a witch.
There was a sense of poetry to it. They needed to remember their roots.
They needed to feel the old energy of that place as it rolled over them, proving that they came from a long line of strong women who had never been afraid to do what they had to do.
The blood, the gore, the pain, all of it had been part of who they were.
They were becoming what they always should have been, and he had to walk beside them this time. Yet still, his stomach churned.
Jessamine hadn’t helped. She refused to see him before the ritual, speaking through Sybil in words that made little sense. She was busy. Preparations needed to be made, and the other coven members needed her help. She would see him there, and not to worry, she wouldn’t let them hurt him.
All of it felt wrong. She had always been by his side. She belonged with him. Something was wrong. He could feel it deep in his bones.
Elric just didn’t know what yet.
He brushed the vines away from the entrance and walked into that old place with all its dark memories.
A coven of witches all stood around the altar, just as it had been all those years ago.
But this time, he was connected to them.
He sympathized with the woman on the left with the scar down her eye who had lost a son to the plague.
He prayed along with Agnes, who worried for her grandson.
He listened to Sybil’s fear about what this would mean for all of them.
Standing at the altar, with her back to him, was Jessamine. He would know her anywhere. It didn’t matter how far she was from his sight or how difficult it was for him to see her. She’d covered herself with a cloak, though. All of her dark hair and lovely figure were obscured from view.
Her energy was so muted. He hadn’t been able to feel her much before, but now? Now she was entirely gone. No matter how much he struggled to reach out to her, no matter how hard he pulled on that meager thread that used to link them, she was gone.
He walked up to her side, his hands shaking with nerves that he didn’t understand. “Nightmare?”
Jessamine’s voice rose, and the entire coven fell silent. “There has been a change of plans,” his gravesinger said. “I do not know what Ajax has done to me, but I know that there is irreparable damage within my body. I thought, perhaps, we could channel Elric’s magic through me, but…”
Sybil reached forward and helped Jessamine pull the cloak from her body.
At first, he noticed nothing wrong. She was still the beautiful woman he had fallen in love with.
Though her dark hair seemed to billow slightly more than the smooth waterfall he was used to, or the tangled rat’s nest it sometimes was.
She still had that lovely silver scar around her throat and eyes that saw straight into his soul.
Those berry-red lips always made him want to kiss her. And why would he not?
Until his gaze traveled down to see how much of her had already been lost. Both of her hands, all the way up to the elbows, were nothing but dripping shadows. She lifted one of them, revealing the bones beneath that gleamed in the moonlight illuminating the cavern from above.
She was dying, and he died a bit with her. No magic could save her while she was eaten from the inside out. It was his magic eating her, and he couldn’t help but feel like he had cursed her with just a touch.
Her sleeveless, threadbare dress showed how thin her body had become. He could see the edges of her, outlined in the light as she looked at each and every one of them.
“I don’t think I’m surviving this one,” she murmured. “My connection to the Deathless One has been severed entirely. The magic that is leaking out of me… I don’t know what it is doing to my form, but I think we all can see that it is no longer fixable.”
“Jessamine,” Elissa gasped.
“This is my purpose, and I will fulfill it.” Jessamine stared hard at the rock before getting onto the altar.
Sybil helped her with a hand on either side of her waist, practically lifting her into position. Then she kept a hand against Jessamine’s back as she lowered their dying gravesinger onto the stone.
For a moment, time seemed to slip. He remembered only moments ago when he had been that person, lying on the altar, knowing that he would not get up again.
The witches gathered around her had sorrowful tears streaming down their faces, but it was hard to see them as anyone but those who had harmed him as well.
He made his decision perhaps a little too easily. But if Elric was being honest with himself, he’d made his choice before he’d even gotten here.
She looked so small on that altar. The stone beneath her was so much larger than she was, and the rough-hewn edges made him fear it would bruise her skin.
But there were already bruises underneath her eyes.
There always were, but now they were so much worse.
Her hands had become pools of liquid magic, all dissolving onto the stone and dripping down the edges, leaving nothing but black smudges and bones in their wake.
He didn’t want her to hurt anymore. And there was only one way he knew to protect her.
He reached for his well of magic, replenished with her in a realm that only she brought color to, and started to pull it out of himself.
The shadows tore from his skin, pouring into her body without sacrifice.
Without ritual. She could take all the magic that he was and use it without ever having to ask. Not like the others in this room.
“I gift my magic to you,” he murmured. “Willingly. Completely. Wholly. So that you may do with it as you wish.”
“As above,” Sybil said, even as she reached forward and placed her hand on Jessamine’s wrist.
The magic transferred between the witches.
He could see it leaving from Jessamine, even as her pale, bare feet dissolved as well.
He saw the bones of them first. The sharp edges poking through her skin before the darkness slowly seeped out of her pores and turned her flesh into darkness.
It was brutal to watch, horrific in every way, and rage burned in his chest.
Ajax had done this. His brother had done this.
“This magic is pure and gifted without intent. I give it freely, so that you may decide how to wield it. I break the chains that bind the magic to me, and I gift it all to you.”
Agnes reached for Jessamine, shuddering at the sensation of shadows that climbed up her arms. “So below.”
Another flexing of his spell surged out of him, forcing its way into Jessamine’s body as she gasped.
He tried not to focus on how her chest moved so rapidly it looked like she was convulsing.
This had to be done. The coven needed this energy, and there was no other way to give it to them this quickly.
“I give you all of me,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “All that was, all that is. The magic that has been mine is now yours.”
Elissa stepped forward, her hair rising and nearly standing on end as she touched Jessamine and all the magic that she was a conduit for. “So mote it be.”
Magic splintered out of his gravesinger.
Tendrils of it, reaching for each of the witches in the room and filling them with more energy than a lifetime of sacrifices could gift them.
They would be stronger than any witch who had ever lived.
Any creature who had ever been. And yet, his heart still shattered as Jessamine finally looked him in the eyes.
An apology shone in those glistening depths, filled with tears from pain that she didn’t want to admit was there. She was brave. Ever so brave, his gravesinger, his nightmare, his love.
Reaching underneath her neck, he drew her up and pressed their foreheads together.
“Power is raw and shimmering,” he murmured to her as the room filled with the moans of witches devouring more magic than they had ever dreamt of.
“Power is responsibility. It is greed and hope, hatred and love. All of it must be wielded with the knowledge that it can harm as much as it can hurt. I need you to remember that.”
“I love you,” she whispered.
He held out his hand, waiting for Sybil to place her athame in his palm. The blade gleamed, freshly sharpened, ready to make a cut, because all magic had a price.
Elric lifted Jessamine’s bony hand, wrapping hers around his own on the hilt. “I do this for you,” he whispered.
“Take care of them.”
“I always do.”
He drew the knife between them, holding it between both of their hearts as though he could promise her the world without ever saying a single word. Their hearts beat as one, he tried to tell her. They always would.
“The strength of a god in the hands of the worthy,” he murmured, staring into her eyes.
The spell drew to an end. Elric flipped his wrist effortlessly, pressed her bones to the hilt, and sank the dagger into his own heart.
In only a split second, the world stood still.
One moment, her eyes were drifting shut in peace, and in the next moment, they had flown open and electricity surged through her.
Her body seemed to stabilize. The shadows were still there, but they strengthened.
Her form wasn’t entirely liquid, but solid enough to hold on to her as she lifted her hand and pressed the chilled touch to his cheek.
Blood poured over their hands. His heart pumped harder, trying to get more of that liquid to organs that needed it, but there wasn’t anywhere for it to go but out. No matter how hard his body tried, he was dying. The hole in his heart certainly assured that.
“What?” Jessamine whispered, her voice cracking. “Why?”
She supported him as his skin started to cool. Together they rotated, so he was now lying on his side with her, while both his blood and her dark magic mixed together in a strange, flurried ink. Their combined mess was nearly deep purple as he watched it drip off the altar just beyond her shoulder.
Elric lifted a shaking, bloody hand and skated his fingers along her jaw. “Because I would do anything for you. And a world without Jessamine Harmsworth is not one worth living in.”
Those tears that had been building in her gaze fell. “Did it ever occur to you, Elric, that I wouldn’t want to live in a world without you either?”
“I will find you,” he whispered. “I will wait until I find your soul again. We will be together.”
The witches around them fell silent, but then he heard Sybil’s gasp. The dark witch had seen them. Sybil’s senses had returned after the flood of magic, but instead of reveling in ecstasy, he watched as she fell against the altar with a sharply worded “No!”
It echoed, bouncing throughout the entire room as the stones caught upon her horror and everyone lunged forward to the altar. No one touched them, though. Not a single person. All the witches instead stared between Sybil and them, waiting to see what had horrified their sister so much.
“Sybil,” he murmured, his tongue already losing its ability to create shapes in words. “Of all of them, I thought you would mourn me least.”
“She made a vow,” Sybil replied, her voice shaking. “She made a vow to never sacrifice you, Deathless One.”
Of course she had. His Jessamine was ever so kind in that way, but it was unrealistic. She may have made a vow, but he would never have held her to it. His eventual sacrifice would have happened no matter what they did.
But as he made eye contact with Sybil, he realized perhaps he had missed something.
“She made the vow before the gods.”
“I’m the only god,” he replied.
Then Jessamine gasped. She pressed a dark hand to her chest, and he watched as a sudden fissure of gold cracked between her breasts. The light nearly blinded him, and he flinched away from it.
“You aren’t the only god any longer,” Jessamine replied, wincing as another crack spread. This one fractured right through the silver scar on her neck and speared up onto her cheek. “And I did make a vow. I would never harm you. Not even unwillingly.”
“No,” he muttered. “No, I have forgiven you for it. I will not stand for you being punished.”
Another crack spread, this one straight down her forehead and right between her eyes.
Her gaze widened, and he watched as fear set in.
“My sisters, I need you to listen to me. We use this power for good. You attack Ajax, get your revenge for your god and your gravesinger. You are the last of the witches, and you are the only ones who can save us now.”
Sybil reached for her, but then hesitated as more lines of gold spread, shattering across Jessamine’s body like pottery knocked from a shelf. “Don’t talk like that, Jessamine. We’ll figure this out. We’ll get you both back. There has to be a way.”
He wasn’t all that certain that there was, though.
Jessamine gripped the side of his neck. He stared into her eyes, and the whole world fell away.
For the moment, it was just the two of them.
Even as cracks formed on her features and even as the rest of his lifeblood drained out, he found comfort knowing they would die together.
“I love you,” she whispered, her words seeming like a dream. “Even after everything, I wouldn’t make a single choice differently.”
“I’m glad for it.”
“Don’t you have anything you’d like to say to me?”
Elric could hear the witches beginning to argue as Sybil threw out any spell she knew.
The panic in the room was nearly overwhelming, but he still managed to lean forward and press his lips to Jessamine’s.
“You know I love you, nightmare. But there are a lot of things I would have done differently.”
As he died, Elric watched her entire being shatter before his eyes.