58. Cori
Cori
I t took only a few moments to realize why Sue had been tasked with escorting Cori to the field. The woman may have looked plain and unassuming, but from the moment the bolt was released and her hands were untethered, the woman locked her in with an icy stare.
“If you even consider trying to run, I’ll gut you,” she said simply. Despite the severity of her threat, Sue looked amused, almost as if she wanted Cori to try. “I know about ten different spells that will kill you in your tracks.” Cori acknowledged the scary little woman before her with a curt nod. “And if you try to attack me, I know about ten other spells that will dismember you before your lips stop moving,” Sue continued, her voice disarmingly sweet.
Cori followed Sue out the front door of the quaint, eerie little house, determined not to let her lips move at all. They approached a clearing in the woods, where the light of a bonfire flickered on the top of the hill. About a hundred people were gathered around the fire, and as she approached it, she realized they were moving in a slow, purposeful circle around it.
She was instructed to stop at the clearing. Calvin was positioned at the top of the hill, standing still, his arms raised toward the fire in his impeccable black suit. Enzo was next to him, holding the hilt of an ancient-looking sword.
His shoulders were slumped in defeat as he stood there, his gaze fixed on her as she approached. Cori did not know what time it was as she walked out onto the clearing, but based on the position of the moon in the sky, she could guess it was almost time.
She tipped her head back, tuning in to the position of the Earth. She was almost completely tipped on her axis as the solstice approached. Wispy clouds dotted the sky, but the stars shone through them.
As she gazed upward, her heart and her Eye opened to the heavens above her. Saturn and Jupiter were about to touch, whispering at her urgently as she planted her feet in the barren ground of the wood.
The time is near, Cordelia. Have faith in your purpose.
Sue ushered her over to Calvin, and she was shocked to realize his gaze was fixed on the same stars in the sky.
“Beautiful, isn't it?” he said, genuine wonder in his voice.
“I’m inclined to agree,” she answered him.
His eyes shifted to focus on her, startling her, pulling her away from the heavens.
“How does it feel to hold such power, Cori?” Calvin asked her, his voice raspy, desperate.
“What do you mean?” she asked innocently. But she knew what he meant.
“What can you see when you look at me?” His question was pleading, urgent despite the relaxed posture in which he stood.
She hesitated, biting her lip. “Are you asking me to read you?”
“I’m asking you to read my future,” he said, the nervous curl of his lip succumbing to the charm of his smile for a fleeting second.
She gestured to his arm. “May I?” she asked. He nodded in affirmation. She took his forearm in her hands and opened her Eye to him .
A young boy ran through a handsomely appointed living room. An impeccably dressed woman sat on a sofa, thumbing through a magazine as an older woman watched the boy with interest as he repeatedly attempted to shoot a basketball through a tiny toy hoop.
“Calvin,” the older woman commanded.
The boy trotted promptly to her elbow.
“Yes, Grammy?” The boy was gap-toothed and bright-eyed, eager for the explanation of her summons.
“What does Grammy always say?” she asked, a keen smile pulling at her lip.
The little boy’s eye twinkled. “Hansons never quit.”
The old woman’s eyes crinkled in a smile. She kissed him, staining his cheek with a smear of bloodred lipstick, before he went back to his game.
Cori reentered the present, her eyes bleary from the vision.
Calvin’s eyes were wide. “What did you see?” His question was raw. Urgent.
She swallowed hard. “Hansons never quit.”
His smile deepened, his eyes glittering with the reflection of the bonfire. “Right. They don’t, do they?” Calvin smoothed out the front of his suit, adjusting the cuff links. He clapped his hands three times. “May I have your attention, everyone?”
The dancers around the bonfire stopped at the commanding presence of his voice.
They sat on the ground immediately, as though they were children listening for the next instruction from their schoolteacher. Cori imagined how many times the same people in the crowd had listened to him in coven meetings, letting the commanding timbre of his voice brainwash them.
Calvin cleared his throat. “Today is an important day. As you all know, hundreds of years ago, on this very land, our elders made a decision.”
The aura of the crowd contracted with fear and anger, a dangerous combination of emotions. Cori scanned the crowd for Enzo who was the only person beside herself still standing, clutching a sword in his hand like an unwanted appendage. Calvin lectured on.
“For hundreds of years, dark magic has been vilified by humans.” A collective wave of disdain erupted from the crowd. “So, in the Covenant, our elders banished dark magic, preventing it from ever coming together with the light. Preventing magic from ever reaching its full potential. That ends—today.”
Cori’s ears became numb to the sound of Calvin’s voice. She knew how this speech would go. First, he would vilify the Covenant to his followers. He would follow that up by vilifying the prophecy that she delivered, but there would be a twist. At the climax of his speech, he would acknowledge how her Eye had willed her to come.
Twist it into the fate of the future being foreseen by the witch who had given the prophecy, justifying the reason for her death. The reason she should die, to cancel out everything. Not just her prophecy, but the Covenant itself.
Cori’s chest tightened as bubbles of air surfaced from her abdomen. Saturn and Jupiter reached out to each other in the sky as Calvin’s voice repeated her words.
Words that had haunted her and terrified her for so many years. Words that had caused her to wonder what it would be like to be killed.
“The Gray Covenant has been betrayed, weakening the Giver, as was foretold by those whose oath was made. When the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter occurs on the winter solstice, the Mother will collect the debt of three hundred years of stolen darkness. All those who have betrayed the Covenant will receive no more, and all those who have borrowed from the betrayal will weaken through the Other.”
His words—her words—reverberated through her ears as her heart pounded. Enzo’s grip tightened on the sword. Reflexively, her hand traveled to the little charm bracelet Nonna had given her. She felt her fingers glide over the smooth metal, worn over so many years by her touch. By Nonna’s touch before her.
She felt the metal electrify under the pads of her fingers as she thought about what her brother must be feeling right now. She was terrified to die, but she knew she would feel much more terrified in his position.
Why at this moment, did it have to be Enzo?
The man who had once wiped her tears. Who had taken her to the wharf and bought her ramen and ice cream. The man who had filled the void in her heart, who had stepped into the shoes of her father after he had died for her.
Died for them.
A voice whispered in her ear, a voice so familiar, it reverberated through her chest. Stellina . Nonna’s voice crackled through her as though she was listening through the old rotary phone line.
The Giver only gives us what we are strong enough to see, Stellina. Do you know why I gave you that bracelet?
Cori shook her head slightly, scared to clue in those near her to her secret conversation.
I held on to that bracelet for my whole life, but it always belonged to you. Only someone who is strong enough to summon the spirit realm can use that bracelet the way it is supposed to be used. Use it now. Show your brother what he needs to see.
She opened her eyes, but she did not realize until that moment that they had been closed. Her hand was already moving over the smooth gold of the bracelet, as if her fingers had walked themselves there on their own accord. As she looked up into Enzo’s face, she was shocked to see that his gaze was not focused on her at all, but on something just beyond her, his eyes wide with wonder.
Cori turned on her heel. “Papa?” Her voice was ice on water, delicate crystals, nearly broken with the tension of the air. She turned back to Enzo. He saw him, too. She knew he did. The way he looked at him with wide, golden eyes, his mouth agape as though about to ask a question .
She had called her father here. Presented him to her brother, tapping into a power she never knew she had.
Paolo glided toward them until he was standing between his children.
Daughter of sea and sky. Son of darkness and light.
In the distance, she heard Calvin’s speech ending. Cheers intensified from the crowd around her through the buzzing in her ears.
The axis of the Earth deepened as the true moment of the solstice approached. Saturn winked at her with comfort as Jupiter gripped her shoulder, squeezing tight.
Paolo reached his hand out to his son, placing it on his shoulder. “Enzo. It’s me.”
“Papa, I?—”
Paolo held up his hand. “Do you remember our last trip to the wharf?” Enzo nodded back at him. “Enzo, nothing is more beautiful than the light on the ocean at dusk. Do you remember why?”
“Yes.” Enzo’s stunned face was dotted with tears as his grip on the sword tightened.
Cori’s mouth moved, but no sound came out as another round of cheers and applause erupted from the surrounding crowd. Paolo embraced his son in a hug, and Enzo’s eyes widened as his father whispered something in his ear. Her father glided to her, his hand brushing her cheek with nothing but the light of his spirit. The whisper of his words was a cool kiss of light. “My star, be bright.”
With the final breath of his words, he was gone, and she stood before the impassioned crowd with her brother. Her eyes connected with Calvin’s—triumphant and confident as the stars intensified in their orbit above her. The earth was breaths away from the moment of her deepest axis. Calvin nodded at Enzo, his knuckles white on the hilt of the sword.
In the eerie light cast between the bare limbs of the trees, a flurry of snow fell around her brother as he raised the sword over his head. She squeezed her eyes shut, as adrenaline surged through her, readying herself for the pain of the blade as she heard the scrape of metal against bone.
When she opened her eyes, Calvin’s severed head was at her feet, the same look of triumph etched into his face as his head rolled away, staining the forest floor with the sacrifice of his death.