Chapter 41
Forty-One
Rose
Everyone is still staring at us. Victoria with her mouth slightly open, students with wide eyes, Drake, Soren and Lucien with expressions ranging from hope to skepticism.
But all I can think about as Ash holds my hand is the way our magic joining feels like coming home.
Like this is what was always meant to happen.
“You can’t do it,” Victoria says, her voice losing its usual commanding edge.
“Watch us.” I really hope I don’t end up eating my words.
Ash’s thumb brushes across my knuckles. “Do you trust me?”
“I probably shouldn’t,” I admit. “But I do.”
He looks at me a little longer, then he turns to face Victoria.
“The contract was meant to be broken.” He takes a breath before continuing.
“Sebastian and Abigail were lovers. Their child would have united the bloodlines. Instead, they were torn apart. The contract was created in grief and betrayal, but it was never meant to last forever.”
Victoria shakes her head. “You would throw away centuries of tradition, of a chance to regain your coven’s power, for what? This girl? Your enemy’s descendant?”
Ash’s grip on my hand tightens. “For a future where magic doesn’t come with chains that bind. Where one coven doesn’t decide an entire world’s fate.”
“What do we do?” I ask him, suddenly aware that I have no idea how to break a magical blood contract that’s survived for hundreds of years.
“We need you. And we need the contract,” he says. “The physical document.”
Victoria laughs. “It’s not here. It’s locked away, protected by wards that—”
“It’s right here,” Lucien interrupts, stepping forward. He reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a small scroll, yellowed with age.
I can’t believe he has it. “You stole it?”
“Borrowed,” Lucien corrects, and I see Soren nod his approval. “I thought it might be useful leverage.”
Victoria’s face darkens. “Hand it over, vampire. That document is my property.”
“No,” Lucien says simply. He walks to us and places the scroll in my free hand. “It belongs to Rose. It always has.”
There’s a strange vibration coming from the scroll.
“It recognizes you,” Ash says. “Both of us.”
Drake appears at my other side. “What can we do to help?”
“Create a circle,” Ash says immediately. “Keep everyone back. This is going to get intense.”
I swallow hard. “Define ‘intense.’”
He squeezes my hand. “When we unroll this, our magic will need to merge. Completely. No holding back, no walls.”
The implications of what he’s saying hit me. No walls mean no secrets. He’ll see everything about me, and I’ll see everything about him. Every fear, every desire, every ugly truth we keep hidden.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“It’s the only way,” he says. “Full trust or nothing.”
I look around the room. Drake, Lucien, and Soren have already moved to form a protective circle around us, their backs to us as they face outward, ready to stop anyone who might interfere.
Victoria stands frozen, her eyes locked on the scroll in my hand, and I can tell the wheels are turning in her head as she plans her next move.
“What if it doesn’t work?” I ask Ash.
“Then we’re exactly where we started.” His green eyes are serious. “But if it does work.”
“No more blood contracts. No more bound witches.”
“Freedom,” he says. The word sounds strange coming from him, like he’s trying it out for the first time.
I nod, decision made. “Let’s do it.”
Ash releases my hand long enough for me to unroll the scroll.
The mark on my arm burns white-hot. I choke, nearly dropping the scroll, but Ash’s hand clamps over mine, holding it in place.
“Don’t let go,” he warns me. “Whatever happens, don’t let go.”
Magic surges through me, not the gentle flow I’m used to but a torrent that wants to sweep me away, a riptide that wants to pull be under. I struggle to stay present.
“Focus on me,” Ash says, his voice sounding distant. “Look at me, Rose.”
I force my eyes to meet his, anchoring myself in the green of his irises. The world around us fades, the voices of the onlookers becoming muffled and indistinct. It’s just us now, Ash and me, and the contract between us.
“Let me in,” he says softly. “All the way in.”
I take a deep breath and deliberately lower every mental and magical barrier I’ve built since I discovered my powers. It feels like stripping naked in front of a crowd, vulnerable and exposed. But as my defenses fall, I feel Ash doing the same.
And then we’re inside each other’s minds.
I see flashes of his life, Ash as a lonely boy desperate to please his father, years that left him bloodied and exhausted, the legacy he never asked for but couldn’t escape.
I feel his anger, his ambition, his fear of never being enough, his need to have revenge.
And I know he’s seeing the same from me. A girl constantly on the move, never belonging anywhere, the grief of losing my mother, the new terror of discovering powers I couldn’t control. My anger and my resentfulness. My doubts, my insecurities, my fear of being abandoned.
Our magic merges completely, becoming something new, and the scroll begins to glow between our hands
“Now,” Ash says, though his lips don’t move. I hear him inside my head. “We destroy it.”
I direct everything I can toward the contract, visualizing it as shackles to be broken. The resistance is shocking. The contract fights back, sending waves of pain through both of us.
“It’s too strong!”
“No,” Ash counters. “You’re stronger. You are. Believe me, Rose. Trust me.”
The scroll vibrates violently now, the signatures at the bottom beginning to smoke.
“More,” Ash urges. “Everything you’ve got.”
I dig deeper, pulling from reservoirs of natural magic I’ve never accessed before.
It rises from the earth beneath us, from the air around us, from the very atoms of existence itself.
Pure, untapped power, the kind that doesn’t need spells or rituals.
The magic that makes me who I am, and who they wanted to control.
The Great Hall begins to shake, and students start to flee the room, but Victoria stands her ground, though even she looks uncertain now.
I give everything I have, and more, and the world narrows to the scroll between our hands, the magic in our veins, the ancestors whose choices have defined our lives.
“Abigail,” I whisper to my ancestor. “Let go. It’s time to let go.”
And somehow, impossibly, I feel her presence. Not a ghost, not a spirit, but the ancestral memory of her that lives in my blood. She’s tired. So tired of the burden she’s carried, the choice she made to protect her family at the cost of their freedom.
For a moment, nothing happens. Then there’s a release, like a sigh of relief from generations of witches trapped in an endless cycle.
There’s a sound of ripping, a flash of blinding light, and a shockwave of power that throws everyone in the Great Hall off their feet. The scroll disintegrates between our hands, turning to ash that’s swept away in a spiral of wind, up toward the ceiling and gone.
The shock wave continues outward, beyond the walls of the Great Hall, beyond the academy itself, rippling across the magical world like a stone dropped in a still pond. I can feel it breaking lesser contracts, snapping magical bindings, severing chains that were never meant to last.
And then, just like that, it stops.
I’m on my knees, though I don’t remember falling. Ash is beside me, his face pale. My entire body feels hollow, emptied of energy, but there’s something new inside me too. Something free and wild and completely my own.
“Rose.” Drake’s hands are strong and reassuring as he helps me sit up. “Are you okay?”
I nod, unable to find my voice just yet. Lucien and Soren appear next, both looking slightly dazed but unharmed.
“That was, “ Soren starts, then shakes his head. “I don’t even have words, and I always have words.”
“Unprecedented,” Lucien supplies, his eyes looking me over for injuries.
I glance down at my arm. The blood mark is gone, leaving unblemished skin behind. When I reach for my magic, it comes to me instantly, strong, responsive and mine.
All mine.
“We did it,” I whisper, looking at Ash. “It worked.”
He stares at me with wonder, then down at his own arm where his mark has also vanished.
Victoria pushes through the crowd, her face a mask of rage and disbelief. “What have you done? Do you have any idea of the consequences?”
“We broke the chains,” I tell her, getting to my feet with Drake’s help. My legs feel wobbly, but I stand tall. “All of them.”
“Impossible,” she sputters, but I can see in her eyes that she knows it’s true. She can feel the change in the magic around us, the shift in the very foundation of witchcraft.
“Not impossible,” I say. “Just overdue.”