Chapter Forty-Two #2
Sylvia had decided that she always knew what was best, that she could make her own rules. Katherine wouldn’t follow in her footsteps.
She closed her eyes, bringing her magic to the surface—
Too late.
It was instantaneous—one moment, Sylvia was unconscious, the next she was on her feet, magic swirling in red sparks around her. Sylvia reached a hand out, and Katherine braced for the hit, but it didn’t come.
It went to Fiona instead.
Katherine screamed as her friend was hurled across the room, flying over the roof of her car and out into the parking lot before landing with a sickening thud. Instinctually, Katherine started to run to her, but she was yanked back by a rope of burning fire around her ankle.
She fell to the ground with the force of it, her knees cracking against the hard floor. She scrambled for purchase, but there was nothing that could stop her from being pulled to Sylvia.
Sylvia flipped Katherine onto her back, pressing her knee into Katherine’s stomach as she knelt over her. “That was some fucking stunt, dear.”
The whites of Sylvia’s eyes had gone fully red. Blood leaked from her mouth, dropping onto Katherine’s face. She was keeping all of her weight on the left side of her body.
But none of that was what gave it away. What gave it away was the tremble in Sylvia’s hands—the same tremble she always got when she was running low on magic.
Unsettled magic was strong, but it wasn’t limitless. What Sylvia had done was unprecedented. What if she was nearing her bottom?
Before Katherine could consider what to do with that information, Sylvia dug her knee in harder. Katherine heaved. “All up on your high horse about me being a murderer,” Sylvia continued. “And look what you tried.”
Ropes of sparking magic wrapped tight around Katherine’s chest, pulling her up from the ground and slamming her against the metal of Fiona’s car. She struggled against the bindings, scratching at them uselessly with her fingernails as they cut off her breath.
“I should’ve taken your magic the second I found you on that bench,” Sylvia snarled. “I should’ve ripped it out of you and left you there to die.”
She veered wildly as she stalked toward Katherine, sweat pouring off her forehead.
Katherine tried to make a plan, but then the ropes tightened and all of the air rushed out of her body, her ability to think disappearing with it.
Her vision popped with flecks of color as Sylvia clenched her hand, tightening the ropes again.
Katherine screamed as she felt something inside her crack. It had to be one of her ribs.
“You know, Katherine, I always wondered where you’d draw your line.
” Sylvia’s face twisted into a terrifying rictus, a mockery of her normal smile.
“I mean, all those years you watched me take from ordinaries … I knew it ate at you. Every time you walked in, I kept waiting for you to say ‘That’s it. No more.’ But you never did.
“I’ve been hurting people for a long, long time, Katherine, and you let me. You had the chance to stop this, and you didn’t.”
The cut of her words was even worse than the ropes, more painful than the magic burning into Katherine’s skin. The agony cleared something in her, letting her think straight for what felt like the first time in her life.
She had compromised her morals for Sylvia, but she wasn’t the one who had committed murder. She had let Sylvia take magic from ordinaries, but she wasn’t the one who ripped Lily’s life from her body.
She couldn’t blame herself for someone else’s actions. For someone else’s decisions. For someone else’s mistakes.
Sylvia’s power had to run out eventually.
If Katherine could find a way to wear her out, she’d have a chance to make that choice again.
To take the killing blow, or at least incapacitate Sylvia long enough for Noctis to arrive and drag her in—for Silas to arrive, to take the revenge he deserved to be able to take—likely quite literally over Katherine’s dead body.
But Katherine wasn’t afraid to die. Not if that was what it’d take to make the world safe for the people she loved.
She smiled. Sylvia’s eyes narrowed in confusion.
“I didn’t,” Katherine said. “No one could stop this. Because you’re too much of a lonely, insecure little—”
Katherine was thrown again, but this time, she put all of her weight into yanking her body in the opposite direction, using the momentum to tug herself out of the magical ropes. She rolled as soon as she landed, hiding behind the bar to avoid Sylvia’s next wave of power.
“You’re just delaying the inevitable,” Sylvia snarled, the click of her shoes the only noise in the room.
Katherine slid herself across the floor, pushing open the door just as Sylvia rounded the corner.
She dodged another blast of magic as she bolted into the kitchen, slashing her palm on the sharp edge of the latch and slamming it against the frame as she performed a locking spell.
She knew it wouldn’t buy her much time—Sylvia’s power blasted through her work in seconds.
But she only needed a moment to grab one of the heavy cast-iron pans and line it up for a slug at Sylvia’s head.
Sylvia reeled back, her hand going to her temple, where a trickle of blood poured down from her split skin.
“What the fuck, Katherine?”
“You’re okay with murder, but you draw the line at hitting someone with a pan?”
“Yes!”
Katherine used her makeshift weapon to block Sylvia’s next burst of power, but she lost it in the process, the metal melting in her grip.
She threw the useless lump aside and instead grabbed a butcher knife, running the sharp blade along her palm as Sylvia rushed at her.
A blue rune lit up on her hand as the accoutrements from Tess’ latest meal flew off the counter at Sylvia, pots, pans, and cutlery knocking her to her knees.
Katherine wanted to fall too. Every part of her felt broken, and with her body in this shape, the few spells she’d done were already enough to push her near the bottom of her depleted magic stores.
But there was no quitting until this was done.
She scanned the kitchen, searching for something else she could use.
She dove for the stove, turning on one of the burners and forcing out a Class 1 spell for a blast of wind to send the fire at Sylvia.
But it was useless—all it took was a wave of her hand for Sylvia to dispel the attack, Katherine’s hopes of ending this turning to steam with it.
“Give it up, Katherine. You can’t beat me.”
Sylvia stalked toward Katherine, another ball of power at the ready.
Her body lurched as she moved, pulled along by the sheer brute force of her will.
Any other witch would have fallen by now, but Sylvia was not just any witch.
She was relentless in pursuing the things she wanted.
It was one of the things Katherine had admired most about her.
Of course, that was until the thing she wanted was seeing Katherine dead.
Katherine didn’t have the energy left for another spell. She slashed out with the knife instead, catching Sylvia’s hand. Sylvia backhanded her, the force of it sending her makeshift caster clattering to the floor.
Katherine heaved, trying to find the energy to reach for the knife again, to make another cut, to try something, anything, but she couldn’t. All she could do was stay there on her hands and knees, waiting as the ropes of Sylvia’s power wrapped around her again.
Sylvia’s magic lifted her, throwing her through the wall of the kitchen back into the dining room.
She heard something in her crack as she was tossed across the ground, slamming into tables and chairs.
She couldn’t even distinguish where the pain was coming from anymore—her body was one massive ache.
She wasn’t going to last long enough like this. She needed to—
Another ball of power slammed into her, landing right at the center of her chest, where the skin was already raw and bleeding from the magical ropes. For a moment, Katherine just stared at the sparks that flew off it, marveling at their strange beauty.
Then the agony hit.
Sylvia stalked toward her again, and Katherine couldn’t even begin to move out of the way.
Her heart felt like it had been struck by lightning, her chest like it had been trampled by a herd of elephants.
This, she was sure, was the end. There was no way a person’s body could survive this much abuse.
Sylvia’s face loomed over her, her hand raising, filled with magic.
Katherine hoped she’d done enough. She hoped that Sylvia was weak enough now to take down. She hoped Fiona would be okay. She hoped someone would take care of Cheez-It. She hoped her parents found peace, even though they’d never know what happened to their daughter.
She closed her eyes and waited for death to come.