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“It’s too much magic. She never should have tried to cast both spells at once,” I said. “The rings are building up to an overload.”

Lavinia wasn’t screaming anymore. She wasn’t moving either. I didn’t think she was even breathing. And yet the spells continued on, spiraling toward catastrophe.

“No.” Dad caught Mom’s hand as she moved toward the barrier.

“I have to stop the spells.”

“No,” he growled, pulling her in close, kissing her head.

“It’s the only way, Nero. You heard Sierra. You see it for yourself. The spells are building up to an overload, and when that happens…” She glanced at me.

“This is old magic. Powerful magic.” My heart thumped. “The explosion will tear a hole in the fabric of time and space. It will destroy everything and everyone.”

“We’ll stop it,” Dad said, his hands shaking, even as they clutched Mom’s arms. “We’ll find a way. Wealwaysfind a way, Leda.”

“Not this time.” A tear slid down her cheek. “There’s no time. I have to stop the spells, stop the overload. There is no other way.”

“There is,” he said. “I will do it.”

“You can’t,” she said with a pained laugh. “You heard Cadence. Only chaos can disrupt the spells. I am chaos.”

Tears were falling from his eyes too now. “I won’t let you do this. I won’t let you sacrifice yourself.”

“It’s a small price to pay to save the people I love.” She smiled at him. “It’s been fun, Nero.”

“It’s not over.” He refused to let her go.

And so did I. I wouldn’t lose either one of them. I just wouldn’t.

So I rushed toward the barrier,intothe barrier. At first, I felt nothing. I was just stuck there, neither in nor out, suspended, frozen. I heard a crack, the boom before the avalanche. The forcefield shattered. It cracked like an egg, splitting open. The spells fizzled out and died.

And so did I.

CHAPTER 12

NEW BEGINNINGS

The good news was I wasn’t dead for more than a few moments, at least according to my parents. Apparently, when I’d charged into the magic bubble, the shock to my body was so severe that my heart stopped. They restarted it, and now here I was alive and breathing.

In other good news, my parents were also both still aliveandI’d prevented the end of the universe. So yay.

Of course, there was also bad news.

While I’d saved the universe and stopped Lavinia from becoming the all-powerful Queen of Magic, I hadn’t managed to stop the Cure.

Or maybe it wasn’t bad news?

On the one hand, there wasn’t any Nectar or Venom anymore. On the other hand, deities and angels weren’t dependent on a poison to survive; and also, with time, as the poison faded from their bodies, they would have a much easier time having children.

Time would tell whether the Cure was good or bad, but one thing was for sure: the Cure had changed everything.

“The world—the universe—just got a hard reset, and nothing will ever be the same,” Eira said.

She was visiting me in the Legion’s Purgatory medical ward, where I’d been recovering for the last couple of weeks. Yes,weeks. I felt fine, but my overly-protective parents insisted that I needed 24/7 medical supervision. I guess my brush with death had them pretty freaked out.

It was so boring here. But at least they’d given me an extra large bed so Snow could sleep with me.

“Yes,” I agreed. “The gods, the demons, the Legion of Angels, the Dark Force…everything is different now. I wonder what will happen next. How will people get magic? There’s no Nectar anymore. There’s no Venom anymore.”