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Betsy also sensed something was off and looked around wildly. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know.” Desperation seized Olivia in a chokehold. The temperature dropped. She gripped Betsy’s hands, summoning her life force. Shimmering green light wrapped around her and slowly crawled over Betsy’s form.

“What’re you doing?”

Olivia tightened her hold when Betsy started pulling away. “Saving you.”

The shadows had expanded and covered the kitchen, leaving them in complete darkness. The malevolent presence grew stronger, closer, its tendrils digging into Olivia’s body, leaving ice wherever it touched.

Olivia bit the insides of her cheeks to stop herself from crying out and struggled to inject her magic into Betsy.

“Ollie, stop, you have to stop.”

Betsy’s fear clawed into her. This darkness wasn’t part of Betsy’s dream. She couldn’t leave her sister here, wherever this was.

Hexanaja,a disembodied, dark voice whispered, the sound shooting terror into her veins.

Olivia could barely see Betsy through the angrily swarming shadows. When a tendril sharpened into a knife and stabbed past her green light, Olivia gasped as pain exploded along her arm.

What’s happening?Had her magic finally reached its limit?

“Go! Leave me!” Betsy shouted.

“Never!”

“Ahh!” Betsy yanked her hands away. Olivia’s heart stopped as she lost sight of her in the darkness. Hands. Someone shoving her.

“Betsy!” she screamed into the void. Nothing.

No. This can’t be happening!

It’s time,the same voice, cold as death, said. More shadow knives stabbed at her. Olivia remembered to shield herself with her magic, but the fire inside her had turned into a raging inferno. Even as the shadows left iciness in their wake, she thought she might burn up inside.

She was using too much magic too fast.

Betsy! Where’s Betsy?

The light around her wavered. No use. She couldn’t hold the magic any longer. As the shadows crept up her feet, numbing her and freezing her in place, a giant ball of ochre light streaked out of nowhere.

An angry hiss from the darkness. The light surrounded Olivia, replacing her green one. She recognized the familiar feel of it.

“We have to find Betsy,” she shouted.

Not now.

A rough yank in her middle. Olivia had the sense of flying through air. The shadows streaked after them, tendrils whipping out to capture her. Andrea’s magic whirled around them like a tornado, shredding apart the darkness.

You will not escape me forever.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Marekhadneverfeltas powerless as when the green light shimmered around Olivia. Her vanilla and floral scent strengthened as magic suffused the air, buzzing along his skin. He gripped her shoulders and clenched his jaw from magical currents clawing up his arm. Gently, he shook her but received no response.

What was she doing? What had she learned to save Betsy?

While he wasn’t an expert in magic, he knew it was dangerous to the untrained practitioner. Whatever Olivia was doing, it couldn’t be good. His keening pain from her rejection was nothing compared to the mind-numbing terror gripping him.

“Tristan, summon Andrea now. Tell her it’s an emergency!” he bellowed.