Page 63

Thirty-Seven

Lydia ran through the corridor, the setting sun strobing in the windows as she flew past. Her feet drummed against the marble floor, Sybil’s moonstone ring burning in her hand.

She stopped before the amber-gold door, her heart racing. She put on the ring and pressed her hand against the wood, watching as a flicker of light passed through the stone. The door opened, and Lydia flung herself through it.

“Mum!”

Evelyn was sitting by the window, watching as the sun crept toward the horizon. When she saw Lydia, she grinned.

“Well?” She stood and smoothed the front of her housedress with her hands. “Did she believe it? I thought I was rather good, actually! I even cried.”

Lydia closed the distance between them and held her tight. “Oh, Mum, I’m so sorry. The things I said, I—”

“Now, now, love.” Evelyn patted her back. “You think I don’t know when my own daughter is having me on?” She leaned back and wiped a tear from Lydia’s cheek. “Don’t go getting weepy on me now. The job’s only half-done.” She took Lydia firmly by both shoulders. “Come on. Let’s finish it.”

···

Evelyn was wheezing by the time they reached the ceremonial chamber.

“Why couldn’t we have destroyed the damned thing in the east wing, instead of running all the way back here?” she asked.

Sybil stood where Lydia had left her, quivering as she bucked against the spell that held her. In the middle of the room, the Grimorium Bellum gave off an ominous drone.

“This ceremonial chamber is just like the one at the academy. It’s been charmed to amplify any magic cast inside. This is the best place if we want the ritual to succeed.”

Evelyn looked around the opulent chamber. “Our ancestors used to walk into the woods and talk to the trees. Simple.” She turned her eye on Sybil. “This is all a bit much, don’t you think?”

Lydia took her mother by the hand, pulling her attention back to the task before them.

She looked toward the setting sun, turning to liquid bronze where it met the mountains.

Her heart was racing, a rush of terror taking hold of her pulse.

She felt breathless, weightless, and she was suddenly certain that they were doomed to failure, and the Grimorium Bellum would consume them both, crushing them to atoms. She felt Evelyn’s hands tighten around her own.

“Breathe, my love.”

Lydia did. The panic in her heart subsided.

She was about to speak, when she felt a strange sensation come over her—not the breathless terror she’d felt just a moment before, but a high-frequency whine, like a ringing in her ears. She shook her head, trying to clear it, but the ringing remained. Evelyn’s brow furrowed.

“Love?”

Lydia turned, her eyes darting around the chamber, every cell in her body tuned to the unseen threat.

It was the book, she realized. It was calling to her, alerting her to danger, but what, she couldn’t see.

The whining became more forceful, shaking her bones, aching in her teeth.

She let go of Evelyn’s hands and went to stand over the book, peering all around the room, but saw nothing.

She felt the ringing building like a migraine, higher and higher, the crushing intensity becoming unbearable, and then, and then—

Silence. The ringing stopped.

She smelled rain.

The knife was in her hand before she understood why.

Ursula appeared like a wraith in the ceremonial chamber, wet clothes and hair clinging to her porcelain skin, mere feet from where Lydia stood. Her hair was soaked through on one side with blood, and the promise of violence rose off her like steam, curdling in the air.

And then the horrifying realization struck Lydia like a skipped heartbeat. The wine. Ursula drank the wine.

Ursula took in the scene in an instant—the ash that covered everything. The ruin that had come to her coven. Her grand mistress, bound and struggling. Lydia watched as Ursula’s eyes narrowed, and she lunged for Lydia, knife drawn.

Lydia sidestepped, but too late, and felt the blade arc across her rib cage, so sharp the pain felt almost like ice.

Ursula snarled a word of power, and Lydia felt her body still, the magic in her veins going deathly quiet.

She tried to fight back, but The Unmaking had sapped her strength.

Ursula grinned, closing the distance between them with long, swift strides, while Lydia stood as still as a statue, her blade gripped uselessly in her hand.

“Lydia, move !” Evelyn shouted.

Evelyn’s command slid inside Lydia’s skin, driving Ursula’s spell out with a force that made her bones shake.

Ursula raised her blade, aiming for her heart, and Lydia did not allow herself to think.

She took Ursula by the back of the neck, driving the knife up and under her ribs until she felt the hilt meet flesh.

Ursula gasped, an empty, rattling sound, her mouth already filling with blood.

Lydia held her tight as she struggled, her eyes so blue they looked inhuman.

Ursula was shockingly strong, but Lydia held on, gripping her in a close embrace as the life seeped out of her.

Her lips moved, shaping the same desperate syllables over and over again as she tried to summon one last spell, but the words of power shriveled and died on her lips.

Her eyes began to swim, losing their focus.

“Ursula. Look at me,” Lydia said.

Ursula did, the lucidity snapping back for one brief moment. She bared her bloodred teeth, defiant.

Lydia bent closer. “I told you.”

She freed the knife from Ursula’s body and slit her throat. Blood poured from the wound, a sea of red engulfing her ivory neck. Lydia stepped back, and Ursula collapsed to the marble and was still.

“Nooooooo!”

Lydia looked up and saw Sybil, mouth open in a howl, screaming in horror at the death of her protégé as her blood spread across the marble floor.

And then the whole world lurched to a halt.

Sybil was holding Evelyn.

“What have you done?” Sybil screamed. Ash covered her dress and her face.

It clung to her hair, making her look wild and unnatural.

She was gripping Evelyn tight against her with one arm, Evelyn’s back pressed against Sybil’s chest like a shield.

Evelyn’s face looked all wrong—her eyes were dazed, her lips pressed tight in a pained grimace.

“You’ve betrayed your own coven! You murdered them all! ”

Lydia understood then with awful certainty, fear seizing her in a viselike hold: Ursula’s spell had paralyzed more than Lydia’s body. It had stilled her magic, freeing Sybil from its grasp.

And now Sybil had her mother.

“ Agonna ban! ” Lydia called, but Sybil was ready, countering the spell with a word of power that sounded like a serpent’s hiss. “ Astyffn ban! ” Lydia tried again, but Sybil batted that away as well.

“Evil, ungrateful bitch!” Sybil shrieked. “After everything I’ve done for you! Do you know the punishment for witches who betray their covens?”

They burn them , Lydia thought. It had been more than a hundred years since such a thing had happened. But she knew. Everyone did.

She felt the air crackle around them as Sybil readied her next word of power, and panic scrabbled at her heart as she realized which spell Sibyl intended to call down.

Lydia had never uttered the words, they were forbidden, only to be called upon in the most dire of cases, but she knew them well.

She’d learned them in her history lessons. They all had.

Fyora Grymm.

Burn the witch.

Lydia looked helplessly into her mother’s eyes as the smell of smoke reached her nose, making her eyes water. Heat rose from the tiles beneath her feet, scorching the hem of her gown. She watched as Evelyn’s eyes cleared, looking at her daughter, then turned grim and determined.

Evelyn leaned back and spoke a word in Sybil’s ear, too low for Lydia to hear, and Sybil immediately let go, going as dull and docile as a lamb. Evelyn staggered away, landing on the floor a safe distance from where Sybil stood.

But something was wrong. Evelyn’s face was hideously white against the sea of black marble, and a pained gasp erupted from her lips as her slick hands slid across the tile, looking for purchase. A crimson stain bloomed on the back of her blouse, making the fabric stick to her skin.

Lydia reached her mother just before she collapsed. She lowered Evelyn to the ground, her heart seizing as a pool of blood began to spread around them.

“Mum?” Lydia’s voice shook, panic taking hold of her as the pool of red expanded and became an ocean.

Evelyn made a pained sound in the back of her throat. “The Nazi bitch got me.” She laughed, dry and tight.

“Mum!” Lydia turned her and saw the slit in the back of Evelyn’s blouse, the flesh underneath bleeding so profusely Lydia couldn’t hope to hold it back with her hands.

Lydia looked up at Sybil, with her cold, vacant eyes.

She looked at the knife, still held tight in Sybil’s grip, and felt a surge of rage and terror boiling inside her heart.

It was covered in blood.

She laid her mother on her back. The blood was everywhere now, covering them both. Evelyn’s lips were white as death, and Lydia felt a horrible sense of déjà vu.

First Isadora. Now Evelyn.

“No!” Lydia took Evelyn’s hands in hers and began to speak. “Siowan-ban, hela-ban, siowan-lif, hela-lif!”

She was no healer, not really. Nicks and scratches she could mend, but a wound like this one was beyond her power, and she knew it. Still, she spoke the words, feeling the life as it flowed out of Evelyn and onto the cold stone floor.

“Stop, my love,” Evelyn whispered.

“No, I can do this! Siowan-ban, hela-ban, siowan-lif, hela-lif! ” Lydia spoke, on and on, even though she knew she was failing.

She glanced to her right. The shadow was there. Her own spectral twin, looking like a dead thing left too long underwater. It was beckoning to her.

Yes. That was it. With the power of the book, she could save her mother. She could feel it, through the cord that bound them. It was making her an offering. Evelyn’s life, in exchange for its own.

“Lydia, stop .” Evelyn’s command ripped the words of power out of Lydia’s mouth, as surely as if she’d never learned them at all, and the book retreated from her, taking its offer with it.

Lydia began to cry as the sea of red crept ever outward. “Mum, I can do this, just let me. You have to let me…”

“No.” Evelyn smiled. Her eyes looked dim. “You save your strength. You’re going to need it.”

“Mum, please!” She drew on all the power inside her, willing herself to defy her mother and speak the words that could save her life. She gritted her teeth, desperately trying to form the syllables, but it was no use. Even as Evelyn lay dying, Lydia was no match for her strength.

Evelyn’s hands were tangled up with Lydia’s. They felt cold.

“It’s all right, my love,” Evelyn said softly. She smiled again, and then Lydia watched as her face went slack, and her eyes went still.

The silence in the chamber was complete.

Lydia looked down at her own bloody hands.

She felt the words of power flowing back into her mouth once again on a river of despair, but she did not speak them.

There was no longer any need. She looked down at her mother, cold and pale in her arms. She felt as if she would die right there, the grief and shock were so great, smothering her to death.

The clatter of footsteps broke the silence. Lydia looked up, and through her tears, saw Sybil running for the door.

“ Agonna ban ,” Lydia hissed.

Sybil fell to the floor, flailing in agony.

Lydia picked up her knife and stood, crossing the room with quick strides.

She would kill Sybil, just like she’d killed Ursula.

Sybil, who had caused so much pain and suffering.

Who had nearly brought about the deaths of thousands.

Who had killed her mother. Lydia would slit her throat and leave her body to rot beside the ashes of her coven.

She felt no hesitation, no remorse. Only an icy determination.

But then she heard it—a voice, like an echo in her mind.

Will they keep fighting, do you think?

Evelyn’s voice, the night they learned the true depth of Sybil’s betrayal.

If you tell the academy everything, will they continue to fight the good fight against the Nazis? Or will they sweep the whole ugly business under the rug and go back to how things were before?

Lydia had known the answer. They both did.

Make her tell them , Evelyn said. Drag her before the high council and force her to confess her crimes. Make them see that the fate of witches and the fate of the world are one and the same.

Lydia stood before Sybil’s writhing body, knife in hand, shaking with rage and grief at the death of her mother.

“ Enough ,” she said.

Sybil carried on screaming.

“ Slaepna fae! ” she shouted.

Sybil fell silent and collapsed to the tile.

The knife felt slippery in Lydia’s hand. She was covered to the elbow in blood. It was everywhere, seeping across the floor, running through the cracks in the tiles. It pooled beneath Ursula’s twisted body. It pooled around Evelyn, and around the Grimorium Bellum .

Something shifted in the air, a low, sinister rumble.

“ What— ” The word was snatched from Lydia’s mouth.

The strange sensation grew, making her feel detached from herself.

Her pulse trilled in her throat, so fast the beats ran together like a drumroll.

She wanted to scream, if only to feel the release of it, but she couldn’t.

Something had caught hold of her, something she couldn’t control.

She looked at the Grimorium Bellum. Where once there was only a book, now there was a hideous void, writhing like a mass of insects.

She looked at the pool of blood, slowly seeping into the pages of the book. She saw the creature, feeding on it like a leech. A roar like an oncoming train filled her skull, consuming her.

“No— ”

Lydia fell to her knees, and the world went black.