Page 56 of Her Wicked Knights (Their Hallowed Queen #3)

Rev

We haven't been able to leave Serenity Hollow since Whit did.

I'm not sure what sort of magic he performed to trap us in town, but it's almost like there's an invisible boundary at the city limits, and every time one of us tries to cross, it turns into a forcefield, completely invisible and completely impenetrable.

So being able to project ourselves to see her, to spy on her and try to figure out where she is, has been monumental.

I'll admit, some of the things we've done have been a little fucked up.

She thinks she's going crazy, and so does Whit.

That's actually kind of perfect, because when we kill him, he'll never see it coming.

When we kill him, he'll not even realize that we outplayed him until it's too late.

When we kill him, we will bring her back to us, and finally, after years of waiting, she'll be ours.

At this point, I couldn't much care less whether she wants to or not.

She's been gone for almost three years. If we brought her back to Serenity Hollow and threw her in the basement and used whatever spell Whit used to seal us in town to keep her our prisoner, who would really even notice?

I mean, aside from Hadley, it's not even like we would have to do much legwork.

Every time I start to feel bad, though, for how far we're taking it as we take turns projecting into her apartment, her car, her bedroom, I remember how fucked up Tripp was after she left.

I think of how she let me believe that there was something beautiful waiting around the corner that night she fell asleep in my arms in the back of Tripp's car.

I remember the bone-aching emptiness, the loneliness when Tripp shut me out because he didn't know how to deal with his own grief, let alone mine or Colton's.

Every time I see her tears dripping down her cheeks or hear the fear in her voice as she calls out, asking who's there, I feel the slightest remorse.

And every time I think of Whit's hands on her, I don't feel bad anymore.

He clearly messed with her head somehow. She's oblivious, but I don't know how she hasn't realized yet that Whit has no good intentions... that he's using her.

Fool that he is, Whit thought he could take her from us.

He thought he could trap us here and since we have no magic, we wouldn't be able to do anything to refute him.

He thought he could hide her from us and that we would just accept it, that we would let her go.

He clearly doesn't know us at all. He also underestimated our inherent magic.

We didn't know it was there until he pointed it out. None of us knew it was already inside, hiding beneath our flesh and lurking in our veins. We may never have figured that out if he hadn't led us to realize it. But Whit underestimated us in more ways than one.

I went down every rabbit hole I could in the last few years, particularly in the time when Tripp refused to talk to me and Colton was so focused on taking down Mayor North that he couldn't see two feet in front of him.

I was surprised to find out that the rabbit holes were more of a tunnel system, an elaborate interconnected network.

Once I found the first few pieces of what was missing from the puzzle, everything else began to fall into place.

I've been able to sneak right into Whit's house beneath his very nose and read from the ancient Grimoire he kept there.

It took forever to find, but I eventually caught him using it, and then all I had to do was wait for him to be consumed by something else, too distracted to realize I was right there.

He thought he could ice us out with his spells and enchantments, but he made a fatal mistake.

He doesn't know that yet, of course. He's blocked our physical forms from leaving town, but he didn't count on us learning to project our consciousness.

.. or to use that skill to find her. He also didn't seem to realize that he could try to hide her from us with his enchantments, but that you can't hide a source from its culmination.

Whit let us see cherry-picked events of our past lives, ones where he was at our side, every bit as involved as the rest of us.

But once I learned to dig deeper, I was able to see the things he'd so carefully hidden, to track my magic all the way back to the original source.

.. to the moment she gave it to us. Marley wasn't Marley then, but she was still her, and we were still us.

We loved her then, as we love her now. Not even death could keep her from us, so I'm not sure why Whit thought he could try.

While Whit has been enjoying our girl under the delusion that she belongs to him, I've been working to find out how to break the curse of him.

He was never meant to be bound to us. A drop of blood on Colton's hand after he killed him mixed with ours when we performed the binding ritual, moments before she was dragged away from us and I had to watch her be murdered.

And for what? Because Whit thought that by having her removed from the picture, he could keep all of her power for himself.

He didn't realize back then that he couldn't have his magic without his source.

For someone who is smart—and he is smart, considering that he put all this together and used it to come here and get us to do his dirty work— he's awful fucking stupid.

He's been marked for death from the moment he went after her himself.

.. from the moment he orchestrated Audrey's entire murder, knowing that there was no way she would be able to stay in town and move on when everyone was looking at her asking what happened that night.

But we've had to be patient. Whit warned us that it's his death, every time, which begins our cycle.

Him, then Marley, then the rest of us. And Marley's the reason for everything we do; if she dies, not only will we die, too, but it will all be for nothing.

A tragedy, lovers cursed to orbit one another for all of time and space, crossing multiple lifetimes in search of one another, loving each other in all of them, but never able to be together.

I won't let any more tragedy befall her.

The last five years of her life have been tragic enough, and that's saying nothing of all the lives before.

No, in order to get rid of Whit once and for all, we need to be sure he's unlinked from us.

And I've finally figured out how to do it.

"Even for you, Rev, this shit is weird." Colton says, eyeing the chalice on the altar.

We're standing in the middle of the abandoned theme park that Tripp now owns.

He bought it when I mentioned that hallowed ground may be the only place where we can bring her back to us.

We haven't talked about whether we will restore it one day, so for now, we're in the midst of the rot and decay from three years ago, when we killed Audrey.

I don't feel bad about it, exactly. But the distance and space from then have given me enough pause to realize that she was a victim in more ways than one.

I saw her as some sort of super villain back then; in reality, she was just a scared, pathetic little girl who was desperate to matter.

Killing Marley's parents meant that I'll never wish her back to life, but in hindsight, I can see so clearly how Whit manipulated us all to his own end.

"Do you care?" Tripp deadpans. "If it works, do you care how far you have to go for her?"

We all know the answer. Colton would go to the end of the earth for her if he could just get out of this town.

We all would. And we will, as soon as this is over.

I learned an ancient practice of magic, Tripp spent half his inheritance on a decrepit theme park that will end up costing him more money whether he decides to demolish it or renovate.

And Colton? Colton has become obsessive about preserving the town's innocence, doling out vigilante justice when the government justice fails us.

It's a weird way of honoring her father's legacy, and I doubt he even realizes that's what he's doing.

Colton's no white knight, none of us are, but he'll lay down his life for her as easily as the rest of us.

"Weird seems to be the theme lately." Colton laughs. "I mean, did you see what she did to herself? The fucking hieroglyphs she cut into her arms?"

"Sigils." I correct him. And of course I saw them. I'm the reason she cut them into her own flesh.

To be fair, I didn't expect her to get hurt.

We've been linked from since before we were born, but when I carved the sigils into my flesh, they somehow transferred to her.

My aim wasn't to hurt myself, but to arm myself with the knowledge I needed when I was stealing information from Whit's grimoire.

Projecting is more of an unconscious act than anything else; I can't take anything physical with me, one way or the other.

I can touch stuff, I can move things, I can make sounds.

But I'm as good as a ghost, a shadow in the night.

I had to remember the spell somehow, and that was the only way to take it with me when I ended up back in my body.

Thankfully, the blade had a very fine tip, and the scars are healing nicely.

Marley dragging herself to the ER was a touch dramatic considering the wounds weren't that deep, but given how they spontaneously appeared, I suppose I can't blame her for thinking something was wrong.

It really put another nail in the coffin of her sanity though.

Of course, Whit couldn't let her be away from him long enough for the psych hold they wanted to put her on, so he pulled some strings, typical puppet master, and got her out of it.

He moved the grimoire after that, and I still haven't found where he hid it, but I already have what I need.

"Whatever," Colton rolls his eyes. "Just tell me what to do."

"Save her, Rev." Tripp implores me, his eyes catching mine from the other side of the altar set between us.

I nod, because there's not a chance in hell that I'm going to let anything hurt her or him or us. This life is the closest we've ever been to having it all, and I won't risk that.

I focus my attention on the herbs in the bowl, things I've been gathering for weeks.

Wormwood, Seal of Solomon, Adder's Tongue, salt from the Dead Sea, Ash from the hangman's noose I stole from the Serenity Hollow historical museum, nettle.

There are just two ingredients left— dirt from hallowed ground, and blood.

The park is overgrown, weeds poking through the cement walkways.

In parts, it's completely cracked, as if the earth below is rising up and casting it off.

That's where I drop down to the balls of my feet, dig my nails into the soft ground, feeling it cake beneath my fingernails.

I toss it in the bowl, right on top of everything else, and wonder if the little earth worm that I dropped in along with it is going to fuck up the spell.

I decide to pluck him out for good measure, dropping him onto the ground so that he can live another day. I pray that we will, too.

"You're sure about this?" Tripp asks, his eyes holding mine. There's no doubt there. He trusts me. He loves me. He believes in me. And that's the greatest feeling in the world, a treasure all its own. It's given me the courage to believe in myself, too.

"Yes."

That's all the proof he needs to hold his arm out over the chalice, his fist clenched around a handful of dirt he picked up when I did.

He doesn't flinch or groan when I slice into his arm, digging the point beneath his flesh and dragging it down the length so that his blood comes fast, pouring out of his vein, dripping past his fingertips, and collecting in the chalice with the dirt he drops when he opens his hand.

Colton presents his arm next, and I repeat the gesture, severing his vein and letting his blood mix overtop of Tripp's, alongside Tripp's as it still continues to stream.

I move quicker now, doing the same thing with my own arm, bleeding into the bowl even as Tripp has to grip the altar to remain standing.

"Stay with us." I tell him, eyeing him quickly before turning my attention to the bowl, which is nearly full. Nearly, but not quite.

The smoke begins slowly, wafting off the surface of the concoction as I bleed the last drop into the bowl. When I do, the smoke increases, a thick black cloud of it that impedes our vision, separating them from us.

"A fate bound by four, betrayed by one. Cleanse us the interloper, let him be done. Set free the souls tethered to him and let the four be bound to one another again."

The grimoire didn't have the exact spell I needed, so I had to take some creative liberties.

Turns out, you can untether souls, but usually only two are bound, which means only two are untethered.

.. and they stay that way. I went off script.

We agreed to stay bound, just in case something goes wrong in this life, just in case it doesn't all go to plan.

Just in case Whit catches onto what we know and decides to take Marley out with him before we can have her.

When the smoke arranges itself into something like a skull, I wonder if I'm hallucinating.

But Colton seems to see it too; I catch sight of him now that the clouds of it are lifting to shape into an omen.

But whether it's an omen for us or for Whit, I don't know.

I don't much care, either, because the skull hovers there for a minute before it explodes, sending waves of smoke out to each of us.

Tripp goes down first; one minute I see him, clutching the table to try and stay upright. The next, he's gone, collapsed on the ground, and I have to force myself to remain still and not check on him.

Colton falls next, taken down in a choking fit until I'm the only one left standing.

And as I inhale the smoke, letting it do exactly what I asked the spell to do, I focus on the only thing that matters now: revenge.