Page 58 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

Sometimes the ones we hear from are the angry ones. Take care with them. For a soul to manage to stay angry once they understand the magnificent workings of the Universe, well. That’s not fun for anyone.

—Evie Oxby, Palm Springs and Bat Wings, Netflix

The wind in the tomb increased, the dust thickening in the air. Beatrice could feel that Taurus was furious, and she didn’t know why—hadn’t he just gotten exactly what he wanted? His daughter?

No, he wanted the son he’d never had. He could get fucked and die, except that had already happened, and now what?

Now Beatrice knew nothing, except that she had to move, and move fast. Minna had—what—four minutes of not breathing before brain damage started to set in? Eight minutes and she’d be gone forever.

Beatrice had one motherfucking miracle left to spend.

What she didn’t have was time to figure out the right way to do this.

There was only one way. Somehow, she’d make that way right.

She dropped to her knees, ignoring the howl of the wind that grew in her ears. It didn’t matter if it was an illusion or real. She didn’t care.

The fountain pen—there it was. It felt perfect in her hand. Red ink still dripped from it, but she honestly didn’t need the ink.

She needed the dust.

Moving as fast as she could, she scraped her palm underneath the marble bench to her right until she had a handful of dust and dirt.

Grandmother Rosalind. Great-grandmother Anna.

I need you now. She plunged the pen’s nib into the dust. I am the lost twin.

Baby Louise, wherever you are. Help me. All of you, please help me now.

Then, Beatrice became the padlock.

She drove the nib into the flesh of her thigh, shoving the dust into her skin with it. She drew the cursed sigil into her own skin, claiming it. She wouldn’t let Minna have it. It was hers. Beatrice was the one who’d unsealed the page—she owned it.

The lines Minna had drawn on her own skin were thin. Beatrice’s lines, on the other hand, were thick and sure. Her blood didn’t pool, it poured. It surged.

And she felt them—Anna and Rosalind Holland—she felt their power enter her with the ash of their long-crumbled bones. Be brave, daughter.

She pushed the pen harder with more assurance. It hurt like hellfire, but she’d endure it for eternity if it meant Minna would catch her breath again.

Then Louise was with her, too, a soft petal of touch on her cheek. Move faster. Do it for your twin. For her daughter.

Taurus’s voice was deafening. “ Stop. ”

“Fuck!” She paused briefly to look up toward the ceiling, where the sound came from. “You!”

The broken scale was complete—now she needed the other lines. She’d gone so deep, her flesh tearing, that it would be difficult for anyone to understand the sigil’s lines because of the blood, but it didn’t matter.

It was her sigil.

Hers.

Not Minna’s.

She was taking it back.

Taurus was screaming then, threatening her, but somehow, as she pushed the metal nib through her skin, she was able to tune him out.

You will die for love.

Oh, shit—oh, shit! Through the pain, through the noise, through the fear that was so strong, she didn’t how she’d live through it, Beatrice realized what the curse actually meant.

She’d gotten it wrong.

It wasn’t YOU WILL DIE for love. She’d focused on the wrong thing, the death part.

It was You will die FOR LOVE. She’d almost missed the deeper meaning—the curse was about making a trade. Death, traded for love.

She could trade her life for Minna’s.

This was how she would spend her seventh miracle.

Perhaps, if she’d puzzled over the sigil with Cordelia and Astrid for months, they would have figured out what it meant. They could have conjectured and wondered and studied for as long as it took.

But by acting, by just doing the thing, the answer had been revealed.

The pain was past anything she’d ever felt. Every muscle shook as she got ready to connect the very last line, and every fiber in her body shrieked with agony as the sigil took hold. Even feeling her ancestors moving through her blood didn’t help. But it didn’t matter.

It was all for Minna.

“Give her back to me, now .”

A growl echoed throughout the chamber, and she saw him then, a ragged black shape in the candlelight that widened and thinned as it breathed, its lungs sounding like flapping wings, its form composed of ropes of smoke.

Taurus was gaining power, sucking it from Minna, leaching the last strength from her dying body.

Something smashed outside the tomb, as if someone was trying to break their way in.

There was no time to wait for a savior, though. Just this one final line to cut into her skin—

Taurus was on her then, wresting the pen out of her grasp, sending it flying through the air and smashing into the marble wall. The pen shattered into a million pieces.

No.

“You’ve lost.” His forearm pressed against her shoulder—he felt both real and noncorporeal at the same time, there but hollow, as if he weren’t completely assembled yet.

His breath was guttural and foul. “Come with us. If you offer us your power willingly, it becomes stronger. That said, I’m happy to take it off you by force. ”

A weapon. She needed some kind of weapon.

The pen had shattered. That left only the tattoo gun.

It still lay next to Minna, both of them silent, both of them getting colder by the second.

Beatrice shoved against—no, through Taurus—and grabbed the tattoo gun. She felt the malignancy of him rushing toward her, around her, as if he were in front and behind her—the smoke of him was all around and there was no time.

A simple spell. She might have only half a second left. Less.

She closed her eyes and let it come: the whisper, in Naya’s voice. Naya’s real voice? Her only option was to trust that it was.

Make your mark, kill the dark.

She said Naya’s words out loud as she shoved the gun into the darkness that was the sooty cloud of Taurus’s malformed body.

The tool buzzed to life, the energy roaring up her arm and into her chest. The scream that rose was such agony that she couldn’t tell if it came from her or Taurus.

Her ribs felt as if they were ripping apart, bone from sinew.

Pain darkened her vision and she gave a tortured gasp.

In her hand, the whirring gun felt slick, as if coated with blood.

As hard as she could, Beatrice drove the vibrating needle upward into the black energy of Taurus.

He shrieked, a torn and ragged sound that drained all hope from the world.

His shape contracted, shifting, breaking.

Then, Taurus simply shredded, drifting apart into thin black ribbons that curled into acrid smoke. The scream continued for another few seconds, but he was gone so fast, the room felt as if a vacuum seal had been broken.

Fuck.

Minna’s face was whiter than the marble she lay on and exactly as still. No life moved in her. The trade for Minna’s life hadn’t yet been completed. The sigil Beatrice had cut on her thigh wasn’t yet done. Minna still wasn’t breathing—more than a minute had passed now, maybe ninety seconds.

There wasn’t a single second to spare. Not a second to say good-bye to her sister, to let go of the people she loved.

Only Minna mattered.

The last miracle—it was time to spend it.

With the gun chattering in her fingers, Beatrice scored the last piece of the sigil into her skin, connecting the line of the teardrop to the scale.