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“ W hat do you mean, she tied the spell to you ?” I asked, taking a step back away from the table. “What does this all mean?”

Annelise turned towards me as she answered.

“It’s a way to keep her alive. She tied a piece of her soul to mine.

If I were to die, she would simply take the piece of her soul back and place it in another.

She is tying herself to someone living to ensure that if she is killed before that person is… she won’t truly be dead.”

“You can’t be serious… ” Puck shook his head back and forth, backing away from the table.

At first my heart had been beating out of my chest, but now it was a solid a rock, un-beating. This couldn’t be right. It couldn’t.

“The only way to truly kill her would be to—” Annelise began, but I interrupted her.

“Don’t.” My voice was hollow in my own ears as I backed away even more, hitting the table behind us. “Don’t say it.”

Annelise’s gaze held mine as she finished her sentence. “Would be to kill me, too.”

“And why do you doubt that she succeeded in achieving immortality?” Zion asked, his voice gruff as he ran a hand down his face.

Annelise paused before answering. “Because we already know where she left the piece of her soul. And there’s an easy way to ensure it can’t be passed on… ”

My gaze cut towards her, but Zion spoke before I could.

“How do you know this? How do you know it was you that she left the piece of her soul with?”

Annelise swallowed hard. “A spell of this size wouldn’t go undetected.

It’s similar to the binding spell. You wouldn’t be able to ignore the feeling that you were connected to someone else.

I have felt that way ever since that day in Siraleth, when Donika spared my life.

She connected herself to me in some way, but I had no idea what it meant before now.

That it was this spell. But now it all makes sense. ”

Annelise turned back towards the grimoires on the table.

“Whose grimoire is that?” Nik asked almost to himself, speaking for the first time and moving towards the table.

Annelise shook her head. “I have no idea. Your guess is as good as mine. It isn’t spelled like the Kotova grimoire. But then again, most aren’t… ” she mused.

“Can you only link yourself to one person at a time? Leave one piece of your soul with another?” Tess asked, shaking her head .

“Yes,” Alastir replied, “you cannot split the soul multiple times.”

“Oh my God… it’s a horcrux.” Tess’s hand flew to her throat as her eyes went wide.

“Kind of… ” Annelise replied, her eyes still on the text before her.

“Mother above, she created a Goddamn horcrux… ” Tess muttered, her gaze traveling to mine.

“And you think she chose you… why?” Nik asked, peering down at the grimoire.

As if the Kotova grimoire sensed his gaze, it snapped closed, almost catching Annelise’s hand within its pages. She cast him a halfhearted glare as she closed the other book, stacking them atop one another.

“Some kind of sick punishment, I suppose. That to truly kill Donika, I would need to die, too. Donika has always been one for the dramatics, and it is quite poetic if you think about it. She never bore the sigil on her wolf form until after that battle. Until after she marked me.”

“You saw her after that battle?” Tess asked.

Annelise cast her eyes down to her hands in her lap. “I did a lot of… spying in the years afterwards. I hid Diana in the human realm, but I… lingered in Istmere.”

That was one way of putting it. She had kept a close eye on all of us, that was certain.

“Is there a way to be positive that it was Annelise who was marked? What if she marked another during that battle?” Nik asked .

Alastir nodded. “There is a way to confirm. A spell, written here in the grimoire. Without removing this piece of Donika from Annelise… we cannot kill her. Not completely, anyway.”

“God dammit… ” Tess muttered under her breath, flinging her arms up into the air in exasperation.

“And if it is Annelise that she marked?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. “I refuse to lose another person I care about. Another person I love.”

Annelise’s gaze flew to mine, surprise glistening in her eyes.

“We will cross that bridge when we come to it,” Alastir said. “This… I’m afraid… the Mother did not show me. Now that it has been uncovered, perhaps there are other things she may deign to show me. A way out of this mess.”

That was an understatement. This was a shit show.

It was less than one week until we marched against Donika and her forces, and she may have created a ‘horcrux’ as Tess had put it. This was the worst possible moment for us to figure something like this out. But at least we figured it out before we marched on Akra.

I prayed Alastir could find a way out of this. Zion was already deep in his war planning with his resistance committee and there was no turning back now. We needed to kill Donika, and we needed to save my mother. I wouldn’t allow her to sacrifice herself so that we could break Donika’s immortality.

I should have guessed Donika would try something like this. She was so hungry for power, so relentless. Of course, she would want to be immortal, too. No spell was too much when it came to Donika .

“What now?” Tess asked, letting Puck pull her against him. She nuzzled her head into the crook of his shoulder.

Alastir’s voice was ragged when he spoke. “Now, we test her blood… and we wait.”

I hadn’t spent any time in the laboratory during my time in Siraleth, and my only memory of it was from when I had dream walked here. From when I had pulled the grimoire out of the dream with me and brought it back to the mortal realm.

I was biting my fingernail to the point where it had started to bleed by the time Alastir had rolled up Annelise’s sleeve and taken her blood with a needle. It was exactly as one would in the mortal realm… no slice of the blade across a palm or anything like that. It all felt so… normal.

The next part… not so much. He had taken the syringe full of blood and emptied it into a beaker, setting it over a flame to the point of boiling.

His hand poised over the glass—eyes closed as he spoke a murmured spell.

He added ingredients for the spell to the beaker and mixed it.

When he was finished, a spark of light emanated from the beaker and the flame turned off, the blood inside sitting quietly for the first time.

He inserted his pinky finger into the mixture—then put that finger in his mouth—tasting it on the tip of his tongue. His gaze was downcast, a crease forming between his brows .

“Well?” I asked, anxious to know what the spell had told us, if anything.

Alastir shook his head so slightly I could have missed it. My gaze shot to Tess across the lab table, and she gave me a half smile that never reached her eyes. Nik placed a hand on my shoulder.

“It’s as we feared. She has been marked.”

“God dammit… ”

I wanted to fling every single thing on the lab table to the floor, but I restrained myself.

Barely. I leaned back against the work bench behind me, running a hand through my auburn curls and pushing it out of my face.

I desperately wanted to hit something right now.

My energy was swirling angrily inside of me when I felt a tug through the bond.

My gaze flitted up to Nik’s, and he wore an expression I couldn’t quite read.

“Ok. We thought that might be the case. What do we do now?” Tess asked.

Always trying to be helpful. Not only was this one more thing that now stood between me and Donika, but it also made the fate of Annelise unknown.

Amiyah pushed into the room with a grim expression. She had obviously been listening at the door.

“We will do what we always do. We will find a spell to reverse it.” She answered simply. As if it were that easy.

“And if we can’t find a spell? If we run out of time? We only have a matter of days left.” I pointed out.

Amiyah nodded, as if she understood the stakes.

It was always one step forward, two steps back, and I was brimming with frustration. We didn’t have time for this .

“We have two grimoires at our disposal now. There has to be something in there to reverse the marking. We have Alastir, one of the most skilled Shades of our time. And we have me . Worst-case scenario, we figure out how to transfer the mark to me instead of Annelise.”

“No.” I shook my head, my hair falling in front of my face once more. “Not an option. That’s out of the question.”

“I am more disposable than your mother.” Amiyah’s voice was soft when she spoke. She was trying to be reasonable.

“No, you aren’t. None of us are.” My voice was ragged in return.

“Diana—”

I put my hand up to stop her. “I won’t hear it. We won’t sacrifice one person for another. We will find a spell to reverse the marking, or… ”

“Or what?” Tess asked, her voice small.

I met her gaze once more from across the lab table and her eyes brimmed with fear.

“Or nothing. We will find the spell.” I practically spit out the words. “Let’s all get to work.”

I could only pray that the Mother saw fit to save my own mother.

That she would show Alastir a way out of this.

Donika was dark and cruel, but she had found one more way to twist the blade.

If she died, we would have to kill Annelise, too, in order for her soul to truly return to the earth from which it came.

This was so fucked up.

I stormed out of the laboratory and down the hallway, up the spiral staircase, and out of the cottage underground.

I pulled my shirt away from my throat. It felt too tight.

As if I was being strangled. I pushed my hair back again in aggravation, but all it did was fall forward once more, tickling my cheeks.

My head fell back, and I released a guttural, frustrated scream.

Lightning struck behind the cottage and I hadn’t even realized I had released magic along with my frustration.

I screamed once more, and the rain began. In a matter of moments, I was soaked through, my vision blurry through the rain droplets clinging to my lashes.

I screamed in frustration again and fell to my knees, all the angst swallowing me. A hand on my back startled me. I flung my hand out without thinking clearly. Luckily, Nikolai was ready, and he deflected the fireball easily.

I startled, realizing what I had done. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking—”

He cut me off by grabbing me by the back of the head, pulling me against him. He kneeled in the mud with me, holding me as I cried. I had done the same for him when he had broken apart in the library, and now he did the same for me.

“I can feel it. Your anger. Your frustration.” He pulled away only enough to capture my eyes with his. “Your eyes, Diana. They’re swirling with your magic.”

I pulled away slightly. “They haven’t done that since I’ve been bound. I’ve been in control… I’ve—”

Nik shook his head. “Maybe it has nothing to do with control. Maybe it is the magic… taking a piece of you. Bound or not, that is the nature of Stormshade magic. It is always a balance.”

I shook my head, tears dripping down my cheeks and mixing with the rain that pelted my skin. “I can never escape all this.”

“You can.” Nik pulled me against him once more. “This is almost over, Diana. We will finish this.”

“And my mother?” I croaked against him, gripping his jacket in my fists. I held on so tightly my knuckles were white.

“I don’t know. I wish I could tell you she would be fine, that we would figure it out and that everything was going to be ok, but I don’t know if that is the truth.”

I tilted my chin up to gaze at him. His eyes were the depths of the ocean, swirling full of emotion. “What will I do?”

“You will do nothing.” His voice was raw when he spoke. “If it comes to it, I will wield the blade.”

“But Donika is mine to kill,” I protested.

“And she still will be,” he said. “If a piece of her still lives in Annelise, that is not your burden.”

“I can’t ask you to do that, Nik.”

A muscle feathered in his jaw. “You didn’t ask.”

I shook my head to protest, but his hand clasped my cheek, pulling my mouth to his. The kiss was salty and desperate, full of all the anger and frustration that drowned me. The guilt. I could taste the smoky rainwater and my own salty tears on his lips.

I pulled him against me, desperate to release every last kernel of anger that threatened to tear me under. He kissed me back just as fiercely, his rough lips claiming mine .

Marking me as his.

Whatever came next, he would be by my side. He would help me get through this. The only problem was… I didn’t think I could tolerate losing one more person I cared about. I wouldn’t survive it. Annelise and I had just started getting to know each other. I had just begun to forgive her.

When our lips parted, his were red and swollen, rainwater streaming down his cheeks.

His blond hair was darkened and dripping.

He looked as if he were plucked straight out of my wildest dreams. As if the Mother made him just for me.

The corner of his mouth lifted into a smirk under the torrents of rain.

A warmth bloomed in my chest through the bond and I quirked my brow at him.

“Did you do that?”

He nodded—his lips parted ever so slightly.

I ran my hand from his cheek, down his chiseled jaw, to a drop of rain at the edge of his lower lip.

I captured it with my finger, dragging his lip down with it.

I sent him a blast of warmth in return and his eyes heated, his jaw ticking as his smile turned wicked.

“Diana—” My name wasn’t a prayer this time, more like a warning.

My smile turned sinful in return, thoughts of what we could be doing right now, beneath this rain running through my head.

But I knew he was right. We didn’t have any time to spare. We needed to find a way to break the immortality spell and save Annelise… or come wartime, my heart would be broken once more .

And I wasn’t sure how many pieces were left.