Page 72 of Will It Hurt?

Aisla

Five minutes to midnight.

Where the fuck was she?

I glanced at my phone again, waiting for a message box to descend over the wallpaper of Anaia’s fluffy head.

Nothing.

Anger lashed at my chest.

Seriously— after making such a big deal about this spell and how important it was and how I should try it even if I messed it up—she wasn’t even going to show up?

She had almost begged me.

My stomach twisted.

Had she changed her mind? Gone back on her word? Lost faith in my ability to retrieve her daughter?

I forced myself to take a breath, but it did little to steady my nerves.

There was nothing stopping me from casting the spell on my own. After all, there would be no debating the outcome if I could bring Belle back with me. But what if I followed the instructions to a T and somehow… failed? With no witnesses?

Would I still get paid?

It was a selfish thought, but I was only human. The sole reason I’d taken this job was to break away from the coven, but now… Now I wished to ease Jinn’s grief just a little.

Damn it, why did I feel like I needed her here ?

I’d only known the vamp for less days than I could count on one hand. Why did I feel like something wasn’t quite right simply because she wasn’t seated across from me?

Even if she had been here, she would be forced to do nothing but watch as I cast the spell. She didn’t have to draw the circle or murmur the incantations. She didn’t need to lift a single finger to shape the magick.

And yet, somehow, this small, anxious part of me felt like I needed her.

When the clock on my phone read 11:56, I decided it was time.

There was no use wasting peak hours of the solstice waiting for Jinn to show up.

She had already paid half the amount upfront, and I knew without a doubt that she was serious about getting her daughter back. The least I could do was get started.

The candles had been set; the circle mapped out with a piece of chalk. I sat in the middle, knees bent, feet flush with the ground. Jinn’s necklace had sat in my pocket overnight and I clasped it tight in one hand.

I imagined the weight of a warm stone heavy beneath my breasts, grounding me as each breath whistled through my lips.

Open.

A deep groan whipped around the covenstead.

The heavy stones above my head shifted brick by brick, the centuries-old ceiling twisting backward like building blocks as dust sifted down around the circle.

No one had touched the skylight in years—perhaps decades—but it obeyed as if the magick in my blood alone was enough to wake it. Bit by bit, the great slabs of rock moved, revealing a sliver of the night sky above.

The first beam of moonlight cut through the darkness like silver thread, spilling across the stone floor in a perfect, shimmering pool .

The light was raw, unfiltered, bright with the magick of the Cold Moon. It carried the weight of the stars, the pull of tides, and the hum of an ancient power that was dormant in my veins.

The moonlight moved with the shifting brick, piercing through the opening until it fell on my knees, my lap, my chest, my hair.

A rush of energy, cool as midnight water, crawled over my skin, raising goosebumps in its wake.

I stilled, my breath ceasing as the Cold Moon wound its way around me, weaving into my bones, twining with the tendrils of my own magick.

All around me, the sigils carved into the stone floor by the elders long gone began to glow, dull at first, then pulsing as more of the moonlight fell through.

I retrieved the glass bottle from my back pocket and emptied its contents into a wooden bowl that waited at the top of the circle. Blessed water trickled into it, shimmering under the moonlight.

The blade sliced across my palm, trickling blood down over the necklace and into the bowl.

Strange.

I stared at my fingers, moving them deliberately but barely feeling them. An odd weightlessness moved through the air, as though my limbs had forgotten how to stay grounded.

They felt stretched, pulled in all directions, as though I had stopped being limited by the casing of my skin.

The light seeped through like liquid silver, and with it came a cool, humming energy.

A slow unraveling—a thread being pulled from the fabric of my being.

My heart—was it still mine? It beat slower, deeper, as though trying to match the distant rhythm of the tide. My pulse no longer belonged to me but to the moon itself, drawn into its orbit, tethered by invisible strings.

The magick in my blood responded, shifting, stirring, as if it had been sleeping all this time and was only now waking to the call of the moon. It slid through my ribs, down my spine, spreading like ink in water, diffusing into every part of me.

I wasn’t just standing in the light of the Cold Moon.

I was being remade by it.

And there was no turning back.