“No!No!It’s the only way I can get my magic back!The Well can give it back, I know it can!”
She turned her power on her sister, using her magic to lift Talia from the ground and shove her toward the magical perimeter.She pushed her through the boundary, knowing she’d be trapped out there without magic to get back through.
“Emberlin!”Talia screamed as she landed on her butt in the snow.Rising to her feet, she yelled, “Throw the stone in.The warlock told me it would help!”
Emberlin looked at the stone in her hand, the dark magic seeping from the carved runes and dripping from it like big, fat black raindrops.
“Let me see,” Santa said from behind her.
She turned and handed it to him, then called for her healing magic to cleanse her skin.She felt tainted just holding it.
Sebastian joined Emberlin.“Is she okay?She doesn’t look right.”
“I think she’s bespelled,” Emberlin said.“Her eyes are glazed over.”
Looking at her sister, she said, “What warlock gave this to you?”
“Throw it in the Well!It will return the magic to those who have lost it.”
She sounded frantic, her voice going higher as she pleaded for Emberlin to finish what she’d started.
“This is my brother’s doing,” Santa said.“It’s a Shadow Crystal imbued with his dark magic through these runes.If she’d gotten it into the Well, it would have created weak spots in the magical perimeter and let him into Northernmost.”
“Shit,” Sebastian said.
“Oh, Talia,” Emberlin said.
“I don’t think it’s her fault,” Santa said.He pressed the Shadow Crystal between his palms and his eyes turned bright blue as his hands lit up with a golden glow.The stone shattered in his hands and turned to dust, and then the dust was swept up and out of Northernmost, away from the Well.
“Frost must have tricked her,” Emberlin said.“Bespelled her.”
“Seems like something my brother would do.Try to use someone at their lowest point.He nearly succeeded too.”
“No.No!”Talia yelled.
Emberlin looked and saw a portal open behind her sister and the one she’d come to know was Frost’s number two—Azure—stepped free.He grinned malevolently and reached for Talia, who was trying to get away from him.
Sebastian and Emberlin rushed out of the perimeter and she hit him with her fire magic, sending him reeling backward as her mate grabbed her sister and the three of them hauled ass back into the safety of Northernmost.
Azure stumbled back into the portal, his coat smoking from her fire, and disappeared.
Emberlin looked at her sister, who was sobbing on the ground.
She knelt and lifted her tear-stained face.She could see the spell that had been cast over her to cloak what she was seeing.Using her healing magic, she removed the spell and then listened as Talia told them about a warlock at the waterfall and how he’d wanted her to have her magic back.
“Talia,” Emberlin said softly, “I put your hands in the Well when you were unconscious, even after Santa told me your magic would never return.”
“You did?”she asked.
“Yeah, I did.I had to try.”
Talia swallowed audibly and tried to stifle a sob.
Santa stood next to them, looking compassionate.“I’m sorry you were tricked, Talia, but the reality is that once your magic is gone the way my brother took it, it’s gone forever.No one—warlock or witch—can return it to you, and the Well will no longer recognize you as a witch.You are welcome to touch the Well yourself to verify what I’ve said and what your sister explained, but it won’t change anything for you.I’m sorry.I’m really very sorry.”
Talia sat on the cold ground for several moments and then walked over to the Well alone and put her hands into the magic.
When nothing happened, she knelt next to it and rested her head on it.“I hate not having my magic.I feel so lost.”
