Sarah wavered. “How?” she asked.
“Step through with me,” Bernadette said, gesturing to the remains of the Geatgrima. “You are the missing piece that is out of place. If you Cross back now, the Source can begin to heal itself. All of it lies with you.”
Sarah’s eyes began to gleam with the ghosts of tears. My goddess, was it working? I felt like I could see her resistance crumbling away in real time.
Bernadette was still speaking in the same, soothing tone. “Imagine that, Sarah: the chance to undo all the wrongs. No one gets such a chance. Do not squander it.”
“I… I can’t,” Sarah whispered, but it sounded like a plea rather than a declaration. Jess’ hand tightened on my arm. She sensed it too, the weakening.
Bernadette walked slowly forward until she reached the outer edge of the circle. She extended her hand. “Come with me. We will Cross together. All will be healed. Two Second Daughters, rewriting our legacy.”
Sarah drifted to the very edge of her magical cage. She looked down at Bernadette’s hand, and then nodded. Beside me, I heard Jess murmur under her breath, and felt the invisible barrier between the two spirits vanish. When Sarah reached for Bernadette’s hand, she was free to take it, to step outside of the circle. Bernadette smiled, and led Sarah toward the plinth upon which the remains of the Geatgrima stood.
We all held perfectly still. Any moment now…
It happened in the space of a breath. Sarah turned her head, and her eyes fell on me. Something twisted in her expression—a feral, animal something, and though she spoke no words, I could hear the thought echoing in my own head.
If the Darkness wants her, he will have to take us both.
She launched herself at me, face wild, hands outstretched, malice and covetousness burning in her eyes. There was no way to stop her. All I could do was close my eyes, and brace for her invasion.
A burst of cold air…
A blood-curdling scream…
My eyes flew open just in time to see Bernadette and Sarah collide in midair, to watch as Bernadette, expression grim with determination, her arms wrapped in an embrace around the very woman who had torn apart her life. And in that embrace, Sarah Claire was carried straight through the Geatgrima. Their entwined figures shivered in the air above the plinth for a fraction of a heartbeat, and then vanished.
No one moved. No one spoke. Everyone was afraid to trust what they had seen, to believe it could really, truly be over.
But the moments ticked by. Persi gave a dry sob, and the stillness shattered like spun glass. My mother loosened her grip on my arm, and I felt the blood rush down to my numb fingertips. On my other side, Jess scrambled to her feet and moved cautiously forward, until she stood with one foot upon the plinth, still and expectant. At last she turned, and the hope in my chest bloomed in perfect synchronicity with the smile on her face.
“It worked,” she said, her face eloquent with relief. “The Geatgrima is restored. Can you feel it?”
And before I could even answer, a whisper brushed past me, gentle as a butterfly wing.
Well done, my little bird.
I laughed, even as the tears came into my eyes. “Thanks, Asteria.”
Epilogue
Asteria came to me that night. I heard her voice, not from without, but within, calling to me from the inside of my own—head? Heart, perhaps? Regardless of exactly where it came from, I woke at once full of the knowledge of exactly where I would find her.
I hurried down the stairs and out the door into the garden, in nothing but a t-shirt and flannel pants. I should have been shivering with cold, but it couldn’t seem to touch me. My grandmother felt like a flame inside me, protecting me and keeping me warm.
My bare feet padded purposely through the frosty grass, following a path my heart had already chosen. I reached my mother’s walled garden, which was never locked anymore, and pushed the creaking old door inward.
Frost and cold could not touch this place. The trees were rich with foliage, and the flowers bloomed lush and colorful, like hothouse plants. Asteria sat at the center of the garden on a bench, waiting patiently for me. I felt the smile bloom on my face, like one of the flowers nodding in the gentle nighttime breeze.
“Asteria.”
“Hello, my brave girl. Come sit beside me.”
I sat. She was real, and yet she was not. I could see her, but only if I didn’t look too hard. I could feel her, but only in the way one might feel the wind or the brush of a butterfly wing. She was a suggestion of herself.
“You look better,” I told her. “And you sound better, too. Like yourself.”
“Sarah’s desperate magic twisted our means of communication. We were all lost and confused—separated from ourselves and our living coven members. I could not reach you, and when I tried, I could not make sense of what was happening.”
