Calm them, the urge whispers in my mind.
Instead of staring directly at Bunny, I focus on the space around them. In the air where auras sometimes appear. When I relax my eyes, I spy the vivid orange of anxious terror.
Power pinches along my shoulders, a sensation born of my natural magical aptitude. All of us Shelly witches have abilities tied to emotions. Ame is desire, Anthony is jealousy, Mor has a more general connection to all emotions.
I sense fears and have the ability to soothe them.
I want more than anything to comfort this rabbit.
But before I can ask if that would interfere with the spell work, a black cat lopes into the circle, straight for Bunny. The feline curls its dark body around the shivering animal and starts up a soothing purr that rumbles through the quiet clearing.
“Thank you, Lucky,” Ame calls out to her familiar. “She’ll keep Bunny calm while we work.” My sister points to a spot on the edge of the circle, sitting equally between two fires. “Here’s where you go, Broderick. Probably best to kneel.”
I do as she directed, and when Mor places the grimoire on the ground in front of me, I review the spell once more. An invention from sunder witches.
The curse breaker.
There’s a hiss behind me, and I glance back in time to see blood well on Ame’s thumb, where she nicked herself. Mor takes the knife and cuts her thumb too, then wipes the blade clean and hands it to me.
Each of them places their hand on my bare shoulder. They speak a string of words in the witch language, and I gasp as a shot of electricity races down my spine. Suddenly, my skin feels overly full of an abundance of power.
“Now,” Ame, normally the softest spoken of us, commands.
As I read from the tome, I mimic her unwavering attitude. I chant the spell in an unrelenting tone I would never use in my daily life.
But tonight, I cannot waver. Cannot doubt or shy away.
“Take of my body. My blood to break,” I say as I reach for the silver dagger lying innocently next to the grimoire.
The blade is warm when I drag it in a stinging slash across my palm. I hiss through my teeth at the painful bite of steel. With the flow of my blood, I feel the draw on my power. On all of our powers. Energy from Ame and Mor feeds into my body from where they clasp my shoulders.
“A curse before me,” I say in the witch’s tongue, “break it.”
Then, I repeat myself, over and over, as the pain intensifies.
The injury on my hand burns more than a cut should, as if a hand were pressing hard on the wound. A corner of my brain is horrified at the realization my younger sister did this alone, no magical assistance. This agony would only have been amplified.
I’m determined not to bow to it.
“Break it,” I growl in a voice I’ve never used before.
Fury rises fast in me, toward the dead sorcerer who forced this on an innocent mythic. The vile man made my sister suffer so she could free them.
Wind rustles the tree branches, the spindly limbs looking like grasping fingers in the night sky. The flames grow brighter as magic seeps from me. The scent of smoke and burning herbs is thick in the air. Lucky lets out a yowl and sprints from the middle of the circle.
But still, the rabbit doesn’t change.
I will not fail in this. I will not fail them.
“Break it!” I snarl. “BREAK IT!” The words scream out of me with a rush of power, and the world goes white.
And like a switch being flicked, everything shuts off. The surge of magic, the bonfires, the ringing in my ears—it all ceases.
We’re left in the forest clearing, under the light of the full moon, and the only sounds are an owl hooting and four people panting.
Four.
I push myself to my knees, having fallen forward in that last wave of power, and I cast my eyes to where the animal was once crouched. Bunny is gone.
