With those three powerful words, a sensation surges from Alaric to me. A pressure pushes into my palms and tendrils link around my body. They wrap my fingers before moving up to my hands, my wrists, and covering my arms like sleeves. They continue over my torso, around my neck, and down to my legs before ending at my ankles.
The Darkness seeps into my body, my heart, and my mind.
Welcome,it whispers.
“Oh my,” someone murmurs.
I stand, abandoning Alaric’s hand while flexing my own. Power surges, different than earlier. Stronger. More invincible.
Not weakened by earthly connections.
But still much the same too, probably because in the grand scheme of how Darkness infects a witch’s body after murder, this wasn’t a lot by comparison. More like a nudging reminder of having something that may make some of my choices questionable, but far from being evil.
Beside it, the cooling nudge of my water magick reassures me of its presence.
“What did you do?”
Alaric blinks up at me. His skin is still pale with his oncoming death, but his eyes are brighter. More like the man Ryder knows. The pain permanently etched into his expression since meeting him is gone and his breaths, though weak, are less shallow.
“Allowed you to die without pain.”
“You stupid girl.” He stares down at his body with a hard shake of his head. “You’ve infected yourself.”
“It’s not a weakness to help someone else.”
I turn away from the bed only to be knocked into place by the sudden chilling whispering voice in my ear,Kill him. Then embrace Darkness entirely.
Fuck off,I tell my new imaginary friend and walk away.
“Carina,” Alaric calls when I’m halfway out the door. “You still need to run. You’re a fool if you think my son will let you go, especially now.”
Still not sure what he means, I exit the cabin and head into the forest where the wind blows harshly, nature’s slap for my actions. It’s nothing less than I deserve, and I settle at the base of a tree and shut my eyes, ignoring the invisible collar my neck is adorned with.
A collar that chains me to a different master. One that owns my soul.
I’m sorry, Hecate
Thirty-One
RYDER
When I returnto camp after a long morning of patrols, only one thing—one person—is on my mind. And although it’s a risky, stupid fact, she is.
Holding her in my arms all last night wasn’t like in my cabin. It was more intimate. She wasonme—infecting me with a curse I’m growing hesitant to be cured of.
My eyes sweep the camp, spotting Leah but not Carina. Scents of her, old and new, linger, make it difficult to distinguish where she’s gone. As I’m crossing to Leah to see what she knows, Marissa streaks across the camp.
Panic quells any desire previously felt. Her expression tells me everything, so without an explanation, I take off for Dad’s cabin.
Be okay, be okay, be okay.It’s what I recite, shoving through the door.
Dad is laying in bed, his breathing laboured like before but now for all the wrong reasons. He stretches a hand towards me with less effort than he’s needed all week. It draws my attention to where his skin is loose on his hand, his body thinning before my very eyes.
But what’s the most striking is the absence of black magick wrapped around his body; the suffocation the cabin was being dealt with.
“What happened?” I demand to no one in particular while crossing the room to his side.
“I’m dying. I feel it, Ryder.”
