I pressed my palm to my heart, mirroring Stella, Dayna, and Sophia. We drew upon our Roberts’ power, the stacking of elemental magic that made us. The magic moved between us like a hinge unlocking.
Liz gasped, her body jerking as something inside her twisted sharply, violently, then aligned. It wasn’t power flooding in—it was direction changing paths, a compass needle snapping north.
Her breath shuddered. “I feel her,” Liz whispered.
The ground beneath our feet groaned, and wards flickered along the boundary. Spirits stirred and turned to watch what was unfolding.
“And she felt that,” Sophia muttered.
Stella spoke. “Yes.”
The temperature dropped. The air misted with our breaths. Shadows stretched, pooling where they shouldn’t, curling like fingers around the edges of reality.
Eloise appeared, but not in the flesh. Hers was a stolen essence, her form shifting with each of her steps as she closed the distance between us with her face a picture of thunder. She knew.
“You’ve been busy,” she said, voice echoing around us. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you rearranging my inheritance?”
The souls she had trapped whispered in my mind, a plea for help and release. Their tethers shuddered as Eloise lashed out, agitating them, shaking the bindings that held them hostage.
Memories lashed out.
Dayna screamed, clutching her head. Sophia dropped to one knee, breath tearing from her lungs. Stella bled from the nose, eyes still fixed on futures unraveling too fast to catalogue.
I stood still and tall, displaying the granddaughter she’d shaped with cruel words and punishment. I didn’t shield myself, allowing Eloise to hit me full force. This was part of the plan.
Donn leaned forward from the shadows, the silver in eyes shifting like the tides as he waited for the destruction of me, of her. One of us would not leave here tonight.
Her power slammed into me, oily and invasive, crawling over my senses like rot. I tasted blood and heard the dead whispering in overlapping voices, accusations and pleas tangling together. I locked my knees in place.Come on, Grandmother, you know what you need to do to win.
Eloise glowered, and her form sharpened and solidified.That’s right. You’re winning. The living can’t touch you.
“You thought you could bind me with my sins?” she whispered. She’d incorrectly read what we’d done tonight. Good. “Child, I am made of them.”
That’s what I was counting on.
I caught Donn’s gaze. He nodded once, and a slow smile crept over his face. It was a thousand times more terrifying than anything Eloise could say or do.
Liz cried out as the altered curse answered her call. Eloise staggered at the same time Dayna whispered a spell, locking Eloise in reality. No running. No retreat. This ends now.
The stolen souls sucked in a breath as Donn’s power leaked from Eloise to me. I welcomed in the dark and yanked on their restraints.
They turned, focused, rage built and twisted into readiness.
Eloise screamed as Liz pulled from her mother, draining her of the power she had abused for too long.
“Elizabeth Roberts, how dare you?” Eloise snapped.
Liz’s head snapped up, her eyes glowing as generations of Roberts women lent their stacked power to a worthy vessel. One not corrupted by greed and evil.
“I made you,” she snarled.
“Then you only have yourself to blame,” Liz growled back as she rose on shaky legs.
Eloise lowered to the ground, her hands grasping the grass. My heart paused, a moment of hesitation for an act which would leave a stain on my soul no matter the justification.
Eloise’s aura fractured, cracks of ghost light spider-webbing across her form as the veil tightened like a courtroom closing its doors. “This isn’t over,” she snarled, fury bleeding through the cracks.
“No, it’s only just begun,” I murmured. It wouldn’t be our power that slaughtered her. Rather, she was to be judged by the sins she thought couldn’t touch her.
