Phoenix and I stumble backwards, but apparently Sabra’s gotten all she needed, because while we’re still in shock from her sudden actions, she’s busy driving the same ceremonial knife into Ammit’s gut.
Ammit screams and looks down in shock as blood soaks the front of her white linen shirt, the blade embedded deep in her belly.
Sabra yanks the long knife free without mercy.
Ammit stumbles forward, hands pressed against her gushing stomach as she falls to her knees. Blood pools beneath her on the marble floor, spreading in dark rivulets that follow the grooves between tiles.
“Sabra!” Phoenix cries, cradling her sliced hand to her chest. “What are you doing?”
Sabra glares in her direction but doesn’t answer.
The runes beneath our feet begin to shift. The golden symbols that make up the circle start rotating in opposite directions, inner rings moving clockwise while outer rings spin counter. They pick up speed, becoming a dizzying blur of light and motion. The air pressure in the atrium drops so suddenly my ears pop.
Sabra lifts the bloodied stone knife above her head and begins to chant. The words are guttural and ancient, in the same language I heard her use when we first worked magic together in the courtyard. Her voice rises and falls in a rhythm that feels older than time itself, syllables heavy with meaning I can’t understand but somehow recognize deep in my bones.
Ammit gasps. Her hands fall away from her stomach wound. Her head tilts back, eyes rolling white as her mouth opens in a silent scream. For a terrible moment, she goes completely rigid.
Then she collapses onto her side, utterly still.
Dead.
But Sabra doesn’t stop chanting. If anything, her voice grows stronger, more insistent. The spinning runes glow brighter, shifting from gold to white-blue, the color of winter starlight.
Ammit’s body jerks once. Twice.
Her chest expands with a deep, shuddering breath.
Her eyes snap open, but they’re different now. Not the predatory, hungry gaze of the goddess who was just possessing this body.
These eyes are wide with wonder and confusion, filling with tears as they land on Sabra.
“Sabra?” The woman’s voice is hoarse, trembling. “Baby girl?”
Sabra drops the knife. It clatters against the marble as she runs forward, falling to her knees beside the woman who no longer seems to be Ammit. “Mom!”
What?I thought Sabra’s mom died years ago. And the woman is far too young to actually be her mother.
But Sabra pulls still pulls the woman into her arms fiercely, both of them crying now. “You came back, Mom. You really came back.”
“Of course I came back.” The woman’s hands shake as she reaches up to touch Sabra’s face, as if she can’t quite believe she’s real. “I promised you I would. I promised. You trusted the grimoire.”
They cling to each other, rocking slightly. Sabra sobs into her mother’s shoulder in broken gasps. The woman holds her back just as tight, whispering soothing words I can’t quite make out over the sound of their weeping.
“What is this?” My father’s voice cuts through the moment like a blade. His handsome face is twisted with fury as he stares at the two embracing women. “What have you done?”
Phoenix takes the moment of distraction to press her bleeding palm against my cheek, combining our blood. The sensation sends an electric shock through me.
Our mingled blood drips onto the marble floor, and where it lands, symbols begin to glow. Not the golden runes of my father’s magic.
These are different. Darker. Hungrier.
They’re intuitive blood mage runes, mixed with angelic runes her magic is pulling from me. I empty my mind except for a permissive, giving attitude aimed directly at her to ease the passage of power from me to her.
The temperature in the atrium drops so suddenly I can see my breath.
“What are you doing?” my father demands from the edge of the circle. For the first time, he sounds uncertain.
Phoenix doesn’t answer him. She’s focused entirely on Sabra’s renewed chanting, which has shifted to a new rhythm now that her mother is safe in her arms. I feel the blood that clotted on my cheek suddenly begin to flow in a steady drip, drip, drip onto the floor.
