“Oh but it is,” Pan said sweetly, reaching out to place a hand beneath Jo’s chin. “You’ve played your little game of rebellion. Even I admit I had a bit of fun with it. But it’s time to stop this now, my darling. It’s time give up the charade and join me.”
Jo’s magic spiked at the idea, though whether it was in temptation or revulsion was hard to say with Pan’s touch against her skin. So Jo shook that touch away, backing up. “We’ll stop you.” Pan frowned at Jo’s words, her catlike eyes shimmering red. Despite the warning signals crackling down Jo’s spine, she pressed on. “We haven’t lost yet.”
If Pan’s magic had been a fire, everyone in the room would have burned beneath the onslaught that suddenly filled the room.
“Enough of this nonsense!” Pan suddenly stood before them in swaths of elaborate armor, her hair a flyaway mess of rainbow strands caught in a perpetual whirlwind. But it wasn’t the costume change that had everyone falling into stunned silence so much as the look of pure, unbridled rage on her face. “Stop being such afool!” She reached back out towards Jo, grabbing her face in a vice-like grip and squeezing her cheeks enough to bruise the flesh—if Jo had been mortal still. In an instant, Pan was back to her normal self, ruffles and colors and all. “I mean seriously,” she giggled again, releasing Jo’s face. “What are you going to do without your precious bow?”
And she was right, wasn’t she? No bow meant no weapon. No weapon meant no shot. No shot meant no chance to vanquish Pan. It had been a plan with no failsafe because it couldn’t have one; even Samson had said there was no other material from the start. Everything up until then was a last resort in a war that none of them had asked to be a part of.
Except, it was a war thatJohadasked them to be a part of. The members of the Society hadn’t needed to fight, and might not have if she hadn’t dragged them back into the fray. She’d led them all to failure, hadn’t she? Just like she had with Nico.
“That’s it, my sweet,” Pan hummed, her tone soothing as she covered the distance between them in a single step and wrapped her arms around Jo’s shoulders. “You know you’ve lost. So just let go,hm? Just do what your magic has been begging of you, destroy it all—these petty friendships, your pathetic life, this sad little world. I promise, it’ll feel good.”
As if in counter-argument to her words, Jo felt the lick of familiar magic against her own, not Pan’s wild and fiery blend of chaos, but the swirling rush of a bonded soul easing its way beneath the cracks in her confidence. Still somewhat slack in Pan’s embrace, Jo let her eyes drift towards the sensation of it, capturing Snow’s eyes at once.
He stood within a circle of his own magic, eyes already searching out Jo’s gaze. The moment they connected, the soothing reach of his magic began to ease her away from the chaos, willing her own magic to fall back into a semblance of order, safely out of Pan’s reach.
He was trying to counter-attack Pan’s sway, pulling in the opposite direction—a game of magical tug-of-war.
Jo could see the rope between them in beams of light, felt it wrap around her like a blanket, warm and comforting and desperate for her safety. It heightened her senses and called out to her in a way that Pan’s did not.
“You think your pull is stronger than mine?” Jo heard Pan hiss, the words themselves slithering into her ears and attempting to block out Snow’s call. Jo felt suspended between the two of them, Pan’s magic seeping into her skin, dark and sticky like tar, while Snow’s tried to wash away the chaotic darkness clouding her mind. It was growing impossible to tell herself apart from the whirlwind of magical sensation.
In fact, within the storm were even tendrils of her team. She could feel Wayne’s magic in a distant thrum, even Eslar’s and Samson’s too, their magics so intertwined it was near impossible to tell them apart. She could hear their fear and taste their desperation, but among all that, with a sudden spike of recognition, she could also feel their hope.
Which was when Takako’s magic tickled her senses.
While Snow’s magic called to her like a song, and Pan’s called to her like a demand, Takako’s was a beacon on the horizon of a dark, vast ocean. And as if Takako’s magic had shouted her name, it drew Jo’s focus instantly.
Takako held the arrow nocked between the middle and index fingers of her right hand. Her left was curled into a relaxed fist, space between her fingers as though she was holding something invisible. The shaft of the arrow rested on her left pointer finger as she slowly raised her arms, drawing back in an invisible string.
Muscles tense and bulging, Takako stood in a perfect firing stance, her arms aligned in front of her in a way that looked ridiculous, and had Jo been unable to feel the swelling thrum of magic coming off of the woman, she would have laughed. But as Takako braced her fingers against her jaw, Jo could almost see the magic rippling in the air in the shape of exactly what they needed.
A bow.
Pan seemed to sense the shift of magic too, her whole body tensing before she yanked away from Jo, her attention suddenly consumed by Takako. Out of reflex, Jo grabbed Pan’s wrist, keeping her from moving forward, and putting Pan’s chest in the direct line of fire at Jo’s side.
But that wouldn’t be enough. Not nearly enough. It was a truth Wayne had forced her to accept at the onset of their journey—their journey to a conclusion she hadn’t wanted to face.
“Where. Did. You. Get.That?” Pan growled in clear recognition, an inhuman sound as she tried to rip her arm out of Jo’s grip, but neither of them moved an inch. Jo could already feel her magic giving in, keeping them both rooted in place, and by the way Pan flashed a surprised look in Jo’s direction, she could feel it too. Jo had expected elation, maybe even a smug sort of giddiness. What she hadn’t expected to see on Pan’s face was relief. Maybe even . . . pride?
“Do it, Jo!” Wayne yelled, the first words to break through Jo’s haze, which opened up the floodgates for a cacophony of sound, most of which came from Snow. Not from his voice, but his magic. It begged and cried against the feeling of being replaced, and Jo tried not to listen. She already knew how much it would hurt, knew that in many ways, what she was about to do could be seen as a betrayal to all he had endured for her.
Especially if it didn’t work—if she didn’t come back.
So Jo focused on her own magic, on how it twisted and writhed around Pan’s wrist and upward, sinking into her skin in veins of color, electricity crackling along every inch of their skin. Jo could still see Takako over Pan’s shoulder, poised and ready, and when she mouthed the words“I won’t miss,”Jo could have sworn she heard them in her soul.
Pan was so consumed by the sight, the sensation of their magic sewing together into one, that she didn’t notice Jo’s last, desperate glance over at Snow, her love, her fated half, her Creation. He’d stopped struggling, knowing perhaps that it was too late to stop the process when she’d willingly opened herself to it. But that didn’t mean Jo’s heart didn’t break at the look in his eyes, the devastation and the pain. But not anger. At least there was that.
“I love you,” Jo whispered, sending the words to him on the last tendril of her magic that had not given itself over to Oblivion.
Once she knew he had heard, once she saw the recognition on his face and the beginnings of her name on his lips, Jo closed her eyes and made her choice. She gave in to the riptide that had been working to pull her feet out from under her from the first moment she’d entered the castle.
Takako was their champion, and she would not miss. Even as Jo slipped away, that faith did not waver. That faith freed her to spend the last moments of her awareness—the last moments of her existence as a sovereign entity, unencumbered by the mad will of Pan or Oblivion—on the only thing left that mattered.
Snow. He was her love; their bond had transcended ages, and he would be the last thing Josephina Espinosa’s eyes would ever see.
Chapter 33
