But of all the things Ellie had done as a witch, only a few had made her feel like she was dangerous. She didn’t want to add to that short list. She didn’t want to take a life.
On the infirmary bed, Allan made a gasping noise and stopped thrashing. Had he stopped trying to cling to his magic or had something more fatal just happened? Could a person die in front of you without you noticing?
Allan’s body started to contract, like he was seizing or tensing against a strike.
Over the next several moments, his entire body shrank into itself. His hair lost its gleam. His skin began to droop with lines and wrinkles. Then the flesh shifted again, as if it were thinning and clinging tighter to the bones. In the space of several heartbeats, it became abundantly clear that Allan’s vitality had been drained along with his magic.
Allan was now a mummified corpse in loose-fitting clothes. His unbuttoned shirt exposed the sunken cavern that had been his stomach moments prior. Now, it was no more than a hollow basin of contracted skin. Each rib was highlighted under the thin webbing of desiccated flesh, and as Ellie watched, the weight of his skull fell sideways.
A crackling noise reverberated in the room as Allan’s head detached from his spinal column. Ellie stared at the now-empty eye sockets and then at the now-unhinged jaw. There was nothing left of Allan.
Vaguely she noticed that the foul smell in the air was gone.He created the rift.And with his death, his magical corruption in Crenshaw had ended, too. That at least was a comfort. Crenshaw was no longer poisoned, since Allan was dead.
Still, Dan’s magic continued to try to drain magic from the withering husk of the witch on the infirmary bed.
“Daniel?” Axell called his lover’s name.
“Monahan!” Sondre barked out.
“He’s dead,” the chief witch began. “Daniel Monahan! Stop siphoning now.Stop.”
Nothing was getting through to Dan. Meanwhile, the glowing rope that was around Prospero’s ankle had crept up to her hips. As Ellie looked at her wife, she noticed that Prospero was breathing as if injured.
“Is he siphoning you?” Ellie asked. They’d talked about what would happen if a witch as old as Prospero were to be siphoned. Proof of that fact didn’t take but a glance to the infirmary bed where Allan’s crumbling remains continued to fade toward ash.
As Dan’s magic started to speed faster over Prospero’s body, her hairturned gray, and her limber body loosened as if decades had passed in a blink.
Death will follow.She was being siphoned, and unless Ellie did something, Prospero would die just as Allan had.
Ellie glanced again at the corpse that was cracking into pieces as every last echo of magic was pulled out of the already dead bones.
“Prospero?” Ellie whispered.
“Ell… ie,” Prospero said, voice thready with pain and age combined.
And at that moment, Ellie no longer remembered any objection to violence or death. She was not willing to lose Prospero. Her magic lashed out as if unaware of any conscious thought or effort.
In that sliver of a moment, Ellie reshaped Dan’s heart. Her magic created the selfsame vines she’d once woven together to protect Crenshaw when the barrier fell. In her mind’s eye, she saw them, the thin vines taking on droplets of blood in the place of eyes. Her creation looked back at her from within the nest of his no-longer-beating heart.
And under Ellie’s magic, Dan Monahan died. She stopped his life to save Prospero. There was no guilt, no hesitation. It was simple.
38Prospero
Prospero felt the weight of every decade of her life as the moments ticked by. She couldn’t force words from her dry lips. The air she’d need to do so was impossible to find, and her lungs had begun to make a strangled whistling noise. The weight of the lungs themselves was wrong, as if dirty water filled them, and a pain throbbing in her bones made tears fill her eyes.
This was it. Death. Like Allan and Monahan, she was about to end.
Ellie saved me long enough that they’d all live—Scylla, Sondre, Walt. Just like Cass’ prophecy. She saved me, and in doing so saved all of us.
Well over a century of life had seemed liked a lot once upon a time, but then she fell in love.Finally.After all these years of keeping her heart hidden from everyone, she’d let go of her walls.
Her gaze found Ellie, who had done something awful to stop the magical ropes that were trying to find energy to drain. Ellie’s mouth was moving, and she dropped to the floor where Prospero had collapsed.
Monahan fell to the ground, slumped over.
Both Sondre and the Norwegian went to the fallen witch.
Voices were blurring as Prospero’s eyes felt heavier.
