“Charlotte knewthe risks—”
“Don’t you dare speak her name!” Rebecca’s voice breaks as she summons the sand from the scattered pentagram. “You don’t get to justify what you did to her.”
She hurls the sand at me. It stings my face and burns my eyes, filling my mouth until I cough and splutter.
“I should have killed you,” Rebecca hisses, just a voice now. “I should’ve burned you to ash instead of trapping you in that journal.”
I force my eyes open and send the wooden table at her, the memory of Charlotte throwing me off balance and making my attack clumsy. She swipes it aside, and it shatters against the wall.
Everything is blurry. My skin stings and my eyes are streaming. I can see enough to know that every flaming candle, jagged bone, and glass shard has lifted into the air at her command.
“But you didn’t kill me,” I say, my voice rough from sand and something else I will not acknowledge. I hold up one hand, not to retaliate, but as a plea for her to stop. “You gave me a chance. Let me prove to you that I deserve it.”
There’s a pause. Everything in the room hangs suspended.
“Bullshit,” Rebecca snarls. “You proved what you are the night you killed Charlotte, and now you’re going to do the same thing to Hannah.”
The binding spell cinches around my chest in Hannah’s absence, and suddenly it’s hard to breathe. Rebecca’s right. History is repeating itself, and I am letting it happen.
My vision blurs—from the sand or something else, I cannot say. “You think I don’t know that? You think I didn’t spend years grieving her, waking up in a sweat, seeing her every time I closed my eyes?”
Rebecca stands frozen, hands up, chest heaving. Everything around us trembles in the air, magic sparking between the debris like lightning.
I raise my hands, ready for the attack. God, this is going to hurt. But I deserve every cut and bruise coming my way.
“Stop!” Elizabeth’s voice cuts through the chaos.
Green light explodes between us, forcing us apart with such violence that I slam into the wall. The impact knocks the wind from my lungs. Rebecca hits the opposite wall with equal force, and all her suspended weapons clatter to the floor.
“Enough!” Elizabeth stands on the last stone step, her silver hair wild, magic radiating from her in waves. “Rebecca, return to Riley’s bedside, for fuck’s sake. Julia, a word.”
I labor to my feet, trying to steady my ragged breathing. My magic sparks erratically around me, uncontrolled.
Rebecca glares at me as she climbs the steps, and I return it, wiping blood from my nose.
Once she’s gone, Elizabeth rounds on me, nostrils flaring. “Have you lost your mind?”
“She came after me!”
“After watching you nearly drain another person she cares about!” Elizabeth’s eyes flash dangerously. “Is that your grand plan? Kill everyone Rebecca loves?”
I pace a small circle through the debris, my fingers crackling with unspent magic. “Nothing is working. We’ve tried everything, and the binding spell is ironclad. The moon will set soon, and then—” I swipe my hand, and a crystal slams into the wall, where it explodes in a shower of glittering purple fragments. “Then I’m trapped forever with someone who despises me.”
“Hannah doesn’t despise you.”
I laugh bitterly. “Rebecca told her about Charlotte. Of course she does.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple.”
My throat is so tight it hurts. I grind my teeth, looking down at the shattered glass, wood shards, and herbs scattered around me.
Elizabeth sighs. “Julia, you’re so determined to be the monster that you can’t see what’s right in front of you.”
I clench my fists, and the debris trembles. “I killed Charlotte, I tried to kill Riley, and I would have killed Hannah long ago if not for this damned binding spell. That is my nature—I destroy everything I touch.”
Elizabeth crosses her arms and taps her fingers. “You stopped feeding on Riley tonight.”
“What of it?”
