We recited the incantation in unison, carefully pronouncing the Latin. I took in as much of Mayhem’s energy as I could handle, filtering it before allowing it to trickle into Miles. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes.
The second time we performed the spell, my skin turned to gooseflesh, the energy in the room shifting and vibrating, heating as if we were summoning Hell itself.
“We have the amulet, brother,” Mayhem said. “Return it to Hecate and join us in the earthly realm.”
The pressure built, the low vibration of the Underworld rattling my bones, but an undercurrent of something other seemed to block our connection with Discord. A high vibration…two different frequencies…no, three…wove through the energy in the circle.
We spoke the incantation a third time, and the air grew thin, every candle’s flame flickering as if blown by an unseen wind. The temperature plummeted. My breath came out in a fog, and ice crystals gathered on the glass bottles and jars.
I gripped Mayhem’s hand tighter, steadying myself as the presence in the circle strengthened. The room heated again, the air thickening as the temperature shot up sixty degrees in half a second.
Every piece of glass in the room exploded.
11
CINDER
“Discord, talk to me.” I imagined squeezing his hand while sharing my energy with him and attempting to block Hecate’s at the same time.
But the goddess’s magic was too strong. I clamped down on the thread my mom had shared, stifling the flow, but I couldn’t stop it completely. It trickled into my demon, assaulting his psyche and disrupting his magic.
“I’m here.” His voice was a faint whisper in the ether. “But not for long. Your sister is summoning me. You must let me go.”
“I would if I could.” I tried to release him, tried to break the bond with both my mother and my demon, but Hecate’s magic wove through us, tightening more and more the harder I tried to let go.
The tether connecting my soul to Discord’s tensed, vibrating and heaving, warring with my mom’s grounding energy. I felt like the flag tied to the middle of a tug of war rope, inching one way before being yanked the other, the pull threatening to tear me in half.
Threads of the veil snapped. The pressure shifted. Discord’s magic, my mom’s, and Hecate’s surged through me. Then an undercurrent latched on, snaking around my psyche and tugging me toward the veil.
My mom gasped. “I feel Ember.”
“So do I.” But I didn’t just feel Ember. Mayhem was there, and Shade and Miles. “Where’s Ash?”
“The curse has come to fruition.” Discord sounded distant, like he was already halfway across the veil.
“Holy Hecate.” My dad’s frantic voice cut through the cacophony of buzzing energy. “What can I do? Scorsha, tell me what to do.”
“There’s nothing you can do,” my mom said, but Dad couldn’t hear her.
I felt my sister’s command in the very core of my being, demanding my demon cross to the earthly realm. My muscles screamed, my heart and lungs contracting and expanding as if they were being ripped from my chest.
“Let go!” I shrieked to Discord, but the roar of the shredding universe swallowed my words.
“I can’t.” His panic slammed into my mind, a cold, sharp spike of fear. “The bond…it’s pulling you with me.”
It wasn’t just pulling. It was obliterating.
Every cell in my body vibrated until I was certain I would dissolve into stardust. The summoning hook—that relentless, magical claw of my sister’s spell—dug deep into Discord’s essence, dragging him upward. Because my soul was melded to his and my mom was channeling the very goddess who held the realms together, we were a package deal. All three of us.
But only one of us would survive.
It felt like we were being squeezed through a straw. My bones liquefied, my skin stretching and turning to mist. The pain was absolute, a blinding, searing agony that eclipsed thought, love, everything but the primal need to scream.
“Hold on to me,” my mother’s voice boomed in my head, sounding like a chaotic symphony of wind chimes and thunder.
I didn’t have a choice. We were tumbling through the void, a tangle of limbs and magic and terror. The cold of the space between worlds bit into my marrow, a sudden intense heat replacing it in an instant as the heaviness of the universe surged around me, threatening to crush my very soul.
Then, with a sound like a cracking whip that shattered the sky, the pressure vanished.
