“No!” My heart hammered against my ribs, my vision swimming into focus. I’d seen what the goddess’s magic did to demons…the violent way Discord’s body had reacted to her latent energy. To channel her in this close proximity… “That will kill them.”
“Then let it.” Her voice echoed with the finality of a death toll. “If the veil shreds completely, everyone dies—witches, demons, and mortals alike. There will be no realm left for you to mourn in.”
Discord looked at me, a silent, grim acceptance in his eyes that made me want to scream. He stepped forward, Chaos and Mayhem following his lead.
“We must do this,” he said, his tone steady despite the pandemonium around us.
“You can’t.” I tried to keep my voice from cracking, but I failed miserably.
“We have to.” He nodded solemnly, and the guys lined up in a row. Discord stood in the center, and they joined our circle, Mayhem, taking Ember’s hand, Chaos taking Ash’s.
My stomach roiled, and my pulse raced. There had to be another way.
The rift groaned, ripping open even more as a massive clap of thunder shook the earth.
“Now, Cinder,” Hecate commanded.
“We’ll filter it,” I said. “We’ll take the brunt of the goddess’s power and pass the tempered magic to you.”
A flood of silver light, pure and devastating, crashed into us. I felt the vibration through my teeth, a high-pitched hum that made my vision blur. I channeled everything I had, trying to act as a buffer for the intense power before pushing it into Ash so she could temper it even more.
It felt like trying to sieve a tidal wave through a window screen.
The power was too disjointed, our demons unable to find a rhythm that harmonized with the divine silver light, and we couldn’t slip fully into the trance. Discord groaned. Chaos wheezed as frost began to pattern his skin, and Mayhem’s complexion turned a sickly, pale white. The fragmented energy ground against the rift, causing more fibers to snap and crack.
A piece of the clearing vanished into the void, leaving a bottomless hole where a pine tree had stood seconds before.
“You are soul-bound,” Hecate said, her voice strained. “Stop fighting the connection and embrace it. I cannot pull you into the trance otherwise.”
“Change it up.” I dropped Ash’s hand. “Soulmate to soulmate.”
We scrambled through the electrical storm of magic. I grabbed Discord’s hand, interlocking our fingers. Ash took his other and clasped Chaos’s hand, while Ember slammed her palm into Mayhem’s before rejoining the goddess’s circle.
“Don’t filter it.” My stomach soured the moment I uttered the words. But we were soul-bound. Our connection, our tether, would keep Discord alive. If it didn’t…
Well, I’d die too. We all would, and no one would be around for it to matter.
I inhaled deeply and let go. The dam broke.
Hecate’s power rushed through me and into Discord without a buffer. My vision blurred, and the goddess yanked me into her trance.
The tether joining Discord to me tightened, and his energy surged across it…absolute, blinding agony. He felt the high vibration so intensely, it threatened to tear the atoms of his soul apart beneath the crushing, infinite weight of the goddess.
“Now!” Hecate shouted above the roaring wind.
Her silver light poured through us, frigid and sharp, stronger and even more all-encompassing than before. For a heartbeat, the jagged edges of the tear seemed to still. The unravelling slowed.
But it didn’t mend.
The pressure from the Underworld pushed back against our silver wall of magic, and the rift buckled inward. The fifty-foot-high rip in reality continued to widen at the top, mocking our efforts as the very fibers of the universe shredded before our eyes.
“It’s still not working!” My voice was a ragged howl in my mind.
Discord’s grip on my hand loosened. His energy began to fade.
A thunderous, guttural roar that could only have come straight from the bowels of Hell ripped through our souls.
19
