Posey collapsed. Dropped. Boneless. Unconscious before she hit the ground.
Cammie was there in an instant, breaking the circle to catch her before her head struck the ground. “Posey? Posey, talk to me?—”
Posey’s eyes fluttered. “I’m okay.” Her voice was barely there. A thread of sound. “Just… tired. So tired.”
But she wasn’t okay. Ramona could see it. The pale tinge to her skin. The way her chest barely rose with each breath. The restoration had taken too much. Way too much.
Felix was breathing heavily, his hands on his knees.
Ramona felt it, too. The cleansing had drained her in ways she hadn’t expected. Her magic felt depleted just from being near it. Stretched thin like old elastic. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
They were only one ritual in.
They still had to break the curse. Break the tether.
She looked at Zara. Through the tether — still there, still humming, still real — she felt exhaustion mirroring her own.
“We need to keep going,” Kashvi said. She was checking her watch, but her hands were shaking too. “We have maybe an hour of optimal dissolution energy left. If we stop now?—”
“We’re not stopping,” Ramona said. The words came out hoarse. Raw. “We can’t.”
Through the tether: agreement. Underneath, a terrible grief, because they both knew what came next.
They rearranged with movements that felt clumsy. Disconnected.
She placed the banewood bark in the center of the now-cleansed convergence point. It looked worse now, darker and twisted, like it didn’t belong in a clean place.
Ramona positioned herself again at the north end of the circle, Zara at the south. The blessed iron nails at east and west, anchoring the ritual space. Holding it together. Hopefully.
“I’ll lead,” Ramona said. Her voice sounded like she’d been screaming. Maybe she had. She couldn’t remember. “You support. Like we practiced.”
“Always,” Zara replied. Her voice was also rough.
Ramona began to speak. The curse-breaking incantation. A dead language, harsh and demanding. Words that required precision. Exactness. Every syllable in the right place or the whole thing would fail.
Her tongue felt thick. Her mind fuzzy. The words kept slipping away from her.
I break this binding.Her voice cracked.I dissolve this curse. I sever the root from the tree.
Nothing happened.
The bark sat there. Inert. Mocking.
She tried again. Louder. Forcing more intent into the words even though she had so little left to give.
I break this binding. I dissolve?—
The bark began to smoke.
Thin tendrils of gray. Acrid. Smelling like burning hair and rotting wood and something chemical.
“It’s working,” Felix breathed from outside the circle. Gerald cooed softly, hopefully.
But Ramona could feel it wasn’t. Not enough to matter. The curse was fighting back. Twenty-seven years of magic, anchored deep in living wood and old intent and a child’s feral anger. It refused to let go.
She could feel it clinging. Digging in. Hers. It thought it washers. A part of her. Essential.
Zara stepped closer. Began to speak in support. Her demonic power lending strength to Ramona’s words. The two languages winding together — ancient and demonic, human and not.
