Through the tether — still there but fraying — Ramona felt everything: Love like drowning, terror like falling, grief like dying, acceptance.
“Ramona—” Zara’s voice cracked. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry?—”
“I know.” Ramona’s tears were hot on her frozen cheeks. “I know.”
The tether was unraveling fast now. Ramona could feel the threads snapping one by one. Dozens of them. Hundreds. The connection that had been constant for seven weeks, that had let her feel Zara’s presence every moment, that had become as natural as breathing…
It was all disappearing.
In minutes, maybe less, it would be gone entirely.
Zara would be pulled back to Hell.
Ramona would be alone.
“I don’t want to leave you,” Zara said. Her voice was breaking, cracking around the words. “I don’t?—”
“I don’t want you to go.” Ramona’s whole body was shaking now. Not from cold but from realization that this was the last time she’d see Zara.
Zara took a step toward her across the circle. “I swear, I’ll find a way.”
“I know.” Ramona’s voice was barely audible. “I know.”
The coven’s chanting grew louder. More insistent. The power was building. Ramona could feel it pressing on her from all sides. The bark was disintegrating. The curse was breaking. The tether was snapping.
Everything happening at once. Everything happening too fast.
Zara reached toward her, and she willed herself to move, even a fraction of an inch. Zara’s knuckles went white around her own. Grasping hands wasn’t enough — she wanted to hold Zara in her arms, but she couldn’t move.
She stared at Zara, trying in vain to memorize her face, the sharp line of her jaw. The way her hair fell around her ears. The exact autumn shade of her eyes. The way she looked at Ramona like she was something precious. Something worth fighting for. Worth crossing back to Hell to save.
She had to believe that last part was true.
“I love you,” Ramona said. The words felt too small, so insufficient, but they were all she had. “And that’s why I have to let you go.”
Zara dipped her chin in understanding.
She spoke the final words of the curse-breaking. Poured everything she had left into them. Every ounce of power. Every drop of will. Everything.
I sever the root from the tree.Her voice rang clear. Strong.I free myself from this burden. I choose my own fate.
The bark exploded.
The sound was deafening, a crack like lightning striking. Light shot straight up in a beam from the center of the circle, white and gold and so bright it seared through Ramona’s closed eyelids.
The curse shattered.
Ramona felt it — twenty-seven years of suppression breaking apart. Finally dissolving. Her magic surging back not like a trickle but like a flood. Like a dam breaking. Pure and clean and so powerful it terrified her.
It washers.
Finally, actually, hers.
She’d never felt anything like it. Had never known magic could feel like this — responsive, immediate, as natural as breathing.
And then the tether snapped, the connection between her and Zara severing completely.
The constant presence she’d had for seven weeks — the awareness of Zara’s emotions, the knowledge that she wasn’t alone, the feeling of being tethered to someone who chose her — it was gone in an instant.
