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“Lay to rest, your sister now, take my offering, and hear my vow.” More words filled my head, and my pulse thundered in my ears. “On the taking of my mortal blood, your visions I will receive, and if the sun rises while darkness cloaks…” I swallowed, my body shaking with a fear like I’d never known before, as I said the last line. “…forever more, my soul will be yours, and in this cavern deep…I will remain.”

In other words, if I didn’t make it back out of here before sunrise, I was dead, and the crones would keep my soul for eternity.

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to run out and never come back. But this wasn’t just about me. My entire coven needed me to pass this test. If I failed in this, not only would my coven lose their magic, we could lose our cemetery as well. Until Charity was laid to rest properly, we couldn’t stop the damage from spreading, not as long as these bones were unbound. They needed to be bound by the kind of magic this place held or there would be no killing the rot seeping into our most sacred earth and the source of so much of our power.

I had no choice. I had to do this.

First—skin.

I stripped off my clothes and placed them on the floor, shivering as goose bumps covered my body, the frigid air soaking right into my bones. I took my small knife from the bag and drew in a desperate breath, the cold, musty air stinging my throat.

Now—blood.

The crones whispered to me, telling me what I needed to do, and I realized that surviving the vision wasn’t going to be my only test. Biting back a scream, I sliced the length of each forearm and blood rushed from the cuts into my cupped hands. Shaking, I smeared it all over my body, my face and chest, stomach and thighs, covering myself with my own blood.

I was growing weak; I had to move quickly. I picked up the needle and thread on the stone shelf and repeated the spell the crones again whispered in my ear as I crudely sewed up the slices down my arms. The spell caused the wounds to tingle and burn, stopping the flow of blood before I fully bled out. I finished sewing, and my head spun as I put down the needle.

Now—potion.

I picked up the first bottle with a trembling hand, then removed the cork and forced myself to sip. I was already so weak, and I gasped as pain shot through my body. I needed to take a sip from each one. Shaking hard, stomach churning, I picked up the next and did the same, then the next.

I was on fire, burning, drowning, beaten.

All the ways the crones had been killed over the centuries. I felt their pain, and fear, and rage with each bottle I drank from.

I screamed and dropped to my knees.

An invisible hand shoved me hard, and I fell to my side. I hit my head on the stone floor and my vision flickered in and out a moment before pain sliced through my skull. I gripped the sides of my head as light and darkness flashed behind my lids, the darkness pressing in until the light was suffocated and there was nothing but blackness around me, so dense and thick I couldn’t move.

My world spun, and suddenly, I wasn’t on the floor anymore. I was above, looking down at myself, my body below, curled in a ball, naked, and covered in blood.

I watched as the ghostly figure of a crone walked from the shadows toward my still form, singing as she slowly crouched down. She reached into the pocket of her brown and tattered cloak and pulled out another needle and thread.

I tried to move, but it was impossible. I wasn’t with my body anymore, and I watched in horror as she pressed my upper and lower lids together and started to sew my eyes closed. I screamed, somehow feeling every bit of it, and unable to look away, unable to move, still watching myself from above. She did the same with the other eye, then moved to my mouth.

“Please, no, don’t,” I cried.

She turned suddenly, looking up at me, the me watching this all happen, and pressed her grubby finger to her lips. “Shh,” she said.

Then she turned back to my body and sewed my mouth shut with black cotton in a cross-stitch pattern along my lips.

I don’t know what I was expecting, a vision that showed me what was coming or what had been. Not this. My soul forced from my body, forced to watch as I slowly perished, as I died. Because that’s what was going to happen.

The crone stood and turned to me. I still couldn’t move. “What are you doing?” I whispered.

She smiled.

“Was there ever a chance of me passing your test?” Had anyone ever passed it? Or was this the price? A soul in exchange for bringing the bones of a dark witch to this place.

She didn’t answer, just laughed and shoved me out of the room. The sound of a stone scraping echoed around me before it slid over the entrance, locking my body inside with the crone and my soul outside in the dark cave.

I turned, spun around, there was nothing but darkness. Something bumped into me, then again, then more. That’s when I realized I was surrounded.

Surrounded by souls.

“Hello? What do I do?”

No one spoke.