Page 29 of Crown of Chaos

Dark shadows stretched over the battlements, and still, no noise came from their movements. I moved my palm from my abdomen, readying to defend my sisters against the strike that was inevitably coming.

“Who told you about this place, Aurora?” Sabina asked carefully, her midnight-blue gaze drifting to where I stood.

“The runes told me,” Aurora said in a singsong tone. “They’re the same ones that predicted Aria’s death.”

Color drained from my face, my heart hammered against my ribs, and fresh unease churned in my stomach.

“What runes did you cast?” I murmured through chattering teeth.

Siobhan shuffled closer, joining Esme and Soraya, who were already flanking me. My aunt just continued rocking, and the faster she swayed, the more fear flowed through the group scattered around us.

A sweet lullaby started, and this time, we all seemed to hear it even if we still couldn’t pinpoint its origin. A heavy pressure formed in the air, and the wind picked up, causing our hair to whip against our faces and around our heads.

“We cast the runes to find out who’d be amongst the dead,” Aurora declared as she drifted toward the wall. “They informed us you’d soon pass through the veil and into the afterlife. The only way to alter the reading was to come to this place and rid it of the evil that lingers within.” She spoke so quietly that we were forced to strain to hear her words. “So, that’s what we will do.”

The fire in the torches eddied in the breeze, drawing my focus back to the warriors on the battlement. Along with the expulsion of their eyes, someone had sewn their lips shut with black string. Blood oozed from their noses as if they yet lived. However, the absence of any heartbeats and their very obviously slashed throats told me that wasn’t possible.

“We need to get out of here, now,” Reign stepped back, but a powerful, piercing wail shot through the air.

The arrow slits in the battlement blazed with light, and when a volley of arrows rushed toward us, I started shouting for people to take cover. The wind devoured my warning as the world seemed to slow until it stalled on a single second of time. I clapped my hands over my ears. The magic pulsing through the field turned my body slugging and seemed to settle like lead in my limbs. My arms shook with the effort it took to hold them up, and I gritted my teeth as I tried to pull more magic to myself.

I managed barely enough to produce a thin barrier, but the moment it slammed into place, I knew something wasn’t right. The magic surging around us didn’t ease when it should have. The webs of spells already gripping me should have retreated, and whatever was causing everything to appear to be moving in slow motion should have been snuffed out.

Screaming clapped throughout the meadow, coming from all around me, and then the pungent stench of blood invaded my nose. Pinpointing anything in the dimly lit meadow was impossible, and the piercing wails were disorientating. All at once, everything exploded back into motion, and it jarred my mind.

Reign roared in pain, but Rhaghana shot toward her with lightning speed, blocking the arrows that had been meant for her twin. Reign grabbed her sister as she stumbled, and together, they dropped to their knees. Rhaghana’s throat had been virtually severed by the missile’s impact.

Ripping power from the realm, I thrust it out in every direction as I screamed with the savage anger rushing through me, spitting more shouts of agony from my throat. Reign held Rhaghana in her arms, and the tortured sob slid from her parted lips as she pleaded for her twin to hang on. Blood gushed from the wound and pooled on the ground while we stood trapped under this dome, unable to retreat.

“Help me!” she implored, continuing to cradle Rhaghana’s unmoving body. No one moved because we had all frozen under the awareness of other witches encircling us.

“Get up, Reign!” I silently prayed Reign heard me over the wind’s deafening roar. “Get up, now!”

All around us, the ground shifted and vibrated as black, feathery shadows began to break through the top layer of soil. They solidified, revealing themselves to be the dead who were clawing their way free from what had to be their unmarked graves. The barrier wasn’t preventing them from coming up through the soil, but then it was barely doing anything other than offering a thin layer of protection.

A shiver of dread rushed down my spine as howling sounded from the darkened forest that encircled the graveyard. I turned to the new threat, watching in horror as dark witches strode from the gloom and into the meadow. Fluid bled from them in streams, oozing from their eye sockets like liquid ink, unmasking their soullessness. Their lips were gray, as if they’d asphyxiated on the crap spilling from their mouths. Someone had dressed them in thick, black cloaks that dragged over the earthen terrain, but their feet never touched the ground.

Dead, rotting dire wolves trotted beside them, their luminous eyes solely focused on their prey—us.As if our situation couldn’t get any more perilous, the metal chains of the portcullis started to move and the wooden door began to rise. A second later, more wolves and witches emerged from within the keep.

They closed in around us from every side, and I knew in my bones that the thin barrier I’d erected wouldn’t be adequate to hold them back, and even though I yanked frantically at the realms’ magic, it was coming to me in a trickle instead of the flood I needed.

“You thought to best me?” a bitter, ghostly voice rang through the darkness. It turned my blood to ice and slammed horror into my chest. Terror threatened to shred what was left of my composure as recognition drove through my soul. I scanned for the owner of the voice, inspecting the soulless faces of the witches encircling the barrier.

“Mother,” Aurora murmured in an eerie-sounding voice that shot the world reeling off-kilter around me.

She was watching a veiled figure that was slithering through the swarm of witches. The hood attached to the neckline of her dress dropped back, revealing raven-black hair, which was threaded with crimson curls. Perfect, unblemished alabaster skin covered the delicate features of the woman. Green eyes, which were the tint of recently picked limes, fixed on Aurora, and the woman’s blood-red lips twisted into a derisive smirk.

“Oh, my sweetest darling,” she crooned, combing her narrowed gaze over the young woman behind Aurora with interest that troubled me.

Hecate was terrifying and exceedingly beautiful. Her midnight-colored gown hugged her thick, alluring curves perfectly. Soft tendrils of blue lines that pulsed with magic slid down her arms. Her power was infinite, and the taint of it oozing into the air told me she was pulling even more from the witches close enough for her to siphon from.

It wasn’t just magic, though; there was something more. It had a bone-deep chill of evil that promised death. I held on to the barrier, willing it to stand in place while everyone else looked on in suspended silence as the Goddess of Magic came to a stop before us.

My gaze flicked down to Reign, who continued cradling her twin in her arms. Blood soaked the front of her clothing, and her twin’s eyes had long since gone lifeless and glassy. Without taking my eyes off her, I sensed movement from the keep and tried to brace for another volley of arrows.

“Did you truly think I’d tolerate you trying to take my throne from me? Or do you presume I wasn’t aware that my own, treacherous daughter sought to entomb me for an eternity?” Hecate laughed indifferently before she snapped her wrist, sending us all tumbling in different directions. Hands shot through the earth, gripping our clothes or whatever they could reach. “You and your whores are nothing but traitorous, selfish creatures that I’ll drain and never think of again.”

I threw off the ghastly hands trying to rip into my wrists and rose to my feet, bracing against the wind battering through the clearing. The others were doing the same, and Hecate threw her head back, laughing cruelly as the magic that had clasped to her like tattoos left her flesh and was swept up by the wind. I concentrated on it, probing for a vulnerability I could exploit to buy us time to escape.

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