Page 152 of Foul Days

“Kosara!” His terrified eyes searched her face. “Kosara, please…” The shadows filled his mouth, twisting around his split tongue. His breathing grew fast and shallow, as if he was drowning. “Please, help me.”

Kosara pushed herself up from the ground, breathing hard. She bared her teeth into a smile. No amount of begging would convince her to spare him—just like no amount of begging ever made him spare anyone.

Her heart slammed against her rib cage, once, twice, three times. The magic words were ready on her lips. The spell pulled at her mind, aching to be completed. The Wall demanded another sacrifice.

But Kosara hesitated. The Zmey’s blue eyes were fixed on her, hopeful.

What the hell are you afraid of?

That once the ghosts from my past are gone, I’ll be all alone.

She recognised that small voice. It sounded a lot like her younger self. The girl who’d let the Zmey take her away. The one who’d almost died for him.

Kosara knew now it was better to live alone than with monsters in your head.

“Please.” The Zmey reached for her, his fingers grasping at the air. “Please, my little Kosara…”

“I’m not little. And I’m not yours.”

Kosara uttered the last words of the spell, completing the circle. Sealing it shut. In her head, eleven other voices repeated the words after her.

The Zmey screamed. His wide-eyed face appeared and disappeared between the shadows as they dragged him to the Wall. He tried to fight, shoving them and clawing at their dark bodies, but they were too strong.

Somehow, Kosara was herself, but she was also them, the eleven other witches. She saw the Zmey through their eyes. Heard his screams with their ears. She stood in the snow, but she was also around him, grabbing him, dragging him and pushing him, taking him where he belonged.

The Wall swallowed his body hungrily, no matter how hard he thrashed. It stuck to him, sliding down his pale skin, enveloping him in a suffocating embrace. His pleading eyes never left Kosara’s. His mouth never stopped screaming.

A second before he was gone, his terror turned to anger. His scream became a roar.

Kosara watched, frozen, as the flames emerged from his mouth, rolling towards her, coming to take her back to his fire.

I’m never going back.

Kosara clicked her fingers a second before the flames enveloped her. They raged around her—yellow, and orange, and bright turquoise blue, caressing her skin and sliding down her singed hair.

She felt nothing.

Her magic protected her. It was stronger than the Zmey’s fire. It was stronger than it had ever been. Kosara stood there, a dark shadow between the raging flames, and watched the Zmey disappear into the Wall.

And she laughed with the voices of twelve witches.

* * *

It was eerily quiet.

The Zmey was gone. All that was left of him was residual heat and the stench of sulphur. Kosara was alone, standing in a puddle of melted snow. Soot covered the cobblestones, except for a stark white, Kosara-shaped outline.

She turned around, checking behind her shoulder, half-expecting to find him still lurking in a dark corner. Hello, Kosara. He’d smile his handsome smile. Did you really think you could get rid of me that easily? How cute.

But his voice in her head wasn’t so clear anymore. It sounded like a distant memory.

Her laugh echoed in the empty street, high-pitched and slightly hysterical. She had defeated him. It had only taken seven years. The Zmey was gone.

Her shadow slid across the ground and stopped at her feet. Then, one by one, the rest followed, until Kosara was surrounded by shadows.

She felt bigger surrounded by them. As tall as the Zmey. And just as powerful.

Simply to try it out, she clicked her fingers and uttered a fire spell. She was at the brink of exhaustion after keeping the embedding ritual going for so long, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if nothing happened.

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