Page 91 of First Ritual

“Fight, fight,” I slurred, gripping my head. “Syera?”

“Tempest!”

Something didn’t feel right. I was hurt. Power was pouring into me. Mother’s. “Take from me,” I echoed Syera’s scream. “Mother, take from me.” Grandmother was fighting someone outside. I must’ve been in bad shape for Mother not to be fighting with her.

Who? Look out the car window.

In the car, I stared at the blood on my lap and coating my hands. I lifted my head and glimpsed the frozen, terrified expressions of Syera and Mother. This was the last time I’d seen them alive. Just like this. Terrified for my life. So terrified they’d ignored the threat outside.

I looked out the car window. We’d driven in the day, but it appeared as night. “Just black magic outside. No form. Unsure what creature, what magic. So powerful.”

Look at your mother.

Mother’s blue eyes were filled with pain. Pain for me. Pain for what might happen. Fear. So much fear.

My breath came fast.

Calm. Stay calm.

I couldn’t be calm. Not when I saw that expression on my mother’s face that filled me with so much anguish. I couldn’t breathe.

I clutched at my chest.

Your sister.

“No,” I whispered as Grandmother’s white-gold power began to fade. From outside the car, she glanced directly at me through our magical windscreen. Her hard, gray gaze shifted to where Mother’s magic was fading. She was giving me too much. What little Syera possessed was fading too. Black magic shattered the windows and poured into the car. It covered Syera.

Grandmother whisked her power back from the attack outside and redirected it into me. Every bit of it. Directly into my chest.

“Goodbye,” I moved my lips as she moved hers, speaking her silent farewell to me. Why was she protecting me from the blackness when Syera was covered in it?

“Why not Syera?” I sobbed.

She knew you had the power to survive.

Tears covered my face. Or was that still blood? “Syera didn’t have the most power, but she was strong.”

You can’t blame yourself for being alive. Nor for others’ actions.

The black choked me. It filled the car. The foreign magic stabbed and pressed on the armor Grandmother had sacrificed herself to give me.

She was dead now.

I screamed.

Mother was dead.

I kept screaming.

Syera. My Syera. She was dead too.

Black poured down my throat, shoving in to squeeze my very heart until it stopped beating.

23

Steady lulling movement. Thud. Float. Thud. Float.

I cracked open an eye.

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