Page 130 of Burning Crowns

Wren began to tremble, her heart pounding so loud she couldn’t think straight.

Oonagh slashed her fingernail across Rose’s neck, drawing a line of fresh blood.

NO!Wren’s little finger twitched. Her left foot moved – an inch and then another. She gritted her teeth, eyes streaming as she tried to break the binds of her curse and free herself from Oonagh’s hold. As Rose’s blood poured out of her, Wren’s anger burned to something brighter, hotter. Wren felt its fierceness and knew it for what it was – love. Blood-borne and bone-deep. A force so powerful and unyielding andeternal, even the strongest magic – even the deepest curse – could not defeat it.

It flooded Wren, scouring the darkness and breaking apart the chains inside her. She took a step, and then another, finding her balance. But time was not on her side.

As Rose’s blood fell upon the roots of the Mother Tree and the flames licked her feet, Oonagh cast her spell.

‘Blood spilled from a fallen royal, will burn upon this ancient soil, so the heart of Eana may be fed, and its witches returned to me, undead.’

Oonagh threw Rose to the ground and raised her hands to the sky, summoning her magic with a guttural cry.

Wren found her voice a heartbeat too late. ‘NO!’

The sky split in two and from within came a streak of crackling lightning that hurtled straight at Rose.

Wren didn’t even think. With all the remaining strength in her body she flung herself through the air, Rose’s scream joining with hers as the lightning bolt ripped through Wren’s body, sending her spiralling into darkness.

Then came the yawning hollow of death.

And after – nothing at all.

Rose

CHAPTER 46

Time juddered to a halt as the lightning bolt erupted, cutting through the air in a blinding streak of silver. Rose screamed as it came but somehow Wren was quicker than the bolt, stronger in that awful interminable moment than the curse that lived inside her. She leaped at Rose, using her body as her shield just as the light came crashing down.

Wren shuddered as it tore through her body. For a heartbeat, the entire world turned to bright blinding white, where Rose saw nothing – heard nothing – but the sound of her own scream ringing in her ears. Then her sister collapsed on top of her, her spent body crumpling at the bottom of the Mother Tree.

But this spell – this curse – was not yet over. With her heart shearing in two, Rose looked up just in time to see the bolt that had shattered Wren rebound off her broken body and crash into Oonagh. She howled as the light lanced through her, flaring under every inch of skin and bone. With a final, strangled cry, Oonagh Starcrest collapsed.

The flames hissed and thrashed in the sudden silence. They leaped from the trunk of the Mother Tree and made a fiery circle, trapping all three of them inside. Rose wrapped her arms around Wren, bowing her head until her hair surrounded her sister like a curtain,shielding her lifeless body from the fire. But the flames that licked Rose’s skin did not burn her. They were warm and gentle, and for an absurd, grief-riddled moment, she thought the flames were trying to help them.

It’s not too late, she imagined them whispering.Not yet.

Rose looked down at her sister’s lifeless face and pressed a finger to her throat, feeling for a pulse. There was none. But Rose’s magic surged, rising to the challenge. Wren was gone but she was not yet lost.

‘Oh, Wren.’ Rose sobbed, as she touched her forehead against her sister’s. ‘Please come back to me.’

She closed her eyes, calling on her healing magic. In the quiet of her mind, Rose saw the thread of her own life, shining gold and sure. She reached for it, using the strand as an anchor as she went in search of her sister’s life. But there was only darkness ahead, and within it, a simmering sense of foreboding.

Rose ventured a little further, feeling for the familiar thrum of Wren’s magic. She was met with silence. There was no power here. No pulse.

Wren! Come back to me!Rose pushed herself further, deeper, until her grip on the world slipped away and her mind grew fuzzy, her thoughts dispersing like ash in the wind. And then at last, she spotted it – the thin, brassy strand of Wren’s life, slowly sinking into blackness. Rose lunged, grasping for it. Her own thread strained, struggling to bear the distance, but she was so close now, so veryclose …

Snap!Rose felt an awful cleaving inside herself, and then the terrible sensation of falling. Down, down, down she went, the ribbon of her life tumbling with her into the fathomless unknown until Rose had the final fleeting sensation that she was dead, too.

Wren

CHAPTER 47

Wren was in the darkness, but she was not all the way dead. She could still hear her sister’s sobs, feel the brush of her hair against her skin, smell the roaring fire that surrounded them. But the lightning bolt had rattled her soul loose. One minute Wren was in her body and the next she was above it, peering down on herself from above.

Rose was cradling her, the twins lying together in a heap. The burning branches of the Mother Tree stretched over them, as though in protection. On the other side of the mighty trunk, Oonagh Starcrest lay on her back, staring unseeing at the evening sky. Her eyes were green and glassy, her legs twisted in the dirt. She looked so small and pale now, delicate as a broken doll. Her power had all but drained away, leaving the shell of her body behind.

Behind her, the forest was glowing. The spirits had gathered along the treeline. Wren traced the silvery shapes of her ancestors in the shadows, heard their whispers in the wind.

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