Page 105 of Untethering Dark

Chapter Fifty

A bullet to the chest was nothing compared to the flames that immolated her throat and stole her screams. Summoning cold, Astrid tried to drive her claws into the woman’s hand, icy daggers meant to skewer and rend, but Heldin’s fire magic neutralized the cold, and her flesh resisted, hard as iron.

Too powerful.The final ritual hadn’t leveled the playing field nearly as much as she would’ve liked. She became a hag, yes, but a baby hag against a two-thousand-year-old witch—who’d honed her skills in the Otherworld, driven by revenge and the fight for freedom—was turning out to be no match at all.

Tossing her to the ground, Heldin stepped on Astrid’s throat, heel crushing mercilessly.

White-hot agony blotted out sight and sound. Sucking in air through her nose, and choking on ash,her own scorched flesh, she twisted and clawed at the foot holding her down. Anything to try to throw her off.

Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe.

A terrible, roaring filled her ears, eclipsing all other sound.

Then the pressure on her throat lifted, and she rolled over onto her stomach, gasping and coughing up smoke. Everything was getting hotter. Sweat beaded along her skin, the snow melting beneath her. Clasping her neck, a soundless scream tore through her windpipe as she used the cold to draw out the heat. The pain surged, then passed, her airway and vision clearing.

A towering ring of fire surrounded her, trapping her inside.

The roaring continued as a dark shadow slammed against the flaming barrier, again and again, trying to get inside.Gudariks.

She opened her mouth to call out, but only a raw wheeze escaped. And yet, he heard. Two crimson eyes, brimming with so much fury and anguish, found hers and her heart skipped a beat before it tore in two. He watched her die once already. To see it again...

Gudariks redoubled his efforts, burning his hide raw and bloody, trying to get to her.No, no, no, no, no.Weakened as he was, the effort might kill him.Please, stop.

Words failed in her ravaged throat, so she mouthed them, over and over, begging with her eyes.

As the air grew thick and cloying with smoke, Heldin drew a circle around them, followed by familiar runes painted in blood.

The final hag ritual.

Two thousand years old or not, if Heldin hadn’t been taking hag potion in the days since her resurrection, completing this ritual would kill her. And she was welcome to it. But as far as Astrid could tell, the rune work was correct, and it’d be foolish to assume her enemy didn’t know the rest of the rite.

Astrid crawled toward the edge of the fiery ring, frost limning, then melting on the ground with each drag of her claws. Even if it killed her, she’d get through to the other side.

Heldin would not have her sacrifice.

“Ah, ah, ah.” Astrid was yanked back sharply by one of her new antlers, both jarring the tender flesh atop her head and straining the raw flesh at her neck. Heldin hoisted her to her feet. “I’m not done with you yet.” The words were spoken softly against her ear. Whispered like sweet nothings to a lover, but with a ceremonial dagger pressed to her throat. “How fitting that I undo your mother’s spell with your blood. And how fitting that I take your crown, your power, with this sacrifice. The forest is mine.”

So, this wasn’t just about freedom and revenge. The witch wanted to rule.

Closing her eyes, Astrid tilted her head back, letting Gudariks’s screams and Heldin’s chanting fall into the background. Her arms fell limp at her sides. Fire blazed all around, but not above. There, clouds swirled overhead, the atmospheric moisture beckoning, calling upon its Mistress Winter.

And she was nothing less.

Astrid flipped her hands, palms facing up.

Gusts of frigid air shot down, as unforgiving as a lightning strike, and whipped round and round, kicking up snow and clods of dirt. They buffeted hard against Heldin’s fires, smothering, rather than fueling the flames. The once-towering ring halved in size, then quartered, before flickering and guttering out completely.

And with it, dissipated the winter winds.

“You forgot something,” Heldin snarled into Astrid’s ear, drawing the dagger across her throat and letting go.

It was a lethal cut. The kind that doesn’t just sever the carotid arteries, but goes a little bit deeper to the windpipe, cutting off a scream before it even forms. A cut that leaves its victim gurgling. Seconds before unconsciousness. A minute before massive blood loss and a stopped heart delivers a swift end.

Yet, as Astrid tripped forward, Heldin’s weight at her back vanished, replaced by the splash of something warm. A small smile curled her lips.

Foolish. So foolish.

Heldin’s blade fell to the ground.

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