Page 71 of The Crow Games

Liesel couldn’t truly be gone.

Lisbeth couldn’t really be gone.

Emma fell to her knees and wept.

I stood over her, powerless to help, crying my own useless tears for my sister. It might as well have been Lisbeth’s broken body clutched in her arms, limp and lifeless.

The beast was circling back.

“We have to go,” I told her. “I’ll help you carry her.”

“No,” Emma said. She set her sister down and kissed her forehead, tears dripping off her chin.

“We can’t stay,” I whispered. The beast was closing in now.

“You go,” she said, voice hollow, eyes blank.

I didn’t go. I didn’t move. She rose to her feet, found a long limb she liked, and broke it off from the oak tree that had claimed her sister. With her connection to the earth, she fashioned it into a sharp spear as tall as she was, the wood glittering green and bending to her spell.

Fueled by the sorrow I saw mirrored in Emma, fueled by the loss of my coven sister and the grief trying to burn a hole through my chest, my spirit boiled within me. I called it to my hands, let it turn them gray, let little tendrils of spirit seep from my fingertips in foggy wisps.

We would be the beast’s retribution together. Emma looked ready to murder the world.

When the creature came charging, we didn’t back down. A surge of gray took the brunt of his strike, knocking the beast off his path, sending him sideways into a collection of spruce trees. Emma kept on him, stabbing at his belly, swinging for the bear-like face with her unnatural strength.

He reared up onto his hind legs. I leapt for the beast, reaching into his knee joint. He was so tall standing, his knee was as high as I could get. I tore at tendon and tissue. He roared and fell, landing with a crash that shook the earth and sent me sprawling onto the forest floor. I cut my palm open on a rock and sliced my brow against a branch. Pain, sharp and stinging, left me hissing for breath.

I surged back to my feet, battered and shaken, looking for my next opening.

Emma stabbed the beast in his snout. He swiped at her with his devastating claws, tearing into her front, but Emma kept standing. I dove toward the beast’s belly and shoved my hands inside.

Her next strike went straight through the creature’s blind eye. The beast fell silent. He thrashed once and died, his spirit gone from his body before I could grab hold of it. Emma collapsed. A scream ripped from my throat, one sure to bring the forest full of garm after us.

I climbed over the creature’s carcass and found Emma in a heap on the ground. Her eyes were open and wild, her torn clothing soaked through with her own blood.

“Take me to her,” she begged.

“I shouldn’t move you,” I said. I didn’t know where to begin to help her, pressing my palms high on her chest and low on her belly where the bleeding seemed worse, but more crimson rivulets dripped from her clothing.

She coughed her life force into my face, her complexion turning pallid. Her teeth were pink with blood. “Take me to Liesel,” she rasped.

I lifted her under her arms and dragged her to her sister. Liesel wasn’t far. I placed her sister’s hand in hers.

“I got him,” Emma told her.I got him, she mouthed the words. And then her head tipped back and her mouth fell open. The light left her eyes.

I knew not what to do for them. Eyes burning and blurry, I gathered stones and heavy limbs and covered them as best I could. It was fortunate no garm came to disturb me after that. I would have ripped their soul out of their chest and eaten it, evil or not. In that moment, I was ready to be wicked.

I wanted to burn down the Otherworld and everyone in it.

But I was alone here.

Just as quickly as the thought came to me, my strength left me and I sagged. “I’m so sorry, Emma . . .”

I never should have made a promise to her. A part of me had always known it was empty words.

My knees threatened to buckle as I carried myself through the trees, back toward the black lake. By the time I reached its rocky shore, Emma’s blood had dried under my nails and between the cracks of my palms.

I was tired to the bone. The sort of tired that pierced the soul and sapped me of spirit.

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