Page 90 of Of Scale and Blood

Am here, Kaia said.We do this, be one.

Kin,I replied, though with far less confidence than she had.

I trusted Damon. I was just... afraid.

He turned to face us, the bowl in his hand. There was no blue, no white, left in his eyes; their color was now the same red as the mist that surrounded him—a mist born of combining our blood with the moon’s power.

For the very first time, I wondered what this spell would costhim.

“You may strip off your clothes now, Bryn.” Though his voice was gossamer soft and impersonal, it echoed loudly through and around me. “Toss your clothes and your weapons beyond the circle, ensuring none of them touch it. Then you must lie prone on Kaia so that your entire length is in contact with her.”

“That is going to be uncomfortable naked,” I commented, nevertheless pushing to my feet.

He didn’t answer. Perhaps he couldn’t, given the power he now exuded.

I stripped off, shivering a little as cold fingers of air curled around my torso, then stepped closer to the stone circle and tossed my clothes beyond it. Once my boots had followed, I turned and studied Kaia. Where did I lie? Her neck and back were out of the question because of all her spines....

Leg,she said, stretching her nearest front leg out just enough that it touched her snout.

I scrambled up onto her claws, then sat down, leaning back against the front of her leg and stretching my legs out to her claws. Her scales were cold and rough against my skin, but I didn’t raise the inner fire to keep myself warm, as I had no idea how that would affect the spell.

Perhapsthatwas one of the questions I should have asked.

“Comfortable?” Damon asked in that same soft but distant voice.

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Then the true spell begins.”

He picked up the second knife and sliced his left arm open, then lowered it, allowing the blood to trickle down his palm and fingers onto the ground. Then he raised the jug and began to spell; with every step, he dribbled our combined blood onto the jewels and the herbs. A vortex of power began to rise, and lightning flashed, fierce and bright. Not across the night sky or its bloody moon, but rather inside me. It burned through muscle, veins, and bone, stretching me, expanding me, making me a being that was more than flesh, a being that was ethereal and translucent, here and yet not.

Pain followed, pain unlike anything I’d felt before. I tried to scream, but in this place of blood and power, fire and fury, I had no voice. There was just the vortex, tearing at me, pulling me apart, drawing the past and the future, my hopes and my fears, my strengths and weakness, accomplishments and failures—all that I was, and all that I could be—from my being and spinning them away, tiny specks of ash lost in a maelstrom of blood and magic.

But I was not the only soul caught in this madness.

Kaia curled around me, a gossamer being made of starlight.Redstarlight that burned like fire.

The vortex’s intensity increased, and the world seemed to scream. Or maybe that was me. It was hard to tell in this place of bloody power.

Starlight began to pull away from my incorporeal being and spun toward Kaia’s, the flow gentle at first but quickly increasing, until it seemed like a flood of light was pouring from me to her. It danced briefly amongst her starlit form, then gradually combined—merged—with the red, becoming one.

Then the vortex shifted direction, and a smaller stream flowed from her incorporeal form into mine. Each star hit like a club, then ran amok through me, burning, destroying, rebuilding.

I screamed, endlessly screamed, into that fiery darkness, but I wasn’t alone. Kaia was here, and she too screamed.

Then the spell reached its pinnacle and exploded, taking me, Kaia, and consciousness with it.

CHAPTER11

Awareness returned slowly,piece by agonizing piece. Every bit of me felt bruised and bloody, like I’d been taken apart piece by piece then haphazardly put back together.

So haphazardly, in fact, that it felt like there were still parts missing.

I instinctively twitched my fingers and toes, and though it hurt like blazes, they all responded. And yet, the notion that things had changed, that things were missing, grew.

I opened my eyes, only to be met with utter darkness. For an instant, panic surged, then the darkness gave way to silver glistening in a sea of black.

Stars, no longer stained by the bloody hue of the moon.

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