Page 125 of A Resistance of Witches

Lydia did. The panic in her heart subsided.

She was about to speak, when she felt a strange sensation come over her—not the breathless terror she’d felt just a moment before, but ahigh-frequency whine, like a ringing in her ears. She shook her head, trying to clear it, but the ringing remained. Evelyn’s brow furrowed.

“Love?”

Lydia turned, her eyes darting around the chamber, every cell in her body tuned to the unseen threat. It was the book, she realized. It was calling to her, alerting her to danger, but what, she couldn’t see. The whining became more forceful, shaking her bones, aching in her teeth. She let go of Evelyn’s hands and went to stand over the book, peering all around the room, but saw nothing. She felt the ringing building like a migraine, higher and higher, the crushing intensity becoming unbearable, and then, and then—

Silence. The ringing stopped.

She smelled rain.

The knife was in her hand before she understood why.

Ursula appeared like a wraith in the ceremonial chamber, wet clothes and hair clinging to her porcelain skin, mere feet from where Lydia stood. Her hair was soaked through on one side with blood, and the promise of violence rose off her like steam, curdling in the air.

And then the horrifying realization struck Lydia like a skipped heartbeat.The wine. Ursula drank the wine.

Ursula took in the scene in an instant—the ash that covered everything. The ruin that had come to her coven. Her grand mistress, bound and struggling. Lydia watched as Ursula’s eyes narrowed, and she lunged for Lydia, knife drawn.

Lydia sidestepped, but too late, and felt the blade arc across her rib cage, so sharp the pain felt almost like ice. Ursula snarled a word of power, and Lydia felt her body still, the magic in her veins going deathly quiet. She tried to fight back, but The Unmaking had sapped her strength. Ursula grinned, closing the distance between them with long, swift strides, while Lydia stood as still as a statue, her blade gripped uselessly in her hand.

“Lydia,move!” Evelyn shouted.

Evelyn’s command slid inside Lydia’s skin, driving Ursula’s spell out with a force that made her bones shake. Ursula raised her blade, aiming for her heart, and Lydia did not allow herself to think. She took Ursula by the back of the neck, driving the knife up and under her ribs until she felt the hilt meet flesh.

Ursula gasped, an empty, rattling sound, her mouth already filling with blood. Lydia held her tight as she struggled, her eyes so blue they looked inhuman. Ursula was shockingly strong, but Lydia held on, gripping her in a close embrace as the life seeped out of her. Her lips moved, shaping the same desperate syllables over and over again as she tried to summon one last spell, but the words of power shriveled and died on her lips. Her eyes began to swim, losing their focus.

“Ursula. Look at me,” Lydia said.

Ursula did, the lucidity snapping back for one brief moment. She bared her bloodred teeth, defiant.

Lydia bent closer. “I told you.”

She freed the knife from Ursula’s body and slit her throat. Blood poured from the wound, a sea of red engulfing her ivory neck. Lydia stepped back, and Ursula collapsed to the marble and was still.

“Nooooooo!”

Lydia looked up and saw Sybil, mouth open in a howl, screaming in horror at the death of her protégé as her blood spread across the marble floor.

And then the whole world lurched to a halt.

Sybil was holding Evelyn.

“What have you done?” Sybil screamed. Ash covered her dress and her face. It clung to her hair, making her look wild and unnatural. She was gripping Evelyn tight against her with one arm, Evelyn’s back pressed against Sybil’s chest like a shield. Evelyn’s face looked all wrong—her eyes were dazed, her lips pressed tight in a pained grimace. “You’ve betrayed your own coven! You murdered them all!”

Lydia understood then with awful certainty, fear seizing her in a viselike hold: Ursula’s spell had paralyzed more than Lydia’s body. It had stilled her magic, freeing Sybil from its grasp.

And now Sybil had her mother.

“Agonna ban!” Lydia called, but Sybil was ready, countering the spell with a word of power that sounded like a serpent’s hiss. “Astyffn ban!” Lydia tried again, but Sybil batted that away as well.

“Evil, ungrateful bitch!” Sybil shrieked. “After everything I’ve done for you! Do you know the punishment for witches who betray their covens?”

They burn them, Lydia thought. It had been more than a hundred years since such a thing had happened. But she knew. Everyone did.

She felt the air crackle around them as Sybil readied her next word of power, and panic scrabbled at her heart as she realized which spell Sibyl intended to call down. Lydia had never uttered the words, they were forbidden, only to be called upon in the most dire of cases, but she knew them well. She’d learned them in her history lessons. They all had.

Fyora Grymm.

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