Page 137 of Pirate Witch
Reva mumbles a prayer under her lips and steps into the pool. The water turns the same luminous shade as her hair the moment her bare feet breach the surface.
“Lay her in the water,” Reva orders, breaking the heavy, anticipatory silence. “But take her clothes off first. We don’t know what will happen, and I don’t want them to end up burned into her skin if this goes south.”
“It won’t,” Elsie insists, some of her former optimism shining through. Or is that pure stubbornness?
Noster helps Niklaus shrug the long shirt Nilsa is wearing off, exposing the searing red light coming from her back. The two of them lay her in the glowing water—careful not to touch it themselves—and her body floats into the centre of its own accord.
“Did someone bring her athame?” Reva asks.
Valorean steps forward, wordlessly handing her the knife. Reva handles it reverently, pressing the handle into Nilsa’s clasped hands so that the blade is pointed downwards, to her toes.
“It will help connect her with the Goddess,” she explains.
“Before we do this,” Noster says, interrupting the ritual before it’s even begun. “I’d like to request a favour from the High Priestess.”
Reva’s eyes sparkle with unshed tears. “Name it.”
“If this doesn’t work, and Nilsa dies, I want you to send me to the Stars after her.”
Reva hesitates. “I’m not a Shadow.”
“But you are a Lunar High Priestess,” he presses.
She sighs and nods. “Fine. I will.”
“Me too,” I say, before anyone else can stop me.
I’ve had six hundred years of walking this earth without her. Now that I know what my life was missing, I can’t go back to that. I won’t.
“And me,” Casimir echoes.
One by one Rysen, Valorean, and Niklaus all say the same. Reva and Elsie are both crying freely by the time they’ve finished. The tears drip down their cheeks, shining with the reflection of the light from the pool.
I’m not sad in the least. If anything, I feel calmer knowing that, whatever happens, we’ll all be together after this. Whether that’s in Nilsa’s Stars or back on theDeadwood.
Reva raises her arms to the sky. Like all sanctuaries, there’s no roof to impede the view of the Moon, hanging full and glowing in the darkness above.
“Goddess Moon, come to me,” she calls. “Use me as your instrument to reclaim your Shadow…”
Her words are drowned out as the room begins to brighten. My nose is flooded with the scent of clear skies and crisp cold night. As if the witches have bottled the essence of winter and unleashed it upon our senses. With the light comes an unearthly cold, the likes of which makes even my breath mist the air. On top of all that, an ear-piercing ringing noise starts up, slowly growing in volume until I can’t take it any longer. I clamp my hands over my ears, glancing at the others to find they’re doing the same. Even Elsie, who doesn’t have enhanced senses, is struggling to block out the sound.
Reva alone seems unaffected as she splays her hands wide over Nilsa’s floating body. White fire streams from the luminous moon in a bolt that slams into her. Every strand of her short hair flies up to form a halo around her face, as if she’s caught in a static wind only she can feel.
The pool gets brighter and brighter until it’s so blinding that Nilsa is barely visible. It hurts to look, but my aching soul won’t let me tear my gaze away. Only the dark speck which is our mate’s hair and the red glow of her sigils under the water gives us a clue she’s still there. Even that’s blurred by the tears streaming from my eyes.
What is happening in there?
Then Nilsa screams. The sound is so full of torment that Rysen and the twins roar in response. I surge forward, trying to get to her on instinct, only to be flung back against the wall by a stream of white fire which blasts from the pool, catching me in the stomach and winding me.
Whatever the Moon Goddess is up to in her pool, she’s made it clear she doesn’t want to be disturbed. Nilsa’s screams keep going, so full of bloodcurdling pain and terror that it shreds my insides. The sound of her voice mixes with the agonising, high-pitched ringing until my ears begin to bleed and I’m forced to slam my hands back over them once more.
Pulses of energy rock the room. Smashing into our bodies in waves of bone-crumbling force. Any hope I have of getting back to my feet disappears in that instant.
My eyes slide closed, giving up under the onslaught as Reva channels so much magic that my senses are completely overwhelmed.
I can’t say how much time passes. It could be an hour or only seconds. Time and the world beyond this room—which quakes under the force of the divine magic coursing through it—cease to exist.
All I can think of is our tiny, broken mate, caught in the centre of that powerful maelstrom.
