by Emma Dean
Claire cracked her knuckles, just like Mika did, one at a time as she glared at Mika from across the circle.
“It’s too bad,” Eisheth said, hands in his pockets as he studied Claire. “She could do amazing things with her power, but she’s never been interested in more.”
Sounded like the demon had kept an eye on their family for a long time. Mika supposed it made sense – blood witches were his daughters too.
“If it comes down to it, I want you to yield,” Eisheth told her. “I’m not going to give you false hope. Your sister is extremely powerful. Yield, because even if you lose your clan, you will never lose your family. I won’t let her enslave you.”
The demon turned her toward him, hands on her shoulders. Mika studied the odd cognac color of his eyes and knew this was a father telling his daughter to be careful.
“The Morrigan will flay me alive if I let anything happen to you,” Eisheth said, smiling slightly. “And you will always have a home with me, with Jess…you’re not alone.”
Mika blinked back tears and hugged the demon tight. “Thank you.”
Eisheth cleared his throat and adjusted his cuffs. “Kick her ass, darling.” Then he disappeared, reappearing by Piper’s side.
Just before the circle was finished, one last person came up the hill, a female witch who didn’t look a day over seventy. Her entourage and the necklace she wore told Mika all she needed to know.
The Head Witch, Cassandra Jadis, had arrived.
She supposed it made sense, the first witch challenge since her own.
Mika watched as Cassandra paused beside Claire, leaning down to whisper in her ear. When Claire nodded, Mika’s blood ran cold.
What had her sister gotten mixed up in?
“The circle is complete,” Takahashi announced as Cassandra found a space away from the shifters.
The High Priestess’s voice was loud and clear as she declared, “Let the challenge begin.”
28
“As a reminder, once you step inside the circle, you will not be able to leave until one of you yields or dies,” Takahashi stated, mouth a grim line.
Claire didn’t smirk or laugh. Her face was more serious than Mika remembered seeing it. Ever.
“If neither of you will yield and you refuse to kill your opponent the circle will take both of your lives. This is Ritual, this isn’t a game. Do you understand?”
Mika ignored the grim faces and focused on Claire. “I understand, High Priestess.”
Claire echoed her words and there was no other fanfare. Everyone present was dead silent.
“Step into the circle.” Takahashi moved away from the line, moving into the southern point. Selene gave Mika a nod and then went to stand at the northern point of the circle.
Georgina Magnus stood at the eastern point and the Takahashi matriarch, Aiko, stood at the western point. Witchlights hovered around the circle, obscuring everyone’s faces until they were nothing more than a shadowy crowd.
Mika stepped into the circle at the same time Claire did and the power from the circle raised goosebumps all over. Then the circle closed completely, creating a dome-like structure over the ruins with a glittering purple forcefield.
This was no longer some event in the future. This was happening now, and Mika’s entire life would change the moment the circle dropped even if she won.
“You made a big mistake, little sister,” Claire warned, power already crackling in the palm of her hand. “I’ll let you live if you yield now.”
“And end up married? No thanks.” Mika mentally summoned the power she needed to shield.
Claire grinned viciously. “Be grateful I didn’t choose someone else.”
Shielding still wasn’t Mika’s strong suit, but thanks to Selene it was much improved.
Real battle magic was easier for her though than a simple shield spell. Something about the way the magic was woven made more sense to Mika. It was second nature compared to the struggle she normally had during dodgeball.
Her magic wrapped around her protectively, tight against her skin.
“Just remember, I am exactly what our parents wanted me to be,” Claire told her, looking down at the blood-red magic crackling like lightning in her hand. “You are the one who has constantly disappointed the clan at every opportunity.”
The lightning jumped from Claire’s hand without warning, striking everywhere at once like one of those plasma balls they’d had as kids. It hit Mika with enough force she was flung backward into the circle.
And the circle didn’t break.
Instead it was like hitting a wall – well, a wall that electrocuted you.
Her scream of pain echoed back at her and Mika slumped to the ground, shield shattered to pieces.
Claire stalked toward her with that crackling energy and Mika threw up her hand, shifting the earth beneath Claire’s feet, tripping her up. The power in her palm died and Mika had just enough time to get to her feet before Claire’s next attack.
All that training seemed to fly right out of her head thanks to the shield scrambling her brains. Mika didn’t know whether to shield or attack, but she dodged every spell Claire threw at her.
Which only infuriated her sister more.
“Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?” Claire demanded, conjuring a whip. The thing lashed around Mika’s throat, dragging her to the ground when Claire yanked. “It would have saved us both a lot of pain and heartache.”
She didn’t know why Claire was pretending to care. They’d always had a strained relationship. Everything Mika did was never good enough for Claire, and everything Claire did upset Mika.
Mika struggled to get the whip off her neck, barely able to breathe as Claire yanked again, stalking forward. Another spell was already building in Claire’s other hand and with a whispered word she released it.
Only instinct kept it from landing. Mika forced her mind to focus and she thought the counter-spell, disintegrating the ice shards back into harmless water. She blinked the drops from her eyes and focused on the whip.
It was just energy – crushing, suffocating energy, but that was it.
A little focus and Mika picked at the thread holding the spell together until finally the whip became nothing more than smoke.
She gasped and choked, trying to get air into her lungs. Mika looked up and Claire was watching her with a small smile on her face. “I spent five years at university,” Claire told her. “You can’t possibly beat me.”
Mika flung her hand upward, focusing on the roots in the ground. They shot upward, wrapped around Claire and lifted her off the ground. Her sister’s strangled scream made her grit her teeth, but she didn’t stop.
In one hand she conjured a battle spell that would slice into skin like butter, and the other hand was a camouflage spell. Mika cast both at the same time.
Claire dropped to the ground when the roots were sliced through. The spell sliced into her suit as well, cutting through some of the protective spells and drawing blood.
Whatever Claire had woven into her suit was heavy duty stuff.
Mika circled around, silent as a raven. Before Claire could cast a reveal spell, she summoned that knife made of ice and wrapped one arm around her sister’s throat from behind. The blade was pressed against Claire’s delicate flesh, ready to spill her life force on the earth.
“Yield,” Mika begged, breathing hard.
Claire laughed, blood dripping down her cheek from the shallow cut. “You’re adorable.” She gripped Mika’s wrist with her bare hand and at first nothing happened.
Then a pain unlike anything she’d ever experienced before rippled through her body, starting from her wrist. It was worse than hellfire, worse than broken bones, and Mika screamed.
The spell she’d had ready released violently and Claire batted it away like it was nothing.
Mika dropped to her knees, still screaming, throat raw and bloody as the pain overloaded her senses. She couldn’t think, couldn’t shield, couldn’t break contact. H
er whole world was the excruciating sensation that seemed to keep growing, getting worse while Claire held onto her.
Her sister turned, tightening her grip on Mika’s wrist and another wave of pain slammed into her. Mika suddenly couldn’t see thanks to the sparks behind her eyes.
“Yield, Mika.”
Claire sent another wave and this time her scream destroyed whatever was left of her vocal cords. There was no more sound as Mika’s throat rasped, trying to eject sound anyway.
She nearly choked on the blood that poured down her throat.
“You thought you were so special,” Claire whispered, her lips suddenly against Mika’s ear. “You thought you were the only one.”
The pain lessened for a moment and Mika lurched forward, vomiting up blood from the taste of it, but she still couldn’t see. The dirt under her hands was rough and slimy with what smelled like more of her blood as it dribbled from her mouth and nose and ears.
“But how could you be the only one when the trait is genetic?” Claire mused as if she hadn’t just crippled Mika. “Elizabeth had the same sense of self-importance and everyone overlooked poor Annie. But I wasn’t going to let that happen to me.”
Mika tried to speak, tried to ask how Claire knew, but no sound came, just a pitiful croak.
The air shifted and she knew Claire had knelt beside her. A finger under her chin lifted her face upward, but still all Mika could see was white stars. “How are you going to win if you can’t cast?” Claire asked.
Mika couldn’t gather her thoughts long enough to mentally conjure anything, not when every time she thought she could try, Claire sent another crippling wave of pain through her body.
She could barely hear the shouts of those outside the circle, cheering for her death, or yelling for her to do something, she didn’t know. The shield dampened sound too much and the ringing in her ears pretty much guaranteed it was all nonsense.
Mika was alone in this cage with her sister.
“How are you going to yield with no voice?” Claire mused, her tinkling laughter so at odds with the pain she sent through Mika again. “It doesn’t matter really. If you begged me, I’d restore your voice. I have that power.”
A gentle touch on Mika’s throat and the pain there eased, the stars receded ever so slightly, and she could see a fuzzy version of her sister. “You’re not the only blood witch Mika.”
29
A blink as her brain tried to process. All she could manage was a raspy, “Why? How?”
Why hadn’t her sister told her? Why hadn’t she said anything after Mika showed up with a dress covered in blood? If Claire knew, had their mother?
Why hadn’t anyone told her?
“I stumbled on the truth after a blood dream,” Claire told her, tilting her head ever so slightly. “Seems as though whatever made us forget is starting to wear off. I didn’t tell you because why would I? You’ve never approved of anything I do.”
Claire stood and offered Mika her hand. “Do you yield?”
Did her sister want to somehow come back from this? How could they? She’d let Mika flounder and drown for the last three years and for what? “I don’t understand.” The words hurt more than she’d anticipated, but Mika had to know.
Claire shrugged with that snotty smirk on her face. “If I had told you, I might have a challenger. I’ve worked my ass off my whole life to rule this clan. And then grandmother gave you the heirloom box,” she spat, hand dropping. “I’m tired of you taking what’s mine. Do you know what I’ve had to do for every scrap of knowledge I possess? You’re not taking this from me too.”
A wave of her hand and all the bones in Mika’s hand shattered.
Claire was a blood witch.
What was the point of winning now? Her sister had known what she was, what Mika was, and chose to let her drown in her darkest hour. She’d done nothing about Brad. Done nothing about Mika’s block. She’d abandoned her own flesh and blood.
What else did Claire know that Mika didn’t? What other spells could she perform that would no doubt break her even further?
Tears streamed down her face and her entire body just…stopped, giving up. Mika slumped to the ground, lying in her own blood as she cradled her hand to her chest.
“As much as I don’t like it, I still need you. There are only two of us left and we need more Marshall witches. Yield Mika, and I’ll leave you alone as long as you provide the clan with potential heirs.” Claire inspected her nails and waited.
She could yield and live that life she’d thought she’d have once, when she was young and naive. Mika would be living a lie, but was it worse than dying?
Corbin and Armad were right there against the shield with Lucien and Ethan. Whatever they were yelling at her she couldn’t hear. But Audrey was yelling in Lucifer’s face, finger pointed right at him as she no doubt tried to get him to interfere.
If she agreed to Claire’s proposition, she would lose all of them. But the contract wasn’t signed with her blood. She could just…run away. Claire would never find her in the foxes’ den or the ravens’ eyrie.
Even though she was alone, even though Claire had abandoned her and only wanted her for breeding, Mika still had a family. She didn’t need high society or a clan to be happy.
But she would be giving up. Claire would take their family home, their clan, and perpetuate the problem unto the next generation and the next. Whatever she was doing with Cassandra…it couldn’t be good.
Was Mika really that selfish? Could she leave the rest of the witch world to whatever it was those two were cooking up?
Could she leave Selene to their machinations?
Selene was family too, wasn’t she?
Mika found Kenzie’s vibrant red hair and studied the scars on her body. Kenzie couldn’t do it all alone and neither could Selene.
She then found Eisheth who looked more disheveled than she’d ever seen him. His mouth was a grim line and his eyes were narrowed, probably calculating how he could interfere and get away with it.
Then there was Cassandra, smiling slightly at her protégé.
If Mika could win this challenge, maybe she could help Claire. Maybe she could help her sister out of whatever it was she was trying to do with Cassandra. Maybe if Mika had told Claire what had really happened to that human she’d killed three years ago, they would have bonded over a shared power no one else had.
Maybe she could have done better too.
Mika wiped the blood from her mouth and whispered the word Corbin had taught her. She disappeared into the shadow realm and the glittering black shroud wrapped around her comfortingly, like a mother with a warm blanket trying to ease her child’s pain.
It allowed her to breathe a little deeper as she struggled to her feet. Mika had to talk some sense into Claire, and she couldn’t do that if she was dying. Walking the two feet toward her sister was the most physically grueling thing she’d ever done in her life. Then Mika stepped out of the shadow realm with her conjured knife.
A slash and Claire’s blood ran down her arm. Mika hated this part of what she was, but she didn’t know what else to do.
Claire’s eyes widened as Mika licked the blood from her knife.
Instantly it went to work, repairing the damage Claire had done.
“I guess we’re done pretending,” Mika managed. “You’re a blood witch, but there’s so much more out there than you know.”
Her sister glared and reached for Mika again, but she saw it coming this time and side-stepped as her body repaired itself. Another slash on Claire’s other arm, a twin to the first.
Again, she licked the blood, hating herself for this. “I can help you learn what we are,” Mika told Claire. “But I need you to understand exactly what that means. What Cassandra has to do with it.”
Claire twisted her fingers and Mika’s kneecap shattered.
She bit back the scream this time as she fell to one knee, the blood she’d consumed already working on the broken bones. Claire wasn�
��t listening and she couldn't afford any more mistakes.
Mika closed her eyes and set a circle around her and her sister. Another word and it was black. No one could see them. Before Claire could say or do anything, she twisted her fingers in the combination she needed, thinking the words with razor sharp focus.
One look was all it took to bring Claire to her knees. “What are you doing?” her sister demanded. “How are you doing this?”
“I’m sure it would be hard to beat you with nothing but normal magic,” Mika told her, waiting for the pop that meant her knee was done healing. “But I just spent the last week training in a fox den with more books on blood magic than you could find out here in a lifetime. Let me help you.”
Claire struggled to stand, clawing at her legs, so Mika twisted her fingers again and Claire’s hands whipped behind her back. “What is this?” Claire hissed.
Mika sighed and wiped the blood from her mouth.
She was so tired.
“As a blood witch I can control the blood in living creatures. That includes you since you’re untrained when it comes to shielding against this kind of stuff. There’s also a permanent spell to prevent it,” Mika explained, lifting her sleeve to show Claire the sigil she’d carved into her wrist that morning. “Yield, Claire.”
Without her hands, Claire couldn’t conjure or cast. She hadn’t spent years compressing spells down like Mika had. She’d relied on brute force and power her whole life.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Mika warned. She got up and shook out her knee, wincing at the second pop as it finished healing. “Yield and let me help you.”
“You think you’re so special,” Claire spat. “With your assassin and your boyfriends. But you can’t lead. All you want to do is disrupt a system that has worked for the last two hundred years.”
“And enslaved us,” Mika reminded her. “Who gains from the marriage contracts? What does Cassandra gain from implementing them?”
Claire blinked at that, but she shook her head in denial. “It doesn’t matter. It works now.”
“Just let me help you,” Mika said, taking a step closer to Claire.