by Erin Hayes
He leaned in and pressed his lips hard against hers.
Julia’s entire body lit up and the clouds above released a torrent of the heaviest rains she had ever felt.
She pulled her lips away from his, away from where they belonged and whispered, “Okay.”
Julia snapped back into the world of the living, aching a little as she realized what she had left behind.
Still, she took solace in the fact that Roman had probably woken, too. And he was safe, which meant he had actually managed to live through the nonsense of earlier.
Everything was clear in her mind. Julia remembered all that Roman had told her, and her mind was spinning with the revelations.
The fact that Cassandra and Paris were actively working toward Julia’s demise sent spikes of pain into her heart. But it also set her mind to working.
Things had been going on under the surface ever since Julia came back, and she needed to get to the bottom of it. Now that she knew what was going on, she could work to stop it. But she needed to be careful. Cass was obviously a force to be reckoned with, and Julia didn’t want to tip her hand too early. She needed every advantage she could get, including the element of surprise.
Julia saw that she had been moved to her bedroom, still wearing her wedding dress. The ruffles of her dress bunched as she sat up but fell back down as she stood.
There was no noise coming through the walls, which likely meant that the brunt of the battle was over. But how long had she been unconscious? Had they thought she was dead and, if so, why move her into her room?
Julia pushed those questions out of her mind. There were so many more necessary questions to consider right now, so many more pressing matters.
She moved toward the door, surprised at how loopy she was, at how much her head was spinning.
She had to move past this. There was so much more at stake than she had ever imagined. She yearned for the times when she thought the only thing that mattered was her relationship with Roman. She certainly knew better than that now.
If Cassandra was allowed to take over the Moon Coven, she would become one of the most powerful witches in all of the world. And, given that Julia had an idea what her true motives were, that couldn’t be allowed to happen.
Julia didn’t want to be head of her family. The Moon Coven had always looked like a burden to her, something that held her back from the things she really wanted in her life and the person she was capable of being. But none of that mattered now. The world was at stake. Her family’s legacy was at stake. Everything she knew and had ever known to be true was at stake.
She didn’t want to be a leader but, like it or not, she was one. She had no choice.
No sooner had this realization dawned on her that the voices of the ancestors chimed back to life in her ears. They were louder this time, clearer. For the first time in forever, Julia could make out the words as they whispered.
And they were cheering her on.
Words of encouragement bounced around her head, facilitated by the most powerful leaders the Moon Coven had ever known. And more than that, they gave her their spells. One at a time, and sometimes all at once, they told her their hard-earned secrets. The spells and magic they had spent years and years perfecting were now piped into Julia’s consciousness.
They were hers. And finally, it all made sense. The ancestors knew. They must have known. They must have looked at Cassandra and seen the truth that had alluded Julia for who knew how many years. They must have seen inside Cass’s heart and knew how lacking it had always been, how cold and hard she was on the inside.
Julia had always been the ancestors’ choice. The voices were proof enough of that, and now that Julia was finally through ignoring them, they would provide her with enough firepower to undo her mistakes of weakness and indifference.
If she was lucky.
Julia steeled herself and started out of the room. She was a Fairweather, a damn good witch in the greatest line the world had ever seen. It wasn’t going to end like this. She would make damn sure of that.
She walked into the common area. It was full of witches from both covens, all of them milling around. The defeat that colored them was palpable. This had been a hell of a fight, a hell of a battle. And it was clear that not all of them had made it out alive.
She shuddered, thinking of the costs of this fight. Still, Mother, Grandfather, and Uncle Jasper all seemed to be intact, sitting around the main dining room table.
Paris and Cassandra also seemed to have made it out in one piece. That didn’t surprise Julia. In her experience, that sort of evil had to be taken down in a much more meticulous manner.
But now was not the time. Even with the ancestors filling her head with spells, Cassandra was a formidable opponent. And this place was full of witches who very likely had nothing to do with this nonsense. Throwing them into another fight, especially another fight Julia wasn’t sure she could win, wasn’t in anyone’s best interest.
Instead, she plastered on the sort of tapered-down smile one wears while trying to make the best of things during a crisis.
“You’re awake,” Cassandra said, eyeing Julia as she strode in, wedding dress and all. “Thank God.”
It took all Julia could do not to launch toward the bitch. Instead, she nodded, tapering her voice as she responded. “Yeah,” she answered. “I must have hit my head or something.”
“No. It was more than that,” Cassandra said. “Your heart was still. Your breath was silent. We thought you were dead, and we would have truly believed it if Grandfather hadn’t managed to sense how strong your aura still was.” Cassandra pursed her lips. “I saw the Blackwood boy around you. I think he was the one who cast the spell. He must have been trying to kill you. Guess we don’t always know people the way we think we do.”
Was she really doing this? Was she trying to paint Roman as a traitorous killer when she had been the cause of all of this?
Julia’s blood boiled. “Oh, I think that’s an understatement, Cassandra. Were the casualties severe?”
“Always, my dear,” Grandfather said, motioning for Julia to come and sit.
Hesitantly, she made her way to the table.
They had no idea. They really thought Cassandra and Paris were victims in all of this. That couldn’t be allowed to go on, but outing them publicly with so little to go on would only make things worse and risk the lives of anyone nearby. Enough had died for this.
“We should send these people home,” Julia said, sitting between Grandfather and her mother. “If it’s safe to do so, I mean.”
“No, no,” Cassandra said, peering at Julia from across the table. “That’s really unnecessary. After all, they came here for a wedding, and that’s what we should give them.”
“What?” Julia’s hands balled into fists on the table. “You’re not serious. Certainly you don’t expect us to go through with a wedding after everything that’s happened?”
“I absolutely do.” Cassandra used a tone that said she thought Julia was the crazy one. “This wedding is happening for a reason. We need to solidify this bond. It’ll make us stronger. It’ll steel us from any future attacks from the Blackwoods.”
“It didn’t steel us now,” Julia answered. “Every witch in the Northern hemisphere is here, and they still handed our asses to us.”
Cassandra leaned across the table, pretense falling from her face a little. “You’re not making any sense, Julia,” she said. “Perhaps the stress is starting to get to you. Like it did last year.”
“That’s enough,” Grandfather said, glaring at Cass.
“It definitely is not enough,” Cassandra spit back, in an unheard of show of disrespect to the coven’s sitting head—not to mention her own blood.
Grandfather reared back, ready to undoubtedly give her the scolding of a lifetime.
“Don’t even start,” Cassandra said. “This is about the future, Grandfather. A future that you have no part to play in. This is what’s necessary for the cove
n, for us to survive. And, should you decide to let your bleeding heart and soft spot for Julia give you unwarranted and destructive pause, I’ll have to override you.”
“Are you insane?” Julia asked, standing to her feet. “You don’t run this coven yet, and if you keep flapping your mouth like this, you never will.” She leaned across the table herself now. “So let me make this easy for you. I am not getting married today. I perhaps am not getting married ever.” She looked over at Paris. “At least not to him. And you can prop me up on that altar all you want, but we both know that, without my true consent, no magical bonds can be forged.” She slammed her palms down on the table. “That’s it!”
“Is it?” Cassandra asked, standing and letting her eyes go dark. “Is that it, Cousin Julia? Because I don’t think it is.”
“Don’t test me,” Julia warned, the voices of the ancestors blaring in her ears.
“Oh, I would never. Who would ever test the perfect Julia Fairweather? The girl who is always loved, who is always forgiven?” She shook her head. “I’m not testing you at all.”
Cassandra twisted her hand, and Julia’s mother began to glow, going stiff as a board.
“Cassandra, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Julia said, looking over at her mother and lunging toward the woman.
“Cassandra!” Uncle Jasper yelled. “Stop this right—”
Cassandra twisted her hand again, and Jasper fell unconscious.
“This is how it’s going to work, Julia,” Cassandra said, glaring at her. “And if the old man does anything to stop it,” she said, looking over at Grandfather, “I’ll kill half the people in this room. What I’ve placed on your mother is called a ticking paradox. Twenty-four hours from the instant she began to glow, the paradox will kill her. Unless, of course, I stop it, which won’t happen until after I see you walk down the aisle and give your true consent to marry Paris. Oh, yes,” she said, snapping her fingers. “It’s going to hurt like a bitch until you do.”
Julia’s mother screamed as she crumpled to the floor.
“Cassandra! Stop this!” Julia yelled.
“You stop it, Julia,” she shot back. “You’re the only one who can.” She began toward the door. “Twenty-four hours, Juju. Don’t make me wait too long.”
Cassandra swept out the door, effortless and breezy.
“There has to be a way to undo this,” Julia said, looking up at Grandfather, who had made his way to the floor beside his daughter.
“The paradox is unbreakable, my dear,” he answered. “I’m afraid she’s right. She placed it. Only she can take it away.”
Julia’s eyes filled with tears. Looking at her mother, at the pain she was in, she knew what she needed to do.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, kissing her mother’s forehead. “But I’ll fix it. I swear I’ll fix it.”
Julia ran to the only place she knew, to the only family she had left.
It must have seemed strange to the Blackwoods when the bride whose wedding they had just ruined came rushing to them for asylum with tears in her eyes.
Even if they hadn’t just taken part in destroying half of her family’s ancestral home and ripping apart what was supposed to be one of the most pivotal moments of her coven’s existence, she was still the enemy. She was still a Fairweather and, even in the best of times, it would have been enough to deny her entry.
Her entry was not denied, though. Instead, she found a family almost in as much shambles as her own.
“Still in her gown,” Roman’s father said as he caught sight of Julia. The man looked worn and defeated as he nursed a cup of coffee along with several members of the Blackwood coven at their kitchen table. “Have you come for revenge or just to gloat?”
“Gloat?” Julia asked, narrowing her eyes.
Before the old man had a chance to answer, April rushed up through the back kitchen entrance.
As she neared Julia, her father spoke up. “Be careful, darling. She looks like a woman at the end of her rope. Those can be quite dangerous.”
“You have no idea,” Julia answered in a low, flat voice.
The ancestors had quieted themselves, as they did anytime she was outside the walls of her home. But she still felt them and, more than that, she still remembered everything they said. She knew the spell to rip this place inside out. She knew the incantation that would leave these people unable to speak for the rest of their natural born lives. She could do anything she wanted, anything but save her mother from the agony she was now going through. Magic wouldn’t do that. At least not her own. No. In order to procure that favor, she was going to have to give something else, something much more valuable.
But she couldn’t do that without seeing him first. It wouldn’t be right.
“It’s fine, Father,” April said, looping her arm through Julia’s. “There are a lot of things about this world that scare me, but this woman is definitely not one of them.”
She gave her father a curt nod and pulled Julia away from the kitchen.
“I think those are the most words me and your father have even exchanged,” Julia said, grinning at April.
“Lucky,” her friend answered. “Are you okay? Is your family all right? I didn’t know that was going to happen. I swear, if I did, I’d have warned you guys.”
“I know that, and I’m not mad. Whether they knew it or not, your family was stopping me from making a huge mistake. They were saving my family’s coven.”
“Explain,” April demanded as they whipped back and forth through winding hallways.
When Julia was finished with her longwinded explanation, she saw that April’s mouth had fell open.
“Okay. So that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” She ran her hands through her hair and blinked a few times, as if still taking it all in. “Not that it surprises me too much. I never liked Cassandra. Even as a kid, she gave me bad vibes. Wouldn’t share her play dough and all that.”
“All that matters now is stopping her.”
“Oh my God,” April said, looking over at Julia with sadness in her eyes. “You’re going to do it, aren’t you? You’re going to marry that putz.”
“Come on, April. You know it’s not that simple.”
“Of course it is,” she said. “And maybe it should be. You’re going to sacrifice yourself to save your mother’s life.”
“And you’re going to tell me that she wouldn’t want me doing that?” Julia asked.
“No,” April answered, shaking her head. “I mean, no offense, but that’s probably exactly what your mother would want you to do. But people don’t get to decide who sacrifices what. Keep that in mind, okay?”
They settled in front of a door at the end of the hallway. April pushed it open.
Immediately, Julia saw him. Roman lay in bed with covers up to his shoulders and sweat running from his brow.
“He never woke up,” Julia whispered, swallowing tears.
“They found him beside you,” April said. “But you’re awake now. I mean, that spells hope for him, too, right?”
She didn’t sound so sure, and Julia wasn’t, either.
They entered the room and, the closer they got, the paler Roman looked.
“He should have been up by now,” Julia said quietly. “What happened to him?”
“Did he give you a bottle?” April asked, looking from her brother to his true love. “We found a bottle beside you guys and there was traces of a powerful sedative potion in there.”
“Yeah, but I’m the one who drank it. It doesn’t have anything to do with him.”
“Except maybe it does,” April said. “The potion is too powerful to be broken, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be transferred. He took it from you, Julia. That’s the reason you’re awake right now.” April blinked hard. “It’s also the reason he’s not.”
“What?” Julia asked, her heart plummeting. “But I thought—”
April sighed. “Julia.” She stopped, blinked back tears. S
he shook her head as if she didn’t want to say the next part. But she did. “Julia, that potion…it’s what killed my mom.”
Julia stumbled a few steps back. Stay calm. She couldn’t freak out now. That wouldn’t fix anything. Lucky for her, that was exactly how she was wired. She had a way of freaking out about the small stuff, but keeping it together when disaster struck.
But this…this was more than a disaster.
“What do we do?” Julia asked, trying to keep her voice steady, if not for April’s sake than for her own.
“Nothing we can do,” April said, placing a soothing hand on Julia’s shoulder. “It has to run its course.” She bit her lip. “For about fifty years.”
“What?” Julia nearly shouted. “That can’t be right!”
“But he’s alive,” April said, offering a small smile. “I mean, a lot of people don’t even live through it, so that’s a good thing.”
Nothing about this sounded like a good thing. As she sighed, sinking against the bedroom wall, a thought sparked in her mind. Something one of the ancestors said, whispered into her ear back at the manor.
“I might be able to help,” she said, a smile almost touching her lips. She hurried back to Roman’s side and climbed in bed next to him, shut her eyes, and spit off a spell to send her into an immediate dream state, hoping she would find him.
And if she did, and if he couldn’t come back with her, then she would sleep forever by his side.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The instant Julia left him, so did the field. Iowa melted away into the background, taking its kind skies and kinder sceneries with it. Replacing it was something much less inviting, something much less open and warm.
“This place,” Roman said, staring off the edge of a roof…the same roof he nearly jumped from right after Julia left.
And now she had left again. She had done what he asked of her. Of course, he hadn’t told her that he wouldn’t be able to follow. To do that would be to seal her fate.