Consort of Light

by Eva Chase

  My heart thumped fast in my chest as I watched her pale figure on the road, so slight compared to that hulking monster. This was the hard part. She had to force that thing across the long yard of the Frankfords’ property and into that cave, and the other witches might not be able to help her much at all.

  She’d said she was going to ask the other witches to distract it, and they were definitely holding up that end of the deal. Light quavered across the demon’s back and haunches, making it lurch and gnash its teeth. As it swiped toward the edge of the road where the witches were well out of reach, Rose threw a burst of magic at it. The wind whistled, and the creature tumbled across the road and into the yard, heading toward the Frankfords’ house there.

  But only part of the way. It leapt up with another of those guttural snarls and sprang back at Rose. With a slash of her arms, she managed to deflect it and shove it back, but it landed a little closer to her and the enforcers again. She heaved, and it skidded another few paces toward the Cliff. It roared and flung its massive body toward her with a crackling of its unearthly energy that rattled the roots of my teeth.

  They pushed back and forth like that a few more times, the demon gaining a little ground back and losing it and gaining it again. Even in the dim light, a sheen of sweat glinted on Rose’s face. Her chest heaved with panted breaths. My own lungs constricted.

  It was wearing her down. The witches were still tossing their own flashes of magic at the creature, but its attention was solely focused on Rose now, and she couldn’t force it across all that terrain while it was fighting her every step of the way.

  The demon tried to dodge to the side, around Rose, and she hurled it back again—but its claws dug into the packed dirt of the road, holding it from sliding farther. Its opaque gaze swiveled toward the witches beyond her.

  It’d go to the Cliff, all right, but only if it had bodies it could break over the rocks there, blood it could spill for its own power. Rose was strong… but that thing might be stronger.

  My hands itched for something—a pistol, a bazooka, a missile launcher, I’d take whatever—even though I knew with dread curled around my stomach that I couldn’t have helped her no matter what weaponry I had in my hands. Bullets and bombs would bounce right off it.

  So that was it? All we could do was stand here and watch as the last hope this world had fell apart? Wait for that thing to spray all our blood across the Cliff?

  At the final thought, I found myself glancing down at my hand. At the starburst of a scar where I’d mingled my blood with Rose’s, offering my soul in return for hers. A chill flooded me.

  She needed distractions. She needed that monster by the Cliff. And it wanted a victim to slaughter.

  I couldn’t fight it like a lion. Did I have it in me to be the lamb?

  Nausea pooled in my gut, but at the same time my jaw clenched with cold resolve. Someone had to do something, or we were going to lose everything. And I trusted Rose. I’d trusted her with my heart, with my life, with my soul. Compared to everything we’d already been through, offering myself up like this was barely anything at all. I knew she’d get me through it.

  Gabriel must have caught a hint of my intention in my face. “Damon,” he started, frowning.

  I met his eyes, and a wild grin twisted my mouth. With a jerk of my hand, I snapped a branch off the sapling. “I’ll be right back,” I said, and bolted for the road.

  Someone else called my name, but my pounding feet didn’t falter. I tore across the road and onto the grass of the yard, pushing myself faster with every stride.

  When I passed the house, I figured I had enough of a head start to make it to my goal. I let out a whoop in case the demon hadn’t noticed me yet and scraped the broken end of the narrow branch across my palm.

  Blood welled up along the stinging line. I kept running, tossing the stick aside, holding my hand to the air in the hopes the breeze would carry the scent the creature was craving to it.

  My stomach had balled into a knot, but I focused my mind down to two thoughts. The witches had used their blood to hold the demons at bay—the blood I gave freely couldn’t help it. And Rose would come for me, for it, before it had a chance to use a single drop in my body for its own ends.

  Another roar sounded behind me, but this one sounded almost eager. So eager my bones shivered at the sound. I threw myself forward even faster, past the scattered line of trees, out to the rocky ground at the edge of the Cliff.

  The salty wind smacked my face. I dropped down by the start of the path leading down that stone face, letting myself slump on the ground, pathetic and vulnerable. And with a lurch of the ground, the demon came charging to take me.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Rose

  I heard the shouts and caught a blur of motion down the road from the corner of my eye, but I felt Damon’s mad dash toward the Cliff down to the pit of my spark. One of my consorts was flinging himself into danger. Laying his life on the line.

  The awareness ripped through me—and the demon’s head turned. For the last several minutes, it had been completely focused on getting past me to the witches I was blocking it from snatching up, but Damon had caught its attention. Its opaque eyes narrowed and its crooked nostrils flared. My gut lurched, but at the same time I understood.

  This was what Damon had wanted. He was playing bait like we’d meant to have the faction’s witches do. Only there wasn’t any trap here, just the Cliff—the Cliff where the fate of the entire world might rest on my reaching him in time.

  The demon pushed away from the road with a roar, hurtling in the direction I’d spent the last several minutes trying to shove it. I couldn’t be completely happy about that now. I threw myself after the fiend.

  My feet smacked the matted grass of the yard, my breath raw in my throat. My limbs were already aching from all the magicking I’d thrown at it so far. But I had to dredge up more. Somewhere inside me, I had to find the power to see this last gambit through.

  With a flick of my hands, I sent energy to my feet to speed each step along. The demon barreled between two of the trees near the edge of the Cliff, smashing them onto their sides with a shower of bark shards. I raced after it, pulling more and more light and warmth from my spark to the edges of my body. I might only get one chance to do this right.

  Damon was sprawled on the rocks right by the cliffside. The glowing balls of magic my fellow witches had left floating through the air turned his skin a sickly yellow. A dark streak of blood colored his palm. His shoulders were tensed, his eyes wide and jaw clenched.

  His terror as the demon careened toward him rang through me, bringing tears to my eyes. I blinked them away and sucked in a breath. Leaping past the splintered tree trunks, I planted my feet on the rocky ground already half a step into my magicking.

  The demon pounced. I sent all the force I could summon, all my need to protect my consort, ramming into the monster’s back. Its clawed hands were already snatching at Damon’s body—

  My magic hit the fiend and propelled it farther, faster, over the edge of the cliff. In a second, it had tumbled right over.

  It shrieked as it fell, claws scrabbling against the rock with a horrible screech. Damon rolled away from the edge, clutching his arm to his chest.

  “Go get it!” he shouted. “I’m fine. Go!”

  My pulse hiccupped anyway, but I couldn’t stop to check on him, or we might both be dead in another instant. My feet flew over the pebble-strewn ground to the path cut into the sheer rock.

  The demon had caught hold of that ledge farther down, about halfway between me and the cave. It clambered toward me with a low reverberating growl, its glow flickering around it like flames in a breeze. Damon had gotten it so close to the cave, to the portal I needed to shove it through. I just had to push it the rest of the way.

  The path didn’t give me much room to move through a form. I focused on my arms, whipping the energy within me around me and out, stepping backward and forward in time.

&
nbsp; The surge of magic I cast out propelled the demon a few feet farther down the Cliff, but that was all. Every muscle in my body throbbed.

  I couldn’t let this become another standstill. I had to end this battle now.

  The rough rock my hand had come to rest against bit into my fingers. My thoughts darted to the recovering witches, to their stories of blood and skin offered up to hold the demons back. A sacrifice offered up for that purpose—a power greater than anything the demons could produce in response.

  Did I have enough blood in my whole body to contain this creature now that it was free in our world—to contain it and still be conscious enough to hold that spell?

  My instincts said no. But as I dug down deep to draw all the power I could from my spark, the tearing ache of that magicking made my breath catch with a sudden idea.

  The possibility that had just crossed my mind brought a fresh ache with it, sharper and more poignant. That emotion only convinced me I was right. A sacrifice wasn’t a sacrifice unless you let go of something you cared about.

  To destroy this menace, I would give up the thing I’d cared about most after my consorts. And I’d pray that my sacrifice would see my purpose through.

  The demon heaved itself toward me again. I raised my hands and spun around on that narrow outcropping of rock, trusting my feet to find purchase, trusting my balance to hold. Trusting in the great Spark that blessed witches like me with its power.

  “All that is lit and warm in the world, hear me now,” I called out. “Let me bleed my spark, let me put all of it into this magicking. I give every piece of it I need to drive this demon back to whence it came.”

  My spark flared in my chest and seemed to split. Agony stabbed through me as a fragment of that flame snapped from the light in my chest and flowed to my hands. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I whirled my arms in another magicking shaped around that piece of my spark.

  My nerves wrenched even more as the light left me—but it burst into a blazing glow that walloped the demon and sent it skidding down the path, all the way to the cave’s entrance. I scrambled after it on wobbly legs, with ragged breaths, already reaching inside myself to tear away another piece of the source of magic I’d been born with.

  This was more than blood, more than skin, more than bone could have been. It was the core of who I was, who I’d been. But not who I’d be, not anymore—if I survived this battle at all.

  The demon tried to rear up, but I was ready for it. With a thrust of my hands that seemed to rip me open from the inside out, I tossed it sideways into the cave. The ache crept right up to the back of my skull. My muscles were burning.

  I couldn’t stop. I had more. I could give everything, if that was what it took.

  The demon staggered upright on the floor of the cave. Its eyes were as flatly black as always, but they looked wider now, its challenging grimace less certain. It hadn’t expected this. It hadn’t expected me.

  Behind it, the starker glow of the portal whirled. One demonic face and then another swam in its depths. Clawed hands scrabbled at the edges. The power in the seal wavered, and my stomach flipped over.

  Even without blood spilled, we’d almost been too late.

  My knees started to give. No. I drew a form with my limbs as I sank down to the cave floor, pulling more and more of my spark from its place nestled deep inside me. With every stream of that purest magic I tore away, another knife of agony sliced through me. My vision was blurring.

  I balled the blaze in my hands and whipped it at the demon with all my strength. The force drove it backwards, crashing into the portal and through. A clatter of rasping voices in a language I didn’t understand carried out. Something screamed. The cave shuddered.

  I pushed harder, condensing all the magic I’d gathered into a searing light and smashing it against the portal, jerking my arms and flicking my wrists to bind, to seal, to implode.

  Strands of the portal’s red glow broke off and flowed through the magic pressing inward on that opening. They spiraled into the vacant space within, chunks of rock falling after them. Cracks raced across the cave ceiling.

  There was nothing left of me but the pain pounding through my veins and the pulsing circle of the portal contracting and contracting with each swivel of my wrists.

  A mass of rock tumbled from the ceiling. A smaller piece clipped my shoulder. My whole body was already throbbing so much I barely registered the blow.

  A demon eye pressed against the shrinking portal; a demon claw jabbed through. I couldn’t back away yet. I had to see this done, all the way, until I knew the greatest mistake witching kind had ever made was finished.

  Numbness spread over my skin and into my flesh. I couldn’t feel my hands anymore, even as I wheeled my arms to twist the magic clogging the portal even tighter.

  A groan so unearthly it turned my gut to water pierced the air. Then the portal closed completely with a crackle and a smell like hot tar.

  The cave crumbled inward at the same moment, rocks showering down over the scorched wall where the portal had vanished. My head spinning, I scrambled backward.

  The falling stones battered my legs as I dragged myself through the cave mouth. The sea hissed and foamed below and the wind warbled above, and the darkness closed around me. I groped for the path and nearly tumbled right over the edge of that rocky outcropping to meet the waves below.

  Footsteps thumped against the stone. Arms wrapped around me, hefting me up. “We’ve got you,” a voice said. “We’ve got you. You’ll be okay.” And someone else made a sound like a swallowed sob.

  It is okay, I wanted to tell her, if I could have found my mouth, my vocal chords, amid the pain raging through me. They’re gone. They’re done. They can’t hurt anyone here ever again.

  I drew in a breath with an even deeper flare of agony, and I wasn’t aware of much of anything for a long time after that.

  Chapter Thirty

  Rose

  I got the impression it pained Brimsey a little, standing up in the row of officials paying tribute during this ceremony. The Northcotts and Remington and most of the others at least looked honestly happy, but even after everything, the head of Unsparked Relations couldn’t keep that slight curl of distaste from his mouth.

  Well, let him find us distasteful. I was standing with my consorts, alive and on legs that would hold me, in front of nearly everyone who was everyone in the witching world, and they were here to recognize us.

  The late summer day was crisp and clear, the breeze over the patio on the Assembly building’s rooftop carrying a hint of the coming fall. The officials who’d been most involved in the defense against the demon were arranged in a row behind the stately podium. The other guests were scattered among the small potted hedges.

  Lady Northcott was at the podium now, speaking in a voice as crisp and clear as the air, but warmer.

  “And it is thanks to all that we are all here to help this city rebuild and to regain the footing of our witching community. We must recognize the risks taken and sacrifices made by Lady Hallowell and her five consorts. As such, on behalf of the Assembly, we hereby certify that this consorting, while unusual, is completely valid in every way, and Lady Hallowell’s consorts must be treated as full members of the witching community. We will be opening inquiry into the historical basis for similar consortings so that all witches may have as much freedom as they deserve. And tonight we will dine in honor of our bravest peers.”

  She dipped her head to us, and my throat tightened with joyful emotion. Gabriel squeezed my left hand, Kyler tucking his fingers more closely between mine at my other side. Damon raised his chin with a defiant flash of his eyes as if he thought he still needed to prove something here. Jin beamed at me, and Seth let out a long exhale, as if he’d only just realized it really was all over.

  We were safe. We were free.

  The people who were gathered around us launched into applause. The Northcotts motioned us up to the small table set next to the podium, where
they had an official consorting record ready for us to sign.

  We shook everyone’s hands, and then the gathering dispersed to reassemble downstairs in the dining hall. Naomi and then my aunt Ginny grabbed me in a hug, Aunt Irene watching with a hesitant smile. The recovering witches, all of them bright-eyed and steady despite their encounter with the demon just a few days ago, came over with brief touches and words of gratitude. Knowing the demons had no more access to this world had done more for their healing than any spell could have.

  We waited until they’d all headed down the stairs before we moved to follow. Gabriel slipped his arms around my waist, holding me for just a second before we went into the stairwell.

  “What do you think?” he said, softly but lightly. “Was it worth all the trouble?”

  I didn’t think he meant just the outside struggles we’d been through. His embrace brought a quiver into my chest: the flicker of all that remained of my spark. Overcoming the demon and sealing the portal hadn’t taken all of my magic, but it had taken a lot. No one was ever going to look on in awe while I cast a spell again.

  But I’d found that realization less painful than I might have expected. If we were safe, I didn’t need to be doing spectacular magic. Enough to heat up a cup of tea or soothe a small burn if that tea spilled should be plenty for the peaceful life I’d like to lead.

  If I felt a slight ache, it disappeared as soon as I thought of the consequences we’d have faced if I hadn’t managed to rip myself apart like that. There was nothing in the last few months that I could honestly say I’d change. In every case, the alternative might have been so much worse.

  “Absolutely worth it,” I said, hugging Gabriel’s arm against me. “I wouldn’t change a moment of it.”

  One week later