by Sarra Cannon
And it had been like this all day.
I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath.
Everything was probably fine. Maybe he simply hadn’t had a chance to contact us yet. Elisha might have taken his phone or had someone watching him.
The plan wasn't ruined yet. There was still time for everything to come together just like we had planned.
I grabbed the cups and napkins from the back of the van and brought them over to the Tillman Farms booth under the willow tree. Aunt Laura took them from me and sighed.
“You’re taking this too hard, Anna,” she said. “I’ve never seen you so upset.”
“I’ve never seen you go this long without a smile on your face,” my cousin Liana said. “Come on. You love Sunday on The Square.”
“He’s going to be fine,” Gran said, stepping up from behind me and placing her hand on my shoulder. “I know you’re worried about him and his sisters, but Slade seems like a strong, capable young man. If he was in any kind of trouble, he would have warned us by now. We have no reason to believe the plan isn’t going off exactly the way we discussed. It’s too early to worry.”
“I know you’re right, but I just can’t shake the feeling that something has gone terribly wrong,” I said.
“That’s just your own worry creeping in,” Gran said. “Try to relax and enjoy the festival as much as you can. Tomorrow you can go back to worrying as much as you want. Deal?”
I smiled, but it was only half as bright as normal. “I’ll do my best,” I said.
“Come with me. I’ll buy you some strawberry cotton candy before the booth closes down for the night,” Liana said. “Your favorite.”
I took her hand and let her lead me across the square, determined to at least try to have a good time for my family’s sake.
They’d all rallied around me, vowing to make sure I stayed safe, no matter what. They were all prepared to stand and fight Elisha, despite the danger.
I was grateful for all of them, and since they had all been looking forward to this festival and the upcoming solstice rituals, I would do my very best to at least pretend to be having fun.
Nik and Eva strolled over from Urban Grind and waved as they saw me.
“How are you feeling?” Eva asked, giving me a quick hug. “Any news?”
I shook my head. “Nothing yet.”
“It’s still early,” Nik said.
“You’re right,” I said straightening my shoulders. I was not going to let this bring me down.
Besides, Liana was right. The Sunday festival closest to the solstice was always my favorite of the summer. All the best vendors came out, the entire town seemed to be in a good mood, and the food was always amazing.
I’d spent the whole day in a haze and nearly missed all the fun of it, but it was so hard to trust that everything was going to be okay.
I decided then and there to take Gran’s advice, push my worries aside to enjoy the last few minutes of the festival with my friends, and resume my bad mood in the morning.
Only, the moment I opened my mouth to tell Liana I was ready for that cotton candy, after all, Eva gasped and dropped her coffee cup to the ground.
I spun around to see Slade standing several feet away. Only, he didn’t look like the Slade who had left here last night.
Instead, his eyes were bloodshot. His clothing had been burned in several places, torn in others. Blood soaked the front of his shirt from some hidden wound underneath.
“Slade?” I asked, stepping toward him, my heart full of terror. “What happened?”
“I couldn’t stop him,” he said, holding up a hand to reach for me, though the simple gesture seemed to hurt him in some way. “He’s here, Anna. You have to run.”
He fell to his knees in the grass, and I ran toward him. He looked up at me, tears in his eyes as he winced in pain and grabbed his side.
“The talisman, Anna. His neck—”
“Silence,” a voice boomed over the crowd, causing several people to scatter off the square. “You’ve done quite enough for now.”
A tall man with long, white hair stepped onto the grass from the shadows, his eyes locked on me. He brought his fingers together, as if he were squeezing something, but I didn’t put the motion together with Slade’s agony until he clasped his neck and fell over into the grass, his eyes closed.
I reached for him, but a wave of light blew me backward, knocking me to the ground several feet away.
“He doesn’t deserve your affection or your loyalty, daughter.”
I lifted my eyes to the man standing before me.
After all these years, I had finally come face-to-face with my father.
Twenty-Seven
Anna
Gran and my aunts ran toward me, but Elisha lifted his arms and a dome of light surrounded us, blocking off everyone else in the area.
He stepped forward, and I scrambled to stand.
I backed toward the barrier of light, but my back hit it as if it were solid. How had he done that?
I quickly reached for my power, but it was distant. I pushed harder, but nothing would come. I was powerless against him as long as I bore his mark.
Outside the dome, Gran and several others cast spells that ricocheted off the light but could not seem to break through.
Slade lay on the ground inside the light with us, but he was motionless. I couldn’t even tell if he was still breathing.
“It really is you,” Elisha said, a sly smile on his face. “After all this time of searching, I have finally found you.”
“I want nothing to do with you,” I said. “You never should have come looking for me.”
“I didn’t for a long time, you know. I honored my promise for as long as I could, but there’s only so far I’m willing to go,” he said.
I shook my head, not fully understanding what he meant.
“What promise?” I asked.
His eyes widened, and he smiled at me. “You don’t know, do you?”
He shook his head.
“No, I guess you wouldn’t. What happened between your mother and me that night was done in private.”
My body trembled.
“What are you talking about? What happened that night?”
“Your mother set up all her plans to escape,” he said. “But I knew about them, of course. My people are loyal to me above all else. I knew she planned to cross that wall with you and never look back. She was going to break one of my sacred rules, Anna. I couldn’t let that go unpunished.”
A tear slid down my cheek.
Somewhere deep inside, I’d been holding onto some hope that my mother had somehow survived that night. That the reason no one knew what happened to her was because she had managed to escape on her own.
But I realized now it was a foolish dream.
“You killed her.”
“I didn’t want to do it,” he said. “I cared for your mother, and for you. I wanted us to live together as a family, but she betrayed me in planning her escape. I couldn’t let you both go, Anna, so I gave her a choice.”
I began to sob, thinking of my mother’s sorrow.
“I went to her room the night she planned to escape, and I offered her a choice. I would let one of you go free, but the other would have to give their life in sacrifice to my own power,” he said. “I was getting older. My power was growing weaker. I knew a sacrifice that powerful could extend my life for several years. Maybe decades.”
“She let me go,” I said.
“Yes. She was a beautiful woman, truly. I’m sorry you never really got to know her.”
Rage blossomed with my heart.
“You’re the one responsible for that,” I said. “You didn’t have to kill her. You chose that to further your own life. And what? Now you’ve come back for me? Even though you promised her you’d let me go?”
“I intended to let you go forever,” he said. “But your mother’s sacrifice only extended my true power for a few years at best. I took a
nother sacrifice, and then another, but it wasn't enough. Eventually, I knew that the Disciples would rebel against a leader who stole their children or wives and sacrificed them one-by-one for his own power. So I searched for something greater. A spell that would give me immortal life. Once I found it, I realized I had to find you to make it work. It was the only way.”
My blood ran cold at his words.
This was why he was here. Somehow, he’d found a spell to make him live forever, and he needed me in order to cast it.
My jaw tightened, and I somehow managed to gather the smallest bit of power in my fingertips. The others might have been outside that barrier, but I was in here with him. I could still fight.
He smiled at me, glancing at the sparks of dull light that danced around my fingers and then went out.
“Brave and foolish like your mother,” he said. “She was so full of life and ready for an adventure. I didn’t enjoy killing her, Anna.”
My sorrow mixed with anger, and I attempted to connect with my power again. I could feel it pulsing inside of me, but it was as if the connection was broken, somehow.
“Anna,” he said softly. “It’s a nice name. Not your given name, of course, but a nice one, I think. Your mother originally named you Willow.”
He glanced up at the willow tree that hovered over the dome he’d placed around us.
“I see now why that name had been so special to her,” he said. “Perhaps for all her talk of wanting to leave her home behind, she eventually came to appreciate it.”
Tears flowed from my eyes.
For the first time in my life, I could see just how alike we were, my mother and me. We both longed for adventure and wanted to experience more than this town seemed to offer, but in the end, this was where we truly belonged.
Home.
“I wish things had been different,” Elisha said. “Your mother was a great asset to the Disciples of Light, and had she been obedient, she might have done great things in my service. As for you, I could have taught you how to truly use your power.”
He stepped toward me, and I was powerless to get away from him.
“I want nothing to do with your kind of power,” I said.
Beneath my feet, the ground rumbled, and I realized the witches of my family were pooling their magic together to try to get into the dome from underneath.
Elisha studied them, but he didn’t seem concerned. He simply turned to me and shook his head.
“I would have liked more time to get to know you,” he said. “But I’m afraid our time is running short. You can rest in the knowledge that your death will be the start of something great. A sacrifice in the name of immortality.”
He was delusional, talking to me about my death as if he were doing me a favor.
“You’re not the only one, of course,” he said. “I’ll have to sacrifice the entire coven to perform a spell this powerful. It will be a pain to have to rebuild and recruit new Disciples, but I’ll be a god. Untouchable. People will worship me. A small price to pay in the long run for such glory, but this is why I had to find you, Anna.”
He lifted his hand to a gold chain around his neck.
“Everyone who bears my mark will have to die.”
I gasped, understanding for the first time what Slade had been trying to tell me. But if I wanted to end this tonight, I would need his help. I needed him to wake up.
As if he had heard me or sensed my need, Slade groaned and turned over. He clutched his bleeding side, but he was breathing. And he was listening.
Elisha intended to kill us all. Me, Slade, his sisters. Everyone with the mark.
But if he thought I would simply let him take my life and the lives of all those children without fighting back, he was even crazier than I thought.
Slade’s eyes met mine, and he brought a hand to his neck. I nodded to him. I just prayed he was strong enough to stand.
If there was any chance of ending this, we had to do it now.
Twenty-Eight
Slade
Everything in my body ached and screamed in protest as I pushed myself up from the ground behind Elisha. I gritted my teeth against the pain and forced myself to get onto my knees.
I moved as quietly and carefully as I could manage as Elisha gathered a bright light between his palms and stepped toward Anna.
I would only have one chance. One moment to end this.
And if I failed, it would mean the lives of everyone in the Disciples of Light. Everyone I loved.
I sucked in a deep breath, wincing at the pain that ripped through my stomach. I’d been tortured for hours last night. Questioned about Anna and her family and beaten within an inch of my life.
But I had told them nothing.
Elisha didn’t control me anymore, and I would rather die knowing I did what I could to save them all than live as a slave any longer.
I gathered all of my strength into my body and pushed back thoughts of crippling pain as I stood.
Elisha was only steps away from Anna now, and though her family was trying everything they could, they still had not broken through the barrier.
It was up to us, and I would not fail.
With all that I had left, I ran forward and wrapped my arm around Elisha’s throat. He pivoted quickly, aiming his powerful light in my direction. But I already had what I needed.
Clutched in my fist was a golden chain. The key to our freedom, and it had been right in front of us all along.
I yanked my hand backward with all my strength, snapping the chain as I fell to the ground.
Elisha’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the medallion I now held.
A medallion marked with the symbol of a blade enclosed in a circle. The mark of the Disciples of Light.
He raised his power toward me, but before he could release it, Anna reached toward the sky and grabbed a ray of moonlight from the air.
She pulled it down, reforming the light into a long sword at her command.
“This is for my mother,” she said as she plunged her blade of light into her father’s heart.
The ball of light in his hands, meant to take my life, dissipated in an instant as he fell to his knees. His mouth opened wide in horror as he looked down at the pure light protruding from his chest.
Blood flowed down his body in waves and spilled onto the earth at his feet.
The dome of light that had held us prisoner disappeared, and all around us, the people of Willow Harbor gathered in a circle, holding onto each other.
I glanced around, looking for any sign of my father and the other Elders, but I didn’t see them anywhere.
Anna stepped over to me and gave me her hand. She pulled me to my feet and took the medallion from me, throwing it at the ground in front of her dying father.
“You wanted to be a god, but true power never comes from inflicting pain,” she said. “True power and loyalty comes from something you could never understand. It comes from love and self-sacrifice. It comes from service and helping others, not causing them to fear you. You may have been able to control the light, but you were never, ever worthy of it. Now, you will die and be consumed by darkness forever.”
A tear slid down Elisha’s face as he looked up at his daughter.
Then, with a great shudder, the light in his eyes went out and he fell to the ground at Anna’s feet.
Twenty-Nine
Anna
Slade pulled me into his arms, and I fell against his chest, my body trembling.
We did it.
We had finally ended it all.
“Are you okay?” he asked, cupping my cheeks as he looked into my eyes.
“Me?” I asked with a laugh. “Look at you. You’re a mess.”
“I’ve felt better,” he said.
“We’ll fix you right up with some healing herbs as soon as we can get you back to the farm,” Gran said, wrapping her arms around both of us. “I was so scared I was going to lose you, Anna. I don’t know what I would have done if I had fail
ed to protect you, too.”
I held her close as tears ran down her cheeks. “It’s over now,” I said. “He can never hurt anyone, ever again.”
“And the mark?” she asked.
Slade lifted the edge of his torn shirt, revealing bare skin where the mark had once been. His eyes widened, and he looked at me.
“It’s really gone,” he said.
“So, the talisman he wore around his neck had controlled the mark the entire time,” Gran said. “Thank goodness you found that book in the library. I don’t know that we would have ever realized it without that.”
“But how did he get here so fast?” I asked. “There’s no way you got home and back here that quickly, right?”
“I never even left the area. Last night when I left town, Elisha and the Elders were already waiting for me,” he said. “They’d been able to track my location when I’d left Willow Harbor’s town limits yesterday morning, even though I’d only left for a minute. Somehow, the magical borders around this town had been keeping him from seeing my location.”
“I worried about his ability to track those marks,” Gran said. She touched my cheek. “That’s part of why I never wanted you to leave Willow Harbor. I didn’t know for sure, but I worried he’d be able to find you.”
I squeezed her hand. She had done so much to protect me over the years, in ways I hadn’t fully understood until recently.
“Elisha and the Elders had set up a roadblock to stop me from getting too far,” Slade said. “I tried to warn you, but Elisha destroyed my phone before I had a chance. All I could hope to do was buy you more time. But as he spoke, I realized that every time he mentioned the mark, he touched that chain.”
“I saw it, too,” I said. “That’s when I realized what you’d been trying to tell me.”
I looked at his bruised face and wondered what horrors he had endured while I had been at home, sleeping in my soft bed.
I wanted to kiss away his bruises and start working right away on some potions that would ease his pain.