Page 152 of Summer of Sacrifice

Agatha gripped the reins tighter. Guinevere’s ears pulled back as she stamped at the black, ashen ground. Lifting her chin, Agatha gave her final command. “We end this. Now!”

Deafening cries roared at her back as she turned her horse and kicked her into a run. The ground thundered behind her with the hooves and feet of her army surging into battle.

Agatha’s hair flew out behind her as they rode hard. Grimm charged into the valley beside her, Winnie, Seleste, and Sorscha fanning out behind them. Swords sang as they were pulled from scabbards, bow strings groaned as they were drawn back, and magic crackled through the air. Asa shouted commands to his mages in tandem with Laurent to his Druids. The valley opened up before them into a spill of burnt land, and Agatha felt the army at her back fan out.

This was it.

Dark silhouettes of terror dotted the valley, standing on the skeletal remnants of her coven. Her mother.

Agatha let forth a bellow from the depths of her soul, charging headfirst into the waiting monsters. Her sword soared through the air, slicing through the neck of a beast mid-snarl. It was the first cut of the fight, army on army slamming into one another with a cacophony of noise. Magic rained down over the fray from all sides, a kaleidoscope of colours.

They rioted. They raged. All of them as one.

Grimm stood on Nuit’s back, launching upward and transforming into his reaper mid-air. All bones and smoke, he soared above the chaos toward the Acolytes, who were throwing their magic from behind the army of undead. Faster than Agatha’s eye could make out, Grimm swooped low, pulling out the souls of any he could reach.

Soon, she was covered in black blood. Red, beautiful blood coated the ground. Her people.

Leaping off Guinevere, she slapped the horse’s hide as hard as she could to send her out of the fray. To give her the best chance of surviving.

Sword in one hand and magic in the other, Agatha cut and seared her way forward. The Reaping Moon was arcing for the sun, closer and closer, the shadows going rippled, like a mirage.

SELESTE

She’d rendered herself invisible.

Sneaking behind beast and Acolyte alike, Seleste managed to decapitate four undead with magic and one with her machete.

Fight like Hades, my daughter. She heard her father clear as day, clear as the agonised screams of the fallen, and she fought harder.

The magic of an Acolyte bounced off Seleste’s glamour—her ward—revealing her. He and his three cronies closed in on her, but the undead still couldn’t see her. She strategically placed herself behind the beasts, between her and the Acolytes stalking her. Four more heads hit the ground, rolling through the gore, at the behest of her magic and her blade.

Sorscha came up behind her, bleeding and grinning. Feral.

“Did you hear her?” Sorscha shouted over the bedlam, slicing through the stomach of an Acolyte.

“Who?” Seleste shouted right back, dropping her invisibility.

“Mother!” Her dagger slammed into the temple of a beast. It screamed and thrashed at the wound while Seleste cut off its head. “I swear I heard her.”

The smallest of lulls came then, as they awaited the inevitable infiltration of the circle of calm they’d cut around them.

“What did she say?” Seleste asked, her heart thundering in her chest, her body slick with blood.

“She said to fight for the life we should have had.”

Eyes glossy, the Sisters wordlessly regarded one another, hope surging. In no time at all, their circle of peace had filled in, and the battle continued.

Launching herself onto the back of an Acolyte, Sister Spring clapped her hands over his ears. His face began to glow crimson with the fire of her power, burning his brain. He screamed, and Sorscha joined him until he fell to the ground. She snarled, stepping to turn that magic on an undead beast battling Asa.

Winnie was back-to-back with Eleanor, both of them covered in ash and blood, their teeth bared.

Laurent and the Druids fought with weapons and magic, each blow stronger than their last.

Aggie. Where was Aggie?

Seleste spun, another brief pause between killings. She tasted metal on her tongue, unsure whose blood had made it into her mouth.

And then she saw him. A man she remembered from her past.

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