Page 125 of Witch Unexpected
Charlotte slumped, the fight draining from her.
Arne was gone.
Dead.
Toke appeared beside her, and together, he and Sten pulled her to her feet. Their expressions were stoic and stone-like, as if Arne’s death had stripped them of emotion. Sten forced Charlotte’s hand to the statue. She scanned his face, and then Toke’s, searching for goodness knew what, and then her shoulders began to shake.
In trying to keep the men she loved, she’d lost them.
Leif slowly stood and faced me. “Do it quickly, Cora.” His tone was thick with pain. “With my father’s death, the binding is broken; take the anchorship before the seal fractures.”
I wanted to hug him, but there was no way to make this right, only to ensure that Arne and Brie’s deaths wouldn’t be in vain.
I pressed my palm to the statue.
* * *
I’d felt power before,tasted it, wielded it, but the power of the cosmos was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It opened up to me, rushing over me, bathing me in safety and assurance. It seeped into my pores and into my veins. Then came the dark threads, clustered and alive, they slammed into my chest, burrowing into me, but it was a welcome invasion, like coming home to the smell of your favorite meal.
The threads lashed out from inside me, searching, wanting.
“Touch her now.” Anna’s voice commanded.
I felt two hands on me and the brush of a shaggy head. Leif, Tor, and Rune. They were here with me. The threads wound around them, then orange power slid up the threads and into me.
I recognized this power.
Miasma.
They were giving me miasma, but then I was giving it back in a circuit of power. We were bound as one. A unit. A battery.
Chanting filled my head—the elders speaking words that were alien but made perfect sense, although I’d never be able to articulate what they were saying. An image bloomed in my mind—an oval, crimson shape made of thick wax with a silver symbol pressed into it.
The seal, or a mental manifestation of it.
Yours now. The voice was a whisper in my mind.Make the right choices and find the right path. For each path is different, and any truth can become a lie.
I was shoved out of the stars and back into my body properly. Tor’s arms were around me, his chest to my back, his hand splayed across my abdomen. Power thrummed between us like the hum of sex and the buzz of desire.
“Cora…” His breath was hot in my ear. Leif took a step toward me, pinning me in, his bare skin tantalizing me to reach out and touch him.
His eyes were pools of desire and need, raking over me. My body throbbed and ached. Was this it? Was this the mating bond?
Oh god.
Leif’s chest heaved, and he stepped back and shook his head. “Fuck.”
“Now!” Anna cried.
My head whipped round to find the elder witches in a line, facing off against the rapidly emerging revenants. The Elites continued to chant, slowing down the emergence, but it was only a matter of—
Heat bloomed at my solar plexus, and the elder witches lit up in halos of silver. Their hoods fell back, and their hair floated out from their heads, picked up by an otherworldly breeze. A low vibration shook my body, and a shockwave blasted out from the witches, turning the revenants to dust.
The world was blissfully silent.
Then the silence was filled with Charlotte’s heartbroken sobs.
It was over for her.
