Page 44 of Incoronate
Beside me, Trace sat up, his jaw unclenching degree by degree, and I felt the familiar thrum of his presence through our bond settle back into something less frayed.
“Much better,” said Anita as though she had felt the shift as well. “Now that that’s taken care of, we can move on to the anchoring spell.”
I let out a shaky breath, allowing myself a single, dangerous spark of hope. That this anchoring spell wouldslow the spread. Buy us time. Maybe even reverse what was eating through me.
But it wasn’t just my survival I was praying for.
It was Dominic’s too. For what he would become if I didn’t survive this.
Because what I'd seen in his eyes, what had risen so easily and so completely, wasn’t just anger. It was something far darker, something that had been there the whole time and had simply been waiting for a reason to slip the leash. And it terrified me in a way the rot never had.
And in that moment, through the poison and pain and fear, I knew.
This wasn’t just about saving me anymore.
It was about saving all of us.
14. THE THREEFOLD CORD
The living room no longer felt like a place where good people lived. It had been stripped of all its warmth and familiarity, every piece of furniture shoved against the walls until the center of the room lay bare and waiting, dark pools of shadow gathering there like they knew exactly what was coming. Even the air itself felt different, stifling and oppressive, as though something invisible had moved in and claimed the space.
Candles ringed the room in careful formation, dozens of them burning in colors that didn’t look natural or real. Deep violet that bled into molten silver. Emerald so dark it looked bruised. They didn’t flicker like normal fire. They pulsed, each flame moving in perfect synchronization with the others, as though breathing in time to some rhythm I couldn’t hear.
It was just me, Trace, and Dominic now. And, of course, the Roderick sisters, moving through the space with the kind of confidence that came from having dabbled in the dark arts for the entirety of their lives. From knowing exactly what they were doing, even if the rest of us didn’t.
I wished that made me feel better, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on me. If anything, it made me wonder how many people had been desperate enough to come to them for help.
And how many of those people were still even alive.
The sisters had wanted the room cleared out the moment Gabriel tossed the talisman in the fireplace and broke the deadly sins spell on us. Tessa had been sent upstairs to rest while Gabriel went back on Jaqueline duty. Neither of them had been happy about it, though they hadn’t tried toargue. Especially not when the sisters warned them that their presence would put the spell at risk of interference.
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was relieved that my sister and Gabriel were safe and sound and nowhere near us when all of this went down. Some selfish part of me may have even been glad because at least they wouldn’t have to remember me like this if the spell wound up going wrong.
Anita was kneeling in the center of the cleared floor, her red hair pulled back into a severe knot at the base of her skull as she drew something onto the hardwood. It looked like ash or crushed chalk mixed with blood. The mixture left dark, wet trails across the wood, staining it in a way I knew would probably never come out. Not with regular soap anyway.
I tried to follow her lines as they curved and branched across the floor, but every time I focused on them too long, my eyes burned as though I weren’t meant to look at all.
There was no hesitation in her work. Each stroke of her fingers left a perfect line, as though she’d done it a hundred times before. Even the intensity of her focus felt heavy, like one mistake would make the whole thing collapse around us.
Annabelle stood near the fireplace, grinding something in a stone mortar with slow, circling movements. The sound of stone against stone seemed unnaturally loud, ringing through the room and grating into my nerves and bones. Whatever she was making smelled like copper and burnt sage and something else…something that reminded me of graves and wet earth and things that shouldn’t be disturbed.
Each rotation of the pestle sent up small puffs of powder that wafted in the air as though they were too dense to settle. The scent made my stomach turn, the taste of bile quickly rising in my throat, but I swallowed it down and tried not to breathe through my nose. Tried not to think about what she was grinding in there or where it had come from.
I turned my attention to Arianna as she stood by the window, her eyes closed and her lips moving in a whisper I wouldn’t have been able to hear even if I wasn’t perishing from spell rot. Whatever it was, it was making the space around her shimmer, almost distorting the air itself. It took me a beat to realize she was casting. Building layers of protection or concealment or something else entirely. Her eyes opened briefly, meeting mine from across the room before slipping closed again. There was no reassurance in that look. Just acknowledgment. Cold and mechanical.
I sat on the couch in the same position as before, only this time I had Trace on one side and Dominic on the other. Both of them close enough that our shoulders touched. Close enough that I could feel the tension radiating off them in waves.
Neither had said much since the others left. They just sat there, watching the sisters work, their bodies coiled tight like they were preparing for battle.
I supposed in a way they were.
The black veins had spread further while we waited. I could feel them crawling beneath my skin like something returning from the dead, branching out with every heartbeat that stuttered in my chest. My hands had begun to go numb, and my vision kept blurring at the edges.
When I tried to flex my fingers, they barely responded. The corruption had reached deeper than I’d thought. Faster than anyone had predicted. I could feel it in my chest now, wrapping around my ribs and squeezing. Each breath took more effort than the last. Each heartbeat felt weaker. I was running out of time and we all knew it. The sisters knew it. Trace and Dominic knew it. And I knew it most of all.
Anita sat back on her heels, surveying her work. The symbol, or whatever the hell it was, stretched across nearlythe entire floor now. A massive circle with smaller circles nested inside it, connected by lines and curves that seemed to shift when I wasn’t looking directly at them.
The whole thing looked wrong. Nonsensical in a way that made my head spin when I tried to trace the pattern with my eyes. But Anita looked satisfied, her mouth set in a thin line of grim approval as she studied it.
