Page 113 of An Oath at Midnight

Magnolia

Ryan was toying with me.

And no one was going to stop him.

No one was coming to save me. No one knew where I was.

He had all the time in the world, and he was making the most of it.

He sliced down the front of my shirt, yanking it open, then stood back and stared at my mostly naked body. He tutted. “Not much I can use here. You’re scarred almost everywhere, not a fan of the ink either. Not very appealing, are you, Magnolia?” He rubbed his chin. “Your organs will be useful, maybe your legs?” He shook his head, his gaze lifting to mine. “Don’t get me wrong, I mean, I’d fuck you…I just wouldn’t tell anyone about it. You know, because you look like…that.”

He stepped closer. My body was still utterly useless, but I refused to let him see my fear and hoped he saw all the hatred I felt burning through my eyes.

I let that hatred swell and curl inside me, let the anger build higher. That anger, it felt safe. I’d used it to protect myself for so long, and it was wild and dangerous. Recently I’d been able to control it, contain it, but right then, I needed it. I needed that wild rage inside me more than ever.

Agatheena’s words filtered through my mind. I was light, but I was also darkness. Like Gran, like so many other witches who were forced to hide the power their darkness gave them.

Ryan pressed the tip of his knife to the underside of one breast and slid it around the curve, not hard enough to cause real damage but enough to cause pain, to slice skin, to create a new scar. He carried on up to a point in the center of my chest, then back down and around the other breast. Warm blood slid down my ribs.

All I could do was take it—but instead of drowning in the pain and horror, I embraced it, all of it, and let the darkness grow inside me, let it feed on the surge of power that spilling more of my blood gave me.

Then the words came like they had at Shadow Falls, a spell derived purely from darkness, one that was all my own. It was dangerous, but it was either go dark or do nothing and let this evil little fuck cut me up and kill me. Let him walk free to do the same to others.

“Your lungs could be of use. Your ribs as well,” he was saying.

I shut out his voice and focused inward. I’d never spelled this way before. I wasn’t even sure it could be done. Ryan obviously didn’t think so. I’d only ever spoken the words of my spells out loud, but this time it wasn’t my corporeal body that was casting the spell, no, this time it was my spirit. I repeated words over and over in my head, words that would sever the tether between my physical form and my soul. I needed to release it from my body.

I’d read about astral projection, but I’d never attempted it. I wasn’t even sure it was possible while you were still conscious, but I continued to repeat the spell filtering through my mind.

Something wrenched inside me.

I looked down at my hand, and when I tried to lift it this time, it moved. My soul lifting from my physical body.

The tether snapped and I stepped away, away from Ryan and his knife slicing my body.

I wasn’t dead or alive, I was in the in-between.

The darkness inside me grew.

Aiming my hands at Ryan’s back, I yelled one of the spells I’d created, a spell I’d written in my book when I’d been filled with hatred and vengeance after Clayton hurt me. Ryan froze in place, a horrified look on his face, as I used my powers to control the knife in his hand. He cried out in terror, watching his own hand lift. Screaming when I forced him to angle the blade downward, then bring it down hard, sinking it into his own thigh.

The scar on my palm tingled and burned as I forced him to bend to my will, to pull the knife back out, to raise it high again, ignoring his screams and begging me to stop.

But before I could bring it back down, I staggered back. My head spun wildly.

What was happening?

My soul was ripped away from the room, the house. I was dragged at an unnatural speed through the city, the forest, deep among the trees—and right up to Limbo’s gates.

I threw up my hands. No. But the boulders rolled, reforming into an arch, the door opening, and I was pulled through, dragged along a path made of skulls, past souls wandering aimlessly through a dark forest, and through the door of a stone fortress.

My mind spun again. I fought for consciousness but blacked out. I don’t know how much time passed, but consciousness came and went.

“She entered my world. She chose this,” a monstrous voice said, so horrifying it sent terror through every part of me.

“Send her back.”

Zinnia.