I see Liv. She stands beside Mamá, a formidable force with a fireball bouncing between her two hands. It seems I’m not the only one who’s been training. She smiles at me, but it does not reach her eyes. Even so, they tell me everything her lips do not. She helped Mamá plan this attack. Together, they worked to kill me.
The weight of Will’s hand against mine is almost too much to bear. If only I’d listened to the vampires, if only I’d believed the witches were up to no good, we wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t be close to death, and Will would live to see another day. I refuse to be responsible for his end. He’s shown me more support in the past day than my coven did my entire life. He deserves my protection; they do not.
“Ava,” Will says.
His voice is cold, his tone hard. His gaze is sharply attuned to what’s happening around us. I should be as focused as he is, but I can’t shake the feeling that confrontation will only make things worse. We will quarrel our way to freedom, but in the meantime, the witches have a plan, and it’s nearly sunrise.
Mamá has outsmarted us. From the beginning, she anticipated my reactions. She knew the vampires would not assist her, and she knew I was too stubborn a creature to let Liv die. She was smart enough to foresee my leaving yet another home in favor of what I believed was morally right.
My skin prickles, a clear warning that I cannot rattle. Every day, my skin tingles as the moon sets and the sun rises, but usually I’m safely inside the manor, and often I’m tucked beneath the covers of my bed. I envision it now—cold, empty. I wonder if I’ll ever glide beneath those sheets again.
“We need to act quickly,” Will hisses.
His pulse is racing, his skin burning. I’m sure if I look into his eyes, I’ll see his magic bubbling within them, pools of the raging elements at war with what the witches are executing—us.
He’s angry, afraid, and forcing me to choose. Our enemies have made it clear. If we want to survive, they will have to die. We can escape their fury tonight, but that means sacrificing anyone who gets in our way, including Mamá or Liv or the countless others whose faces I do recognize.
My former coven members look at me with disdain. It feels like a lifetime ago when I would have gladly sacrificed my life to save any one of them. How much can I withstand? How many betrayals do I need to experience before I relinquish control over that selfless girl?
Blinded by devotion to the only blood I’ve known and terrified by the idea of an eternity without them, I willingly allowed the witches to abuse me. But the cycle ends here. As much as I want to forgive Mamá and love her, I can’t. She won’t let me.
I squeeze Will’s hand three times to let him know I’m ready for an all-out brawl. I’m prepared to fight my way through bloodshed and teardrops if that means we see another nightfall. I wish it didn’t have to end this way, but they’ve given me no other options.
If they want a war, the vampires will give them one.
I exhale slowly and release Will’s hand. We separate, him skating to the left, attacking the many witches attempting to control him with their magic, and me rushing to the right, toward Mamá and Liv and far too many familiar faces.
Everything moves too quickly. I don’t think about what I’m doing, because the thought sickens me. I’m dashing forward, tearing through flesh. I hear their screams, but I try not to think about the voices, the lives behind them.
I dodge a fireball directed straight for my heart. I don’t know who sent it my way. Maybe Liv. Maybe someone else. I’m focused too intently on simply surviving.
My fist makes contact with bone, and I hear it snap. I hear screams and howls, cursing and incantations. Spells spoken in Latin echo in my mind. I don’t comprehend what’s being said, and I don’t give their words another thought. I need to fight my way off Mamá’s land and back into the forest. Will and I can reach the manor before the sun rises as long as we move quickly.
I come face to face with an unfamiliar witch. I know she will be an easy kill. The frightened look in her eyes will not haunt me. I will take her life far too easily, and I will succumb to the darkness every vampire must face in order to do it.
In the blink of an eye, I’m before her, but the moment I slash to end her life, claws lengthened and drool dripping down my chin like I’m some rabid beast, something stops me. A blast of fire meant only as a warning assaults my chest. I fall to the ground, instinctively patting my jacket to put out the embers. The fire witch easily could have taken my life, but she didn’t. Why?
From where I lie on the ground, I glance up. Liv towers over me. Her gaze is hard, but something softer lingers there. Silently, she begs me to stop fighting. How can she ask me to roll over and die? Where is the dignity in that? And does she really think that’s something I could do? It’s as if she doesn’t know me at all. Maybe she doesn’t anymore, because the girl she’s become is nothing like the witch I once knew.
If she’s not going to play nice, then neither will I. I kick my legs forward, striking her in the ankles. I hit her far harder than intended, and a wave of guilt washes over me as she yelps when she falls to the ground. She breaks her fall with her hands and tumbles over. Her head smacks the frozen ground, and she grunts in response. Dazed, she lies still beside me.
I scramble to my feet, prepared to do whatever necessary to save my soul from eternal damnation. I don’t have time to think about how insane it is that I’m fighting my former best friend, especially considering I was ready to sacrifice everything to locate her.
I fought the vampires and was nearly exiled because of my belief that Liv was innocent and didn’t deserve to die just because of her association with me. And now we’re dueling to the death. Although I will admit, I’m doing that really poorly. If she were any other witch, I would have killed her by now. I wouldn’t be twirling around on the ground, hoping this is some wicked nightmare.
“Suficiente!” someone yells.
Her words lash out at me the moment her blade pierces my side. Sharp, cold, and brutal, it sinks into my gut like I was soft butter. I feel every inch of metal scraping against flesh. I howl as it enters me, knees buckling. I fall to the ground, blinking away the pain. My kneecaps smack against the earth, and a fierce cramp radiates up my thighs. The icy earth digs into my jeans, soaking the material through.
My heart is pulsating in my mind, and my chest is heaving. My vision is blurry, but I feel the exact moment she places her foot against my back and uses her strength to push my wounded body off her weapon.
I collapse forward. Not bothering to catch myself, I fall against the ground. The grass is dead and dry, the frost coating my mouth and tasting like dirt. I suck in a sharp breath, lungs filling with the fluffy, light snow that is shimmering as flurries fall around me. I choke on it as it melts and hack to relieve myself.
With each cough, the stabbing sensation in my side grows stronger. I wince when it becomes too much to bear. I feel myself healing, my flesh tethering together like braided hair. I was careless. It takes far too much strength to heal myself, and even though there is an endless supply of blood nearby, I worry what I’ll become if I taste it.
Someone reaches for me and guides me onto my back. I roll over and arch away from the ground, gasping as the frozen earth brushes against my fresh wound, and I stare into a familiar set of cold, hard irises.