Chapter 43
Tyr and Thorne set up a spell circle in a large empty rock chamber, as far away from the portal room as possible to avoid disturbing Vyrkos.
As if ripping away the idol’s conduit to the outside world wouldn’t disturb him at all. But Blaze had to admit it would be stupid not to do everything they could to mitigate the danger.
Blaze stayed as far from Jack Harper as she possibly could. The longer she was around him, the more nauseated she felt, and they needed her to help with the spell.
Zane came over to where she was standing in a corner, his gorgeous blue eyes filled with concern. “Are you sure you’re okay? We can do it without you, if you need us to.”
“I’m okay.” She really wasn’t; she felt like she might vomit any second, and the Seal on her back felt hot. “It’s just feeling Silas’s magic so strong on Jack.”
He put his arm around her, rubbing her back soothingly. Her necklace hummed, and she felt a little better. “I used to practically worship him, you know,” she said. “He was older than I was, so handsome and talented, and he treated me like a favorite little sister from the time I was about six, and he was twelve.
“He’d teach me spells, help me with the ones that were hard for me. He’d teach me how to defend against them, too, and when I got older we’d practice making up spells and challenging each other to neutralize or undo them.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’m pretty sure I saved his life once,” she said. “He was convinced he had a flying spell perfected, and he wanted to show it to me. He took me to the edge of a ravine and made me watch him jump off. I was awed and terrified at the same time.”
“Fool,” Zane muttered under his breath. “I’m assuming it didn’t work.”
“It did at first, and then he lost control.” She could still remember the horror she’d felt, the terror as she watched Silas careening to what looked like certain death. “He hit the side of the ravine, rolled down thirty feet.”
“And you went down there and saved him?” She knew Zane was trying to sound sympathetic to the little girl she’d been, but she got the feeling he was thinking that their lives would all be a lot easier if she hadn’t.
She nodded. “I wasn’t much of a healer, but I was good at telekinesis, and I managed to raise the depressed skull fracture and set the broken ribs, and stop most of the bleeding. That helped enough that he could heal himself, with me lending him my magic.”
And that day had formed a connection between the two of them that they’d had with no one else. “I know his power,” she said. “The way it used to feel, how strong and beautiful it was.” Even though he’d been arrogant, too, always believing he was a bit better than he really was.
“Feeling it now, all bound up with the dark magic he used on Jack, is like going back to visit a beautiful, pristine pond you once loved, and finding it covered in an oil slick. It makes me physically ill.”
Zane dropped a kiss on top of her head, holding her close for a moment. “I’m sorry you have to go through this,” he said. This time, she knew he was sincere. “You’re strong,” he told her softly. “The strongest person I’ve ever known. You can do it.”
His faith in her helped, though they were all still on edge. Tempest was sitting on the floor in another corner, scribbling in her notebook. Every now and then she’d look around the room, but whatever she saw seemed to make her anxious, and she’d dive back into her notebook again.
Tyr kept finding excuses to be on that side of the room, but Tempest wouldn’t make eye contact, and he couldn’t seem to bring himself to interrupt her. Especially since Rebel was sitting a few feet away, toying with her knife and glaring at him every time he looked like he might come near her sister.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they were ready. The six of them ranged themselves around the spell circle, human and dragon alternating. The circle was lined with gemstones, herbs, and candles, all carefully chosen to enhance the spell’s power.
Jack lay near one side of the circle, unconscious. At the other side was a small table with the idol, still in its spell cage. Next to it was an athame—a sacred knife—to cut the magical connections between Jack, Silas, and the idol.
Blaze and the dragons invoked the four elements—air, fire, water and earth—and the corresponding compass directions, raising magic to power the circle, and to contain and focus the energy of the spell.
Once the circle was activated, Thorne began the incantation for the first part of the severing spell—making the connections between Jack, Silas and the idol visible to their sight. Blaze felt the power rising, nausea churning in her stomach.
Something didn’t feel right to her. She glanced at the dragons, but none of them seemed distressed. Nonetheless, the sense of wrongness grew, making her vision waver. She saw Jack’s life force, and the dark webbing of Silas’s power twined with it, connected to the idol but dormant, the glow of the spell cage interrupting the current.
And then, for a split second, she saw something completely different. The spell cage rotting and disintegrating. A thick dark-yellow stream of energy passing through the east wall of the room like a rushing river, pouring into the idol.
And from there, into Jack. Except she could barely see Jack’s energy at all now. It looked like…
Her vision snapped back to normal, and she saw what she’d seen all along. The others hadn’t seemed to notice anything—they were focusing on Jack, as Thorne intoned a tricky part of the spell.
But the feeling of wrongness was tearing her insides apart. The Seal on her back burned. Careful not to interfere with what Thorne was doing, she whispered a tiny spell to enhance her magical sight and see through illusion.
Snap. Her magical sight shifted again, and she looked at the man lying on the floor. It wasn’t Jack. It had never been Jack. The face and voice and body were a complicated, detailed illusion.
It was Silas.
He’d taken Jack’s form and convinced them to carry him in here like a Trojan horse, and now he was pulling power directly from Vyrkos and Corwyn through the idol, gathering it into himself.
Before she could warn anyone, Silas opened his eyes and flung out one hand. “Dianta mortenous capurna!”
Power rolled through the room, augmented by the idol, freezing everyone in place. Thorne’s incantation stopped in mid-sentence, and the severing spell crumbled.
The spell cage holding the idol disintegrated into a pile of dust, and its eyes opened and began to glow.