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“Language,” she chided me with a smile.
How is she smiling right now?
Cadence raised her finger and pointed at the golem. Its laughter stopped, and it froze under the weight of her stare. A single vine shot from her fingertip and wrapped around the golem’s throat. More vines sprang from the one Cadence had created. They wrapped the golem’s legs, then its feet. The golem struggled to break from their grip, and I was forced to move with it.
Cadence’s smile widened.
The golem grew more frantic, and its hold on my arm lessened. I didn’t hesitate to move my arm, but I didn’t pull it out of its body. I plunged it deeper, until my hand wrapped around its stone heart, then I ripped it away. With one last bellow, the golem died.
Cadence’s vines shriveled up, and her face paled. We stared at the pile of sand and struggled to catch our breath. The stone heart was heavy in my grasp.
“That,” she said, “was awesome.”
“You’re insane,” I told her, “but, yeah, it kinda was.”
Cadence grinned at me, but it quickly faded.
“Dad!” she screamed.
He was only ten feet from us, laying all too still on blood-soaked grass. We rushed to his side, and I pressed my fingers to his throat.
Thrum…thrum…thrum…
A small, slow pulse throbbed against my fingertips.
“He’s alive,” I told Cadence.
She pressed her tiny hands into the gaping wound on his abdomen. Though we’d been given a momentary reprieve—probably just to let us soak in this pain—fighting still raged around us.
“We need to get him out of here,” Cadence said. Though her voice was steady, tears streamed down her cheeks. “He needs a healer.”
I searched the chaos for someone who could help, but Freya’s coven members were all busy in varying modes of combat. The coppery scent of blood, and the hum of magic filled the air.
As I searched for a solution, I realized just how outnumbered we truly were. We’d slain a good portion of the golems, vampires, and traitorous witches, but many still fought vehemently. Freya’s witches were slowly being overwhelmed. Soon, the tides of the battle would turn, and they wouldn’t move in our favor. I looked back at my dad’s pale face, and all remnants of hope drained.
A howl pierced the night.
*
Freya
I shot gust after gust of wind at Josephine, but she shielded herself with rocks. I couldn’t get close enough to fight her with blades. Gloria, a talented wielder of water, launched her own spells, though she didn’t have much better luck than me. I’d never seen the old woman fight so dirty. She conjured water from the air and nearly drowned Josephine with it, but my mentor fought it off with a defense spell and came back even angrier.
A few other witches, all Elders, launched their own spells, but six witches’ magic coursed through Josephine’s veins. Remnants of my mother’s magic fueled her.
Vines popped out of the ground and tried to snag my feet, but I danced around them. I kept Arachne’s web tucked in my pocket. Though it was tempting to use it as a shield, I knew I needed to save it for when she pulled out the Bloodblade.
Chaos whirled around us, but I couldn’t break my attention. One wrong move, and the gash on my shoulder would be the least of my worries. Josephine would not attempt to take me prisoner again.
She would decimate me.
“Behind you!” a dark-haired witch from my coven yelled.
I turned. A boulder sprang from the ground and flew at me. I barely dove out of its path before it crushed me. I felt it whoosh past me right as my body hit the ground, but I didn’t have time to see what it collided with because vines sprang from the earth. They wrapped around my ankles and legs, then grew thorns that jabbed through my suit and into my flesh.
I cried out in agony, but my mouth was quickly covered by yet another vine. I struggled to think of a spell that could get me out of this mess. Dirt sifted beneath me. If I didn’t escape soon, Josephine would bury me alive.
I tried to summon fire, but no flames even sparked from my fingertips.
