Page 44 of Little Witch

I had to do something. I couldn't just stand there while all four of them bled for me.

My eyes fell on the spell book still clutched in my hand. Maybe there was something else in it. Some other spell that could actually help. With shaking fingers I flipped through the pages, frantic, searching for anything.

And then I saw it.

A Spell of Sacrifice.

The words burned themselves straight into my brain. A spell to seal the Sanctum, to bring balance back — but it needed a key. A person. Someone to become the anchor, binding the magic and holding the darkness at bay.

My breath caught. I knew exactly what it meant. I knew exactly what it was asking me to do.

"Amber, look out!"

I turned just in time to see another creature rushing me, and this time I didn't move. Couldn't. My mind was already racing somewhere else entirely. I grabbed for the locket, empty now since I'd stopped wearing it inside the Sanctum, and felt the ghost of its power anyway, warm under my palm.

"I have to be the key," I whispered, voice shaking. "Someone has to. It might as well be me."

Nobody heard me over the fighting. I didn't have time to explain even if they had. I began speaking the words of the spell myself, the air around me crackling instantly with something bigger than anything I'd channeled before.

"Amber, what are you doing?!" Dad's voice cut through the noise, panic sharp in it.

I didn't stop. Couldn't.

The words poured out of me faster than I could think them, each one heavier than the last, magic building until it felt like my whole body might come apart from the inside. Light bloomed around me, orange bleeding into blinding white.

The creatures screamed, dissolving under the force of it, but I barely registered the sound. I was too far inside the spell now, the power scorching through me, burning brighter with every syllable.

"Amber!" Rowan's voice, raw with panic, breaking through everything else for one final second.

Then the light exploded outward in a single massive wave, swallowing everything in its path.

The world went completely silent, like it was holding its breath.

Then everything went white.

Chapter Twenty Four

The fight was chaos from the first second, and it only got worse from there.

Shadow met shadow as I tore into the nearest creature, my magic curling around its throat the same way I'd used it a dozen times before, except this time there wasn't a single one of them to kill and walk away from. There were dozens. Maybe more. Pouring out of the treeline like the forest itself had decided to empty its stomach all at once, shapes crawling straight up out of the ground in places where I'd have sworn nothing had been standing a second earlier.

Wind ripped past me on both sides, Rowan and Cian working in a rhythm they'd apparently never actually lost despite years apart, gusts slamming into shapes that shrieked and dissolved into smears of black against the trees. I fed dark into the throat of the thing I'd caught until it came apart between my fingers, ash scattering into the wind, and turned straight into the next one without a breath to spare.

This one got a hit in before I finished it. Claws raked across my shoulder, deep enough that I felt it hit bone, hot blood instantly soaking through my shirt and running warm down my arm. I didn't stop moving. Couldn't afford to. I grabbed the thing by what passed for its skull and crushed the shadow into it until there was nothing left holding its shape together, then spun into the next without even checking how bad the wound actually was.

A third came at me low, aiming for my legs instead of my throat, and I barely got a knee up in time to catch it across the jaw, buying myself half a second to gather enough shadow to finish it properly. My whole shoulder screamed with every movement now, blood slicking my grip, but stopping wasn't an option with this many of them still coming.

"There's too many!" Cian shouted, voice cracking through the noise, wind whipping his hair across his face as he threw another gust hard enough to snap a creature clean in half at the waist, both halves dissolving before they hit the ground.

"No shit!" I caught a second one by the throat, this one faster than the last, and it twisted in my grip enough to sink claws into my forearm before I finished it off, tearing it apart in a spray of something cold and black that hissed against my skin like acid, leaving welts that stung worse than the actual wound underneath.

Yakob's magic crackled beside us, bolts of raw light tearing through the dark, striking three creatures at once and dropping them where they stood, smoke curling off their dissolving bodies. But even with all four of us throwing everything we had, the numbers kept climbing. For every one we tore apart, two more slid up out of the earth to take its place, snarling, patient in a way that made my skin crawl worse than the claws did. It felt less like a fight now and more like trying to bail out a flooding boat with our bare hands.

I caught sight of Amber out of the corner of my eye, frozen near the treeline, and felt my stomach drop straight through the ground.

"Amber, get back!" I screamed it loud enough to hurt my throat, throwing another wave of shadow toward a creature circling too close to her, cutting it down before it could get within arm's reach.

She didn't move. Didn't even look up. Her whole focus had narrowed down to the spell book clutched in both hands, fingers flying through the pages with a kind of desperate speed that told me she'd found something she thought could actually help.