Page 128 of A Time of Witches

Sybil wanted to shake her head at Jacinda in a silent plea. This risk was not worth the danger.

The guards grabbed Sybil by the arms and hauled her toward the pyre, her progress hampered by the shackles at her feet, the chain dragging behind, catching first grass and then logs. Their boots did not feel the jagged, uneven surface of splintered wood, but Sybil’s did. Every scrape of rough bark and sharp edge, every miserable splinter across her battered feet.

She clenched her teeth to keep from wincing. How ridiculous to worry about the pain in her feet when she would soon be burned alive?

Her hands were unbound just long enough to lash together once more around a stake driven into the ground.

Sybil’s heart crashed in her chest like a clap of thunder, her entire body quaking with anticipation.

These were moments she ought to cherish, and yet, the wind was too hard to snatch into her overactive lungs, her thoughts too frantic to settle on any one thing.

She would never feel the power of the earth again.

She would never see her daughter again.

She would die knowing she had lost so much time. So much wasted time.

A sob choked up her throat.

The rain came then, droplets cast from the swollen, angry clouds.

The efforts of a daughter of the earth whose gifts were waning. The cost of enlisting the forbidden.

But Jacinda’s efforts would not be enough to put out the flames.

Sybil would burn that day.

All she could do was beg the earth that her daughter would not be next.

Chapter Sixty-Three

Jacinda

Jacinda ground her teeth so hard against one another, they felt as though they might splinter.

To summon a storm a fortnight ago would have been as easy as breathing.

Now the effort gouged her very soul. She glanced at the hill in hope.

The empty forest beyond pulled at her rapidly depleting energy.

Sybil’s fear radiated from the pyre, leaving a metallic taste in the back of Jacinda’s throat.

She had always been aware of Sybil’s moods.

Indeed, she had long suspected Sybil was her mother before she had confessed. The way her gaze lingered on Jacinda’s face with quiet pride, the persistent love that endured no matter how stubbornly Jacinda fought back against Sybil’s rules.

The hurt that echoed between them the day after they saw Jacinda’s father in the street that one time.

Exhaustion tugged at Jacinda. Her entire body was suddenly impossibly heavy.

The clouds overhead continued to churn, a storm simmering but not boiling.

Tears burned in Jacinda’s eyes, a knot of frustration clenching at the back of her throat.

She needed only hold on a few more moments.

For Sybil. For Lilith. For herself. For the descendants she wronged so completely with the linking spell.