Night Two

NIGHT TWO

S leep eludes me that night, and I lie on my cot, gazing up at the ceiling.

Now that I can see the ethereal of earth, there’s no fear of the dark. I lift my arm, turning my wrist toward my face. My skin holds a light silver sheen, too, like magic coats my body, but where the black mark rests is an unnatural absence of light.

My finger traces over the dark squiggle, then my unblemished forearm, and tingles like static electricity root under my nail. The sensation tickles more than hurts, but when I move my finger back to the mark, the mild buzz vanishes.

It’s like a sticker disrupting the natural order of things, something to be peeled off and tossed aside.

I wrap my magic around the absence of light, picturing a melon baller to scoop out the rot. A painful tug comes from my chest, and the light that coats my skin flickers, dimming in brightness.

Heart pounding, I release it, and the silver sheen settles back to a steady glow.

When I took Elias’s ability to transform into bats, it didn’t affect his vampiric nature. But when I did the same to the werewolf in Silver Hollow, his wolf came along with the curse.

Is it because Elias’s bats developed as a bonus power, similar to Bryant’s ability to mess with my mind? Something gained over years of consuming the blood of witches? While the moon madness was a curse tied to a werewolf’s very being?

Is the dark magic curse tied to a witch’s magic? Would yanking it out also steal their powers? If that theory proved true, I could pull the power and the curse from another witch, then return the power untouched.

But not for Esme. Not if it puts her baby at risk. And not to myself. I can’t use my magic to yank out my magic. The two things cancel each other out.

While I might be able to reverse the spell cast all those centuries ago to identify dark magic users, it does nothing to help us now. Which leaves me back at my original, last-ditch plan .

Frustrated, I drop my arm to my side and open myself up to the magic of the fortress once more. A Rothaven creation, the same as the barriers around Hartford Cove and Silver Hollow.

The witches who live here really should have replaced it with one of their own creation. If they had, it wouldn’t now be vulnerable to theft.

Esme’s sniffles come from the adjoining cell, disrupting my thoughts.

Neither Zane nor I shared what we discovered during our meetings, but our silence only confirms that it doesn’t look good.

I roll onto my side, facing the wall that separates us to trace the glowing outline around the stone in front of me. As I do, I picture grout flaking away.

Dust sifts beneath my fingertips, falling away little by little until, with a hard shove, the stone slides inward.

A sharp intake of breath comes from the other side of the wall, and the stone starts shimmying from side to side, the hole deepening. With a final grunt, Esme wiggles it free. It must fall onto her cot, because it doesn’t crash onto the floor.

“Rowe?” Esme’s hand blindly pats around in the hole. “Is that you? ”

“Who else would it be?” I reach out to clasp her fingers.

She flinches at the unexpected contact but then laces her fingers through mine, her skin like ice. “You can use magic down here?”

“So it would seem.” I curl my free arm under my head to be more comfortable. “There are wards on the ceilings to suppress our powers, but I don’t think they can stop ethereal magic. What I did came from the stones themselves. I just gave it a nudge.”

My nose scrunches in thought. “It’s like the energy of the world or something. I’m not sure, and I’m not asking anyone here.”

“But you don’t have a wand.” Bewilderment fills the words.

Does she think magic comes from wands? That’s just silly. This isn’t a chicken or the egg situation. She’d have to have magic to create the wand.

“Wands are helpful, but not essential. I cast my first spells without one.” I shrug, though she can’t see in the dark the way I can. “They’re mostly pointless to me, though I keep trying. Maybe it’s different for elemental witches?”

“I don’t know. Wand crafting was my first lesson.” She hesitates, and I hear the vulnerability in her voice. “Calix told me wands ground us, keep our powers from slipping away. I can’t imagine performing a spell without my wand the way you did.”

The admiration, quiet yet genuine, warms me. “You could learn. Magic isn’t one-size-fits-all. If you’d like, I can show you once we’re out of here.”

A strained silence follows. I can sense her doubt that we’ll be leaving here, and it lingers like the cold air seeping through the dungeon. “So, could you take down more stones? Get us out of here?”

“Maybe.” Probably, though I don’t say so.

Even if I took down the entire wall, where would it leave us? On the run for the rest of our lives? No, I’d rather save that option for a last, last resort.

She misinterprets my hesitation. “It would take too long to do it one stone at a time, wouldn’t it? The guards would discover our plan before we made it outside.”

“There’s also hard-packed dirt behind the exterior stones,” I point out. “And the matter of freeing Owen and Zane first.”

Her hand tightens in mine, and her laugh is rueful. “Prison breaks are so much flashier in movies, aren’t they?”

“Completely unrealistic,” I agree. “We don’t even have a cool poster to hide our escape tunnel behind, or a friendly janitor to leave us tools to dig a tunnel.”

She giggles, the unexpected sound brightening the cell’s gloom. But it fades as she grips my hand again, the faint tremor returning.

“Rowe…” Her voice cracks, thick with regret. “You didn’t have to be here. You don’t deserve this.”

Guilt threads through the words for my being here, guilt for involving me in her fight. It’s a wound I can’t heal, yet I want to soothe her all the same.

“Esme, stop. None of this is your fault.” I take a steadying breath. “You and Zane didn’t drag me into anything. I was already a target. The council would have come for me, regardless. They didn’t come to Hartford Cove just to grade us. They had ulterior motives.”

Her sniffles subside, replaced by curiosity. “What motives?”

I hesitate, aware of the thinness of my answer. “I don’t know, but Aspen is going to find out.”

My mind circles back to my earlier fight with my mentor. Was I too hard on Aspen? He was only trying to prepare me for the worst-case scenario, but his faith in a council that has repeatedly let us down infuriates me.

There’s a reason he’s not part of our pack, despite being my mentor. He still holds himself apart from Hartford Cove, planning to move on once he trains me.

Does he think Mel will follow him, now that they’re humping like bunnies every chance they get? Has he even talked to her about the future? Because if he hasn’t, he’s in for a rude awakening.

Mel is pack. She owns a shop in town. She’s put down roots. She’s the true leader of our coven. She’s staying , even if it breaks her heart again when he leaves.

I really need to stop thinking of people as pack. That’s Haut’s influence and Gael’s words flipping my brain into Alpha mode.

A choked sob escapes Esme’s lips, shattering the fragile silence between us.

“I’ve always been a burden,” she confesses, her voice raw with pain. “Even back then… I tried so hard to escape Calix, but he kept pulling me back.”

Her words drop to a trembling whisper. “He made sure I knew I was nothing.”

As Esme speaks, my vision shimmers, the magic around us stirring to life, plunging me into a memory not my own.

Images flash through my mind of a younger Esme, bruised and bloody, trapped in a dark room. A voice whispers cruel taunts, the magic binding her twisting tighter each time she resists.

I gasp, my heart constricting as echoes of Esme’s pain, her desperation, flood through our connection.

This happened before with Delilah, but not with so much detail.

It feels so real that, for a moment, the scent of fear and pain fills my nostrils, my own flesh aching from a beating.

We had run again, made it to the state line. We thought, this time , we would be free. Calix tracked us down, though. He used magic to silence us, to still our movements, forcing us to smile at those who could have offered help, if only we could scream.

Agony rips through me as Esme’s memories flood my mind. Searing pain from the lashes across our back, the bite of magical restraints that held her captive.

Desperation. Hopelessness. Acceptance. Our will crushed beneath the weight of a power far greater than ours.

“He took everything from me.” Esme’s anguished words ring in my skull.

I see her through the haze of memory, her cheeks tear-streaked, her magic, emerald sparks dancing over her skin, summoned by her emotions .

“No matter how hard I tried to escape, he always found me. Always pulled me back.” Her voice cracks, thick with unimaginable pain and grief.

The echo of her torment floods my body, my heart galloping. The coppery tang of blood coats my tongue, and I can’t tell if it’s a memory from her or if I bit my cheek.

The musty stench of the cellar thickens the air as I struggle to separate myself from Esme, to find my way back. But her agony is a riptide, dragging me under again and again, holding me in the memory.

Trapped in that dark space, we tremble with dread as Calix stalks forward and lifts his boot-clad foot, stomping down on our arm.

The sound of bone cracking as agony flares white-hot through our body.

My hand spasms, and I release Esme’s hand with a soft cry.

“Rowe?” Worry fills Esme’s voice. “Are you okay?”

How does she still hold so much compassion for others when I only glimpsed a small fraction of what she suffered? She doesn’t shove it down into her memory, locking it in a box like I did with what Bryant put me through, either .

She lives with it every day, turning to Zane for comfort when the nightmares get to be too much.

“Rowe?” She reaches through the hole in the wall, searching for me in the darkness. “Say something.”

“Sorry.” I clasp her hand once more, squeezing tight. “Had a muscle spasm.”

I don’t want her to know that I felt what she went through. There’s a difference between telling someone, and having them live through the hopelessness, the moment where you give up and accept that this is your life, and it will only end when you die.

Esme’s other hand comes up, cold as it rubs over the top of mine. “The blankets help, but only so much, right? This place could use a heating system.”

“Yeah,” I choke out, my pulse still racing, every rapid beat echoing the pounding in my skull.

Experiencing Esme’s horror threatens to rip open the scars left by Bryant’s torture. I press my free hand to the stones, pulling strength from them, letting their icy chill numb me to the pain.

Exhaustion sweeps over me, and I long for the arms of my mate, so close if not for the chasm of stone and iron separating us .

Owen’s voice drifts through the darkness. “Rowe? Are you okay?”

His concern wraps around me like a warm embrace, anchoring me back to the present. I picture him in my mind, brows furrowed, blue eyes bright with worry. Even separated, his presence acts as a balm to my battered soul.

I swallow hard, keeping my voice steady. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

It’s not quite a lie, but not the whole truth, either.

Tears threaten, but I blink them back, unwilling to give this cold place a moment of my sadness.

A cold laugh slithers through the dungeon, and my skin crawls.

“You’re not fine,” Elias sneers. “None of you are. You’re going to die, and your mates will rot here alongside me for the rest of their miserable lives.”

Esme’s hand trembles in mine.

“Shut your mouth,” Owen snarls. “Or I’ll break through this wall to shut it for you.”

He laughs. “If you could do that, you already would have.”

“Ignore him, Owen.” I pull the blankets up over my shoulders for warmth. “He’s just a powerless asshole getting off on traumatizing us from behind bars. ”

A humorless laugh rips from my throat. “You’re pathetic, Elias. A sad, impotent little man who can only feel strong by preying on the vulnerable. How do you like being the one locked up and stripped of power for a change?”

An angry hiss comes from him, but I don’t give him a chance to respond. “You know what? Don’t bother answering. I don’t care. You’re nothing but a bitter old bastard whose children hate you, waiting to die alone in a cell.”

Ros’s father scoffs. “You talk a big game, little girl, but if these bars weren’t between us?—”

“She’d kick your ass all over again,” Owen cuts in. “Now, be quiet. Some of us are trying to sleep.”

With a few more grumbles that we ignore, Elias settles back down.

I squeeze Esme’s hand. “We should put the stone back in place.”

“Just a little longer?” she asks, her voice trembling. “It’s so dark at night.”

The darkness of the cellar flashes through my mind, and I can’t bring myself to refuse. “Sure, just for a little longer.”

Maybe if she hides the stone under her bed, the guards won’t even notice the hole in our wall.