Chapter 22 Will You Be My Champion?

22

Will You Be My Champion?

"What is this about?" Wynter said, squirming in the seat of inquisition in Elena's Arcane Emporium office, her eyes flicking anxiously between Elena, Talia, and me. For once, she wasn't wearing her customary mask of Glam Witch ? makeup, and she looked much younger and more vulnerable without it. Tired, too, with bruised shadows raw beneath her eyes. Even her hair seemed listless, the bangs flat and stringy.

She wasn't wearing that distinctive obelisk pendant, but now that I knew to look for it, I could see the way her hand kept twitching up toward her chest, as if to check that it was still there.

"Have you been stealing herbs from us?" Elena asked, in a tone so surgically sharp it sounded like it could part your skin with the barest pressure applied. "And have you been using them to summon the ancient entity of darkness and chaos known as Chernobog?"

The commingling of guilt and surprise that swept like a squall over Wynter's face would have been giveaway enough, even if her jaw hadn't dropped open. "I…beg pardon?" she said, ridiculously, her voice quavering. "I didn't…How would you…"

Elena summoned an entire cloak of billowing ectoplasm, a shroud of roiling, inky darkness that whirled around and behind her like some dark sorceress's cape. There was so much of it I could feel its emanating chill even from where I stood, all the way by the door.

" Nice ," Talia hissed under her breath.

"What the fuck?!" Wynter squealed, recoiling so hard that the chair's legs scraped across the floor. "What is that? What are you?!"

"A true necromantic witch, you idiot child," Elena snapped, the ectoplasm surging around her like a captive black thunderhead. "As you clearly fancy yourself to be. Now speak, and spare us any further nonsense or prevarication. Tell me what you did, or you'll discover exactly how we deal with the meddling of mundanes who infringe on our territory."

Generally, we dealt with them exclusively by erasing their memories of magic. But from the blotchy pallor that had crept into Wynter's cheeks—and Elena's thoroughly impressive intimidation display—I doubted that was where Wynter's mind was straying.

"I…" Wynter began, the word emerging in a sandpaper croak. She swallowed hard, licking her lips. "Yes, okay. I've been…Maybe I borrowed some herbs, here and there. But it was for the cause. I'm a darkling, one of Chernobog's chosen. I've been dedicated to him for years."

"You're a what?" Elena demanded, contempt dangling like icicles from each word. Next to me, Talia groaned low in her throat, rolling her eyes so hard she actually let her head fall back.

"A darkling," Wynter repeated a little more sheepishly, a flush mottling her wan cheeks. "That's what the community of the dread lord's followers call ourselves."

"Is this the actual stupidest bullshit I've ever heard?" Talia mused, a finger to her chin. "Or is it worse than the stupidest? I can't even tell."

"It does seem to call for its own dedicated metric," I agreed.

"And this community of yours," Elena continued, jade eyes narrowed. "What exactly is it that you do for your dread lord ?"

Wynter winced at the scathing tone, her shoulders hunching a little, but then drew herself up. "We—we give offerings," she said, with a stout little lift to her chin. "And we celebrate him during the changing of the seasons, when the world tilts toward winter and darkness."

"Hold on a minute," Talia interjected. "Is that why you're calling yourself Wynter, y and all? As some kind of obnoxious homage?"

Wynter shot her an outraged glare. "It's my craft name," she replied loftily. "Which, as a practitioner, I'm allowed to choose for myself. And spell however speaks to me."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Talia moaned, dragging a hand over her face. "The y speaks to her."

" Definitely worse than stupid," I agreed. "Hitting somewhere deep on the negative end of the scale."

"But why Chernobog, out of all the gods?" Elena asked, genuinely bewildered. "Do death and eternal chaos speak to you , in similar fashion to the deliberately misspelled names of seasons?"

"My great-great-great-grandma was from Belarus," Wynter replied, bristling. "So the Slavic pantheon is, like, my heritage. And he's…well, there's something really hot about all that darkness, right? Like kind of a broody element. The way the end of the world is sort of exciting, if you think about it in a certain light."

"So you worship him because he's sexy," Talia concluded flatly. "Phenomenal decision-making, truly, I applaud you. What better reason to pledge fealty to a deathly chthonic god than fuckability?"

"We don't just worship him," Wynter protested, craning her neck to glare at Talia over her shoulder. "On special occasions, we invite him to show himself."

"You summon him," Elena concluded. "And I assume the Cavalcade would count as an appropriate special occasion."

"Oh, yeah, of course!" Wynter exclaimed, nodding vigorously, guilt and trepidation momentarily pushed aside by a wave of excitement. "The historical re-creation of the magical founding of a town by its witch founders? I mean, for sure . I'm sorry about the herbs, I really am. It's just, they're like, seriously expensive. And you need a shit ton of them, at least for the invocation I was using."

"And where," Elena growled through her teeth, her jaw dangerously tight, leaning over her desk far enough that Wynter quailed again, "would a deluded naif such as yourself even find an invocation to summon a primeval deity of death and chaos?"

"Um, Reddit?" Wynter chanced with a preemptive grimace, as if she had a sense of the reception this was likely to get.

Talia burst into a bout of full-throated laughter, leaning over to prop herself against her thighs. "No," she managed through helpless chortles. "Please, I can't. She found the invocation on Reddit . Make it stop. Or no, you know what, say more ."

"Well, the spell itself wasn't on Reddit, obviously," Wynter argued, like, duh . "That's just where the community threads are hosted, and there was this AMA from one of the really senior darklings, and then that led me to a Tumblr, and then to an Etsy store where I bought the summoning pendant, and—"

"Enough." Elena held up a staying hand, pinching the bridge of her nose with the other. "I fear the advent of an aneurysm if you continue speaking."

Absurd as it sounded, it was theoretically possible that someone dedicated enough—as Wynter clearly was, for all her cringeworthy fumbling at witchcraft—could have stumbled across a legitimate spell somewhere in the infinite morass of the internet. The Thistle Grove Grimoire and the other spellbooks kept at Tomes you're speakers to the dead. Even if you're not full-fledged darklings, I thought probably you worshipped him, too. That's why I wanted to work here in the first place. To see if I could learn anything from you."

"Some of us know better than to court dangerous things we don't understand," Elena retorted caustically—though in fairness, that was a shamelessly far cry from the truth when it came to many of the more daredevilish members of our family. We were just much better equipped to engage in the flagrant disregard of common sense. "And alas, it did work, you foolish child. You just don't remember it."

Of course, I realized. Wynter wouldn't have retained any memory of either of Chernobog's manifestations at the spectacles, because she'd been glamoured to forget them along with the rest of the normies. So she'd simply kept casting and casting—like dropping a pin for him at every spectacle, amplified by the swirling immensity of the Cavalcade's magic such that the spell actually worked for her, unlike all the times she'd futilely tried it before.

"You mean he manifested ?" Wynter breathed, face suffused with helpless wonder. "The invocation worked? How could I have ever forgotten something like that? It…he must have been glorious."

"He was," Talia interjected gleefully, all too delighted to rub salt in the wound. "Super fucking sexy, and did I mention naked? Babe, I'm talking full-frontal, and packing serious heat. You missed out."

"You forgot because it wasn't a sight meant for the eyes of a malicious little thief like you," Elena responded, as Wynter's face crumpled with abject disappointment. "Now, on to business. First of all, you're fired. That should go without saying, but for you, I prefer to clarify beyond a reasonable doubt. And given the extent of this debacle, I'd suggest you consider leaving town altogether, as the rest of the family won't be any better pleased with you than I am, and will likely show considerably less restraint."

"But Thistle Grove is my home!" Wynter wailed, gaze flitting pathetically between the three of us. "Where am I supposed to go? I built my entire following around living here! And working at the Emporium!"

"Better start looking for a different angle to influence, sweetness," Talia suggested in acid tones.

"And before you leave," Elena continued. "We'll be needing the invocation from you."

Wynter swallowed hard, then set her jaw. "It's my spell," she countered stubbornly, her arms tightening over her chest. "I found it. And I don't have to give it to you."

"Ballsy," Talia murmured almost appreciatively, tilting her head from side to side. "Especially coming from someone lucky not to be on the receiving end of at least seven separate hexes. Not to mention the fact that a summoning spell like that draws on you as the power source—do you happen to have given that nasty little detail any thought? Cast it enough times, and there wouldn't be much left of you anymore to call it yours."

Wynter paled even further, and Elena grinned like a cat that had sighted a bird within swiping distance.

"And might I remind you that this is my motherfucking house, dear," she hissed through that sharp-toothed, crimson-lipped smile, whorls of ectoplasm churning around her, lifting up like a storm brewing behind her back. Inky tendrils of it began to creep over her desk like ghostly, sentient filaments, slithering toward Wynter until she whimpered and strained away from them. "Not to mention my town. And let us not forget that you dared to steal from the Emporium and then lie about it, which amounts to deceiving the entire Avramov family. So you will hand that invocation over as if it were a heartfelt offering to me, in earnest pursuit of my forgiveness. And then you'll never set foot across our threshold again…if you're at least bright enough to know what's good for you. That much, we will allow you to remember."

That night, we stood among the surging crowd of normies in the Castle Camelot courtyard—for once absent of its usual jousting knights and beer-toting wenches, the faux castle's crenellated ramparts and turrets soaring above us, the Blackmoore onyx-and-gold pennants snapping in the chill wind. Kitschy as it was during the day, at night the floodlights at the base of the walls, angled up to illuminate the rough-hewn blocks of stone, lent the Blackmoore's mega-sized play castle surprising realism.

It felt a little like having been transported a thousand years back, to when Morgan le Fay, the Blackmoores' alleged ancestress, might truly have been parting the mists in search of Avalon.

Ivy and I stood on either side of Maya with the rest of the quorum gathered near, and Elena's core group of defensive necromancers clustered at the ready close by. The Blackmoore spectacle was already underway—conjured lightning in silver and gold flashed above us in fanciful patterns, splitting the sky into segments like a mosaic of black glass. With each strike, the normies gasped, an oblivious chorus of oohs and aahs that grated on my nerves.

Maya had chosen the Blackmoore spectacle to invoke Chernobog partly because of location; the moat around the castle echoed the lake, Belisama's natural element. Blackmoore magic itself was also elemental and light based, closer in alignment to her aspects than his. "She wants to try reasoning with him one more time, to see if he'll just let her be," Maya had conveyed to us, plainly as skeptical as we were of the goddess's chances of success. "And if he's on the back foot, she thinks she might have a better shot."

We were using the same invocation spell Wynter had cast, for consistency's sake. After all, it had worked twice before, and for a mundane, at that. Talia and Issa had read it over with wrinkled noses—casting something of neither Grimoire nor Avramov origin didn't sit well with them—but agreed to cast it together. Unlike Wynter, they likely wouldn't even need the amplifier of the Cavalcade spectacle to summon Chernobog, but the boost wouldn't hurt, especially if it also put Maya-as-Belisama in a position of relative power.

"You ready?" I murmured to her. "They're about to start."

Maya nodded, nibbling on the inside of her lip, her eyes grave as they met mine. "She's afraid," she said shakily. "She's trying to hide it from me, but I can feel it. She's scared of what might happen if he won't listen to her. But this is the only way. Now that he knows where she is, he'll return on his own, eventually; he never stops trying. She thinks it's best to force the issue with even a slight advantage."

"It'll be okay," Ivy reassured her, sounding about as convinced as I felt. "You'll see."

I'd been seized by deep misgiving as soon as we arrived, a writhing in my stomach like a nest of snakes, almost as forceful as a premonition. Something massive was going to transpire tonight; I could sense it, as if the knowledge itself hovered on the other side of the veil, accessible only to me. And whatever would happen, Belisama had chosen me for it, somehow.

Whatever the cataclysmic fallout would be, I wouldn't be able to evade it—just as I finally had Ivy back, and more to lose than I'd ever had before.

As the lightning continued to fork above us in those gorgeous, geometric patterns, I could feel the moment when Talia and Issa began the invocation, the pungent odor of the herbs burning in a censer held between them abruptly dousing the air. A sticky, icy pall settled over us like an ectoplasmic cobweb, along with a breathless sense of anticipation.

And he answered the call almost at once, as though he'd been waiting just beyond the threshold for another invitation.

Set against the illuminated sky, that striking, demonic form was even more jarring as it coalesced—trapped behind the lightning strikes like prison bars, that web of light acting as the proxy for the veil like the conjured fog had at The Bitters. Whatever damage Belisama had managed to inflict the day before had clearly already been shed; he manifested more quickly than either of the previous times, with a solidity and heft that stole my breath. He looked even stronger this time, more fully realized. And I knew from Maya that Belisama was still terribly weakened from the exertion of the banishment.

"Dearest," he boomed, a terrible smile splitting his face. "You call for me, as I knew you would!"

Beside me, Maya began to glow blue again, though much paler this time, more diffuse. "I do," she responded, in that belling, otherworldly voice, and I could see from the sapphire and amber sparking in her eyes that the goddess had emerged again. "My brother, my lover, my erstwhile companion. I call for you to ask you to stay your hand, and then hie away. Because we are done, my darling, you and I. I will not have you again, when the price of your love is dearer every time."

Chernobog paused, the smile dropping away like a husk, an awful darkness falling like a curtain across his face.

"You do not mean it," he grated through clenched teeth. "You cannot mean it. We are one , my love, as we have always been. As we were made to be. How could you ask me to exist alone in all my darkness, when you have ever been the torch that lights my way?"

"You say you love me, yet you would snuff me out, along with everything precious I have come to treasure here," she called out, and now tears were streaming down her face, eyes bleak with hopelessness. "You would raze everyone in your path, just to seize hold of me once again. I cannot have it. I cannot have you . If you do love me, then hear me now—and begone, for the last time. Give me my peace, and find some different light to crave."

"I WILL NOT!" he roared, lifting both clawed hands to batter against the shining grid of conjured lightning that barred his way. I'd been so caught up in their exchange that I'd barely registered the terror of the crowd, but now the muffled screams penetrated my consciousness, the fearful turmoil that surrounded us as the normies woke to the realization that this wasn't part of any planned performance. "I WILL COME FOR YOU, AS I HAVE ALWAYS COME. AND YOU WILL LEAVE BEHIND THIS MEASLY, MEANINGLESS SCRAP OF EARTH THAT YOU HAVE CLAIMED FOR YOURSELF, AND TAKE UP YOUR RIGHTFUL PLACE BY MY SIDE ONCE AGAIN!"

"He's not going to stop. Not ever," she whispered beside me, and this time I couldn't tell which of them was speaking, Maya or Belisama or maybe both as one. She lifted both hands, gulping back tears. "Not unless he's destroyed. I will never know peace while he continues to exist, in this or any other realm. And neither will this town, not now that he is aware that I am here, that he might find others of my blood here, too."

Blue light streamed out from her splayed and outstretched hands, a savage devastation scrawled across her face—because, I abruptly understood, she did care. This was still her lover, her other half, that she was consigning to destruction, because she had no choice. She couldn't have peace and freedom and the gorgeous enchantment she'd made of Thistle Grove, and keep him as well.

This was the end of the line for them.

But nothing happened this time when the blue light met his embodied frame. The sapphire flames huffed out as soon as they touched him, lapping against him for only an instant before melting away. The alignments didn't matter, clearly, not in the face of the colossal imbalance of powers—he a god nearly in his full-blown and original form, Belisama only a bright seed of herself, housed in the body of a mortal girl.

"I cannot do it," Belisama whispered, wide-eyed and desolate, through Maya's trembling lips—and my heart broke at the sight of that helplessness, goddess or no. "I am too weak to stand against him, especially in this fragile form. If I burn any fiercer, I will extinguish all of her, and that…I will not do that. Not even to set myself free of him."

She turned to me, tears still gleaming like pearls in her eyes. And as soon as I met her gaze, I knew , understood at once what she needed from me.

Why I'd been the one chosen to guard Maya in the first place, to stand beside her when this precise moment came to pass.

"Daria Avramov," she said, knelling yet soft, reaching out to thread her fingers through mine. I could feel the privacy glamour that sprang up to encompass the three of us, her and me and Ivy, shielding us from Chernobog entirely. Her eyes glowed both amber and blue like Lady's Lake on a high summer day, rippling with sunlight reflecting off the water's faceted surface. The heat that pulsed from her palms to mine felt like touching the sun itself, and yet the searing warmth of it was welcome, beautiful, beneficent, sinking past my skin like a stream of courage poured directly into my veins. The urge to kneel pressed at the base of my skull once again, but this time it felt like a request, not a command. "You understand, do you not, that my love of loves is merely a devil overgrown? And in so knowing, will you be my champion? Will you allow me to beseech you for your help?"

Abruptly that sleeping hunger stirred inside me, its jaw unhinging, surging up toward my throat. Yes, some gods were simply devils, overgrown. Whatever it was that had always lived inside me, ravenous and curled in wait, this was something that it very much understood.

"I will, my lady," I said, dropping to my knees and meeting her gaze with a fierce one of my own, as that sense of destiny fell heavily over my shoulders like a chain mail stole. "Of course I'll help."

"Dasha?" came Ivy's panicked voice from behind Belisama, as she shouldered past to stand next to her, beautiful, furious eyes fastened on my face. "Dasha, what does that mean? Dash, for fuck's sake, what are you doing right now ?"

"I love you, baby," I said to her, meeting her terrified gaze with as much reassurance as I could muster, though my heart was heaving against my sternum, pounding in my ears until it nearly drowned out everything else. "And I'll come back to you, I swear . But I have to do this for her first—you know I do. See you soon, okay?"

"Dasha, please, for once, just don't —"

With a furious pulse of the garnet at my throat, I slipped over to the other side of the veil.