Chapter 30

Chapter

Thirty

GRIMM

H e hovered over his prone, floating wife, shifting into his mortal form. Blinking rapidly, he cleared the tears from his vision. He needed to see her.

"Don't you dare leave me here yet, witch. If I'm alive, so are you."

Her lips curved at his words, those honey eyes fluttering open. Black veins etched along her cheeks, her jawline, the column of her neck. Her heartbeat was so faint.

"Our grave has been dug as one, and we'll climb in together." A single tear slipped from her eye, and he wiped it away with his thumb. "Are you ready, my love?"

She nodded once, and Grimm shifted back into his reaper.

WINNIE

The reaper roared, a cry of agony that shook the ground until Winnie almost lost her footing. Sorscha was clawing her way up the rocks, screaming. Seleste was on her knees, weeping. But Winnie couldn't move.

You are going to right all our lives, Aggie. You watch and see, she'd told her Sister in the Spring.

Trembling, she watched as Grimm's skeletal hand plunged deep into her littlest Sister's chest as he roared in anguish and agony. A dark, glowing soul rushed forth, a crown still poised on her head.

Winnie let out a garbled cry.

The reaper wrapped her in his decrepit arms just before there was a bright flash of light, like a cosmic starburst, blinding Winnie.

A breath later, magic shot back into her, both warming and chilling. A hum of returned magic thrummed through the valley.

When she opened her eyes again, Lady Magic and Lord Night were gone, but the bodies of Agatha and Grimm were plummeting toward the ground.

Winnie screamed, rushing for them. Her magic darted out to catch Aggie, and Laurent's magic shot forward for Grimm.

SELESTE

There was screaming and wailing.

So much blood.

Numb.

Her ears were underwater.

Someone pulled at her.

"...can't!"

She was being tugged, but she couldn't register anything.

Too dark.

It was too dark in her heart.

Aggie was gone.

Gone .

"Seleste!" It was Winnie, her face twisted in despair, pulling at her arm from the ground. "We can't stop yet. Please!" she begged. "Stay with me!"

Asa was carrying Sorscha. She was wailing, screaming.

Gaius was on his knees, rocking Grimm's lifeless form back and forth in his lap, his head tipped to the sky as he bellowed.

Seleste dragged her eyes from Grimm to Winnie, who was pulling at her wrist. Aggie lay in Winnie's arms. She dropped to the dirt and gore, her vision dotting, her mind beginning to lose consciousness.

"Take Aggie!" Winnie screamed, her face covered in blood, snot, and tears. " Seleste !"

Numbly, she took Aggie's lifeless body from their Sister Winter, cradling her.

WINNIE

Not yet.

She couldn't stop yet.

Winnie gritted her teeth, pulling at every speck of rage and pain she'd held onto for the last three hundred years.

Her magic shot her into the air as if she were flying.

Someone appeared next to her. Laurent.

His cheeks were wet with tears, too, but they weren't done. Not yet.

Wordlessly, they dropped to the cliff's edge and stalked toward the ancient, shrivelled husk of a woman crumpled on the ground.

Winnie kicked her over, and Laurent bent to check her pulse.

"She's alive," he said softly, "barely."

Aggie had taken back her kernel of Primordial magic. But she had not taken this fallen goddess' life. The others, the Acolytes, had fallen into death's embrace, their magic still tied to their souls. Somehow, Aggie and Grimm had untangled magic from the other souls, allowing them to live until her death placed the magic back in them, upon her choosing.

Athania was different. And Aggie had honoured that difference.

The last, parting gift to the goddess who was once her friend, her chosen sister.

But Winnie had no such mercy.

Moving to look down over the cliffside, she saw everything Aggie and Grimm had sacrificed themselves for. Below, a multitude of differing people joined together in mourning, in triumph, in love, in gratitude .

It would be a long, long road ahead of them. Painful and free. The most bitter of sweet things.

Tears and snot streaming down her face, Winnie stalked back toward the woman responsible for all their pain. The blade of her sword dragged behind her across the rock until she stood above the prone woman.

She kicked her in the ribs, and Athania's eyes peeled open. Lips pulling back from her teeth in a snarl, Winnie's voice was like gravel as she said, "Good. I want you to watch this."

Wendolyn Joubert, the eldest Sister Solstice, lifted her sword above her and screamed as she brought it down on Athania's neck, severing her head from her body.

When it was done, black blood coating her boots, Winnie dropped her sword, letting it clatter to the rock. Laurent was there by her side in an instant, her pillar in the stormy sea.

"Lau," she whimpered, "my Sister… "

"Shh, bábóg . I've got you." He caught her as she fainted.