Chapter: Chapter 140 — The Witch's Final MoveEthan POVI'd barely gotten two hours of sleep before Mira's shout tore through the estate, raw and urgent in a way that had every Guardian on the grounds moving before they'd even processed the words.I reached my father's room to find Mira on her knees beside the bed, both hands pressed hard against his chest, the violet along his skin no longer dormant but spreading again, fast, aggressive, climbing toward his throat in a way it hadn't managed even in the worst hours after the cavern."What's happening," I demanded, my exhaustion burning away instantly in the face of fresh danger."She's pulling on the spell," Mira said, not looking up, sweat already beading along her hairline with the effort of holding the curse back. "Somewhere close. I can feel her reaching for it, trying to finish what she started."My mother stood at the foot of the bed, her face white, her hands trembling at her sides. "She's here," Luna said. "Somewhere on the grounds. I can feel it too."I was already movin
Last Updated: 2026-10-09
Chapter: Chapter 139 — She Cried for HimSophia POVThe estate was quiet by the time we got back, the kind of quiet that felt wrong after everything, like the house itself didn't know how to hold the weight of what we'd brought home with us. Ethan laid Damian down in one of the guest rooms, gently, almost reverently, and I stood in the doorway for a long time afterward, unable to make myself step inside, unable to make myself leave either."You don't have to stand there alone," Ethan said, appearing beside me, his own face still streaked with blood and ash."I don't know what I'm supposed to feel," I admitted, my voice hoarse from crying, from screaming, from everything the night had torn out of me. "I keep waiting for it to make sense, and it doesn't. He hurt me, Ethan. He hurt Emma, and Lily, and half this school, before he ever started trying to be someone better. I can't forget that just because he died protecting me.""You don't have to forget it," Ethan said quietly. "Grief doesn't require you to erase the bad parts to
Last Updated: 2026-10-09
Chapter: Chapter 138 — DamianSophia POVWe hit the church doors together, Ethan's shoulder splintering the old wood on impact, and the nave opened before us in a chaos of candlelight and smoke and the stench of old stone gone rotten with magic.I saw him immediately. Bound to a broken pillar near the ruined altar, blood streaking his face, his body sagging against ropes that were the only thing holding him upright. Everything in me narrowed down to that single image, every tactical instruction Ethan had given me in the car dissolving instantly in the face of it."Damian!"Nathan was already moving, cutting down a witch who tried to intercept him, and Emma broke right toward the wall where three more coven members had scrambled to defend their circle. Ethan drove straight for Elira, forcing himself between her and the altar, and I ran for Damian, every instinct telling me nothing else mattered right now except reaching him.Elira's head snapped toward me, fury twisting her face into something unrecognizable from t
Last Updated: 2026-10-09
Chapter: Chapter 137 — The Last DoorDamian POVThe ropes had cut deep enough that my hands had gone numb an hour ago, which was, in its own small way, a mercy. It meant I could focus on the pain that actually mattered, the burn still humming low and constant under my ribs where my mother's mark refused to fully quiet.She'd set up her altar at the front of the church, where the pulpit used to stand, candles arranged in a wide circle around something I didn't want to look at too closely, black water pooled in a shallow stone basin that pulsed faintly with the same sick light I'd seen in the cavern. The witches who'd survived the morning's raid stood along the walls, maybe a dozen of them, chanting low beneath their breath."You're stubborn," Elira said, circling me slowly, her boots echoing against the cracked stone floor. "I'll give you that much. Your father never had a fraction of your spine. He broke the first time I raised my voice.""Don't talk about him," I said, my voice rough."Why not? He's the reason you grew
Last Updated: 2026-10-09
Chapter: Chapter 136: Find HimSophia POVEthan stared at the photo on his phone for a long moment before he showed it to the rest of us, and I watched something in his face go very still, the particular stillness that meant he was holding back something enormous."She has him," he said, turning the screen so Nathan and Emma could see. Damian slumped against a stone wall, bound, bloodied, his chest barely rising. "Alive. For now.""Where," Nathan said, already pulling up a map on his own phone."No location," Ethan said. "Just the photo and a threat."I read the message over his shoulder, the words settling into my stomach like stones. Let's see if the rest of you are willing to pay the same price for him. "She wants us to come after him," I said. "This is bait.""I know," Ethan said. "That doesn't change anything. We're still going.""I'm coming with you."He looked up at me, and I saw the argument forming before he'd even opened his mouth, the old protective instinct rising fast in the wake of his father's curse
Last Updated: 2026-10-09
Chapter: Chapter 135: The CallEthan POVI was sitting outside my father's room when the phone rang, Luna finally asleep in the chair beside his bed after hours of refusing to leave, Mira's spell holding steady enough that the violet along his skin had stopped spreading entirely. It wasn't a cure. It was a pause. But it was the first pause we'd had all day, and I'd intended to spend it exactly like this, slumped against the hallway wall, finally letting the exhaustion of the day catch up with me.The screen lit up with Damian's name, and I was on my feet before the first ring had fully finished."Damian." I kept my voice low, aware of my father's door a few feet away. "Where are you?"Static, then a breath, ragged and labored. "Ethan."His voice barely sounded like his own, thin and strained, and the sound of it put every instinct in me on immediate alert. "Damian, talk to me. Where are you?""I don't—" He broke off, a wet, pained sound following that I didn't like at all. "I don't fully know. Somewhere in the wood
Last Updated: 2026-10-01
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