There were so many questions I wanted to ask the woman. Before I could figure out how to ask without the use of my mouth, my lips stopped moving. The spell was done.
In front of me, the glowing red barrier shattered like glass, falling into a million tiny pieces. My head filled with fuzz, white noise, and I vaguely felt myself swaying. Back and forth. Static increased as the red faded from my vision and the branch was in front of me once again. I opened my mouth to ask them to help me and keep me standing, but no words came out. Not even a croak.
Then, I dropped like a rock and the world went black.
My head throbbed, pain focused on the back of my skull but ultimately spread all over. Every one of my muscles ached, some spasming. With my eyes still closed I groaned, grateful my voice was back, at least. Though, it hurt to use, my throat scraped raw like I’d been screaming at the top of my lungs instead of reciting a spell.
“She’s waking up,” Zan said worriedly from above me.
His worry was familiar. This was how I always woke up, except usually I was cramped in a bathtub and his words were slightly different. Had I imagined the spell? Had it not worked, and he’d pushed me back through time again? My body felt like it had been through the ringer, so I doubted it, but to know for certain I’d have to open my eyes.
They felt crusted shut, heavy to lift, but I opened them enough that I was squinting. If I’d had the energy to do it, I would have sighed in relief. Zan was hovering while Abby, Waylon, and Kirin crowded around me. Even Waylon looked concerned for me, and I’d been expecting some snark about me being an incredibly weak mage.
“Hadley?” Zan asked. “How do you feel?”
“Like I just drained every hint of magic from my body, and then got run over by a speeding carriage,” I mumbled, croaking.
“Well, the first part actually happened. There are no carriages in here, though,” Kirin said.
He reached his hand down and lifted my torso, ripping a hoarse groan from me. Moving made my head pound more. I really didn’t want to move, but staying on the floor forever wasn’t an option. They gave me a second to adjust to sitting up, my back leaning heavily against Kirin, before asking the question everyone was most curious about. Including me.
“So… did it work?” Waylon asked.
I shrugged. The movement was a mistake, jostling my head. “I think so.”
“How do you not know?”
Breaking the seal hadn’t been like any other spell I’d done before. There had been no stages of completion. I’d gone from reciting the spell, nothing happening except the woman’s voice, to finished with the wall broken in front of me. I had to assume the red wall had been the seal, but nothing in that spell-casting subspace had made much sense. “A lot happened. And I just knocked half my brain out of my head. Why did no one catch me?”
Kirin and Zan had the good sense to look sheepish. “We didn’t know if we were supposed to touch you while the spell was working.”
“If this ever happens again, the spell was done by the time I fainted. Next time, catch me.”
There wouldn’t be a next time if I had anything to do with it. In fact — and this thought caused a pang to shoot through me that had nothing to do with my physical exhaustion — it was unlikely I’d have anything to do with these men in general once we stepped foot outside the house.Stupid, stupid, stupid Hadley. Some things hadn’t changed since my first day at this house, however many rewinds ago.
“Let’s go downstairs and try leaving,” I suggested. “How long was I out? Is Bennett going to be in his right mind?”
Looking at the clock ticking on the wall, Waylon shrugged. It was shortly after two thirty in the morning. “He’ll be right enough to come with us. I’ll go let him out of his cage.”
He vanished through the door to Bennett’s room, and I glanced up at Kirin with a faint smile. “I’m going to need you to carry me down the stairs.”
Ideally before Bennett appeared and I had to face a fear that I’d created by trying to fuck him while he was a beast. Not to mention how sad he made me feel today. Both at once would be too much emotion for my exhausted soul. Kirin snorted but lifted me into his arms, careful to avoid jostling me too much. The gentle sway of his movements still made me cringe and dig my nails into my palms to distract myself from the pain.
At the bottom of the stairs he placed me on my feet and my legs threatened to give out beneath me, but I clutched at the wall beside the front door for support.
The front door looked as it always had. An empty rectangle with the broken wood door leaning up against the wall beside it, as I’d left it my first night. If I’d had a single iota of magic left, I would have cast a spell to reveal the characters on the walls, to see if they’d vanished or changed. Since there was no magic remaining, the only way to test whether or not the spell had truly dispelled the seal was to try to step through it.
I waited until all five of the men were crowding the stairs and the hallway behind me, ready to follow me out of the house if I slipped through the barricade.
Then I slowly reached out my hand, other still holding the wall to stop myself from falling down, and waited to feel the familiar brush of magic against my fingertips.
Nothing.
My fingers passed through where the seal used to be with ease, no resistance meeting them. On shaky legs, I stepped forward and pushed my body through, leaning against the side of the house as I shut my eyes and sighed in relief. We were out. The spell had worked.
Kirin followed behind me first, tentative as I had been, but when he’d shoved his body through the door frame the other four spilled through behind him. Waylon stared down at his body in awe, like he’d expected to be electrocuted on his way out, and Abraxas hissed softly as the end of his tail pulled through the door, his forked tongue flicking out. Bennett didn’t make a sound as he stepped across the threshold, but a smirk curled his lips before I looked away.
I had a moment to wonder why Zan looked sad and panicked before laughter filtered through the air, coming from the packed dirt driveway in front of the house.
