Chapter 2 Too Far
Tori POV
I stepped closer reluctantly, studying the markings without crossing the boundary. Calling magic. Blood inheritance. Binding. I recognised those symbols but the others seemed to shift whenever I tried to follow their shape, which was either deliberate or a very good reason to leave immediately.
“What are you doing?” I sighed, resigned to her stubbornness.
“A spell.”
“Helpful.” I rolled my eyes at her deliberate vagueness.
“It is intended to be.”
“Aunt Miriam.”
Her expression softened. “It is for you.”
“No.”
“Victoria.”
“I said no.”
“You don't even know what it does.”
“I know enough.”
“You don't. You have forsaken our ways.”
“You're dying. And your final decision is to cast a complicated spell? For me?”
“My final decision is to make certain you are not left alone.”
The answer stopped me. I looked down at the circle again.
“Alone?”
“When I am gone, you will need help with the estate.”
Of course. The Barnett Estate. The words had hung over my life since childhood. One day, Aunt Miriam said. One day you will need to understand it. One day, when it is yours. I had never imagined that day would begin with a raven at my window and end with her sitting in a circle of blood.
“I can manage it.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
She smiled. “You sound like your mother.” The comparison caught me off guard. For a moment, I wanted to ask which part of me she meant. “I am dying,” she added. “I'm allowed some sentiment.”
“The estate needs more than you know.” She pressed on, and I wanted to argue.
Instead, resigned, I asked, “What does the spell do?”
“It will find you help.”
The answer was too vague for my taste.
“What kind of help?”
“The kind you need.”
I looked at her.
“You're asking me to trust a spell you won't explain.”
“I am asking you to trust me.”
That was worse. How could I refuse her? Aunt Miriam had raised me after my family had died. She taught me wards, bindings, practical magic, right up until I realised how much damage magic had wrought on my family. Then I had refused to learn, refused to use it.
I trusted her to care about me. I was less certain that caring made this sensible.
“What happens if something goes wrong?”
Her silence was not an answer.
“Aunt Miriam.”
“It shouldn't.”
I stared at her. Light moved faintly through the blood circle. Beneath her determination, I could see something I had never expected to find in her expression.
Fear.
“Do you trust me?” she asked.
It was an unfair question, and she knew it.
“Of course I do, you know I do.”
“Then stand inside.”
I looked at the circle.
“No.”
“Victoria.”
“You want me to stand inside a blood spell.”
“I want you to thrive when I am gone.”
I studied the space beside her chair. If I left now, she might finish this alone. Whatever I thought of the spell, I couldn't make myself abandon her inside it.
“You explain afterwards,” I said.
Miriam nodded, and I stepped across the line. The room seemed to grow colder.
The candles flared. I gasped as something tore through my veins.
Magic surged upward through my body, catching me before I could fall. It felt as though something beneath the floor had reached into me and recognised my blood.
“Aunt Miriam.”
“Don't fight it.”
“What is it doing?”
“Listen.”
“I am listening.”
“No.” Her voice sharpened. “Listen.”
So I did. At first, I felt nothing. Then the spell reached outward. There was no other way to describe it. Something moved through the magic around us, stretching beyond the house, beyond the rain and roads and hills, searching through a darkness I could not see.
Looking.
Seeking.
My heart began to pound.
“What are you calling?” Aunt Miriam did not answer. She had begun speaking in words I did not understand.
The spell tightened. Then it found something. Heat struck me. Iron and smoke flooded my senses. I saw no face, only the impression of a vast presence turning toward us, violent and ancient and utterly unwilling to be ignored.
What seemed to be a thread snapped into place. I could feel it, wrapping gently around my heart.
Aunt Miriam stopped speaking abruptly. Her eyes widened as she scanned the symbols on the floor.
“No,” she exclaimed as the spell reached out again.
This time, something cold answered.
Ink, paper, names flashed before my eyes. Promises folded beneath promises until I could no longer see where one began and another ended.
And something watched us from the other side. Sharp. Controlled.
Then a second thread caught, wrapped around my heart, just like the first had.
Aunt Miriam made a frightened sound. I tried to move toward her but the magic held me in place.
“Aunt Miriam!”
She dragged herself from the chair clutching her heart, blood running from her nose.
“No,” she whispered. “That isn't...”
The spell reached out for a third time.
Hunger answered. Not the simple hunger of an empty stomach, this was something vast and patient.
Silver eyes opened in darkness, a beautiful face turned toward me and a third thread snapped into place, coiling around the other two, surrounding my heart as it beat erratically.
Every candle in the room exploded, the flames reaching the ceiling.
Then I heard my aunt fall and the spell released me. I landed with an almighty thud, my breath thrust from my lungs on impact. I crawled across the ruined circle to my beloved aunt. She was lying just beyond it, one hand stretched toward me.
“Aunt Miriam.” I gasped, still trying to catch my breath. Her eyes opened as I took her hand which was already cold. “What happened?”
“We weren't meant to,” she breathed.
“Weren’t meant to what? What did you do? What did I do?” Panic clawed at my chest as her fingers tightened weakly around mine.
“We reached... too far.”
“Too far? What does that mean?”
Her eyes fixed on something beyond my shoulder. Fear returned to them.
“Victoria.”
“What?”
“It should have been one, not three.”
I leaned closer.
“One what? Three what?”
Her mouth moved but no sound came.
“Aunt Miriam.”
She looked at me with pity in her eyes, and opened her mouth to answer me, but whatever answer she had intended to give me died with her. I sat beside her body while the rain continued to fall. Morwen eventually came inside and settled on the back of Miriam's chair.
Neither of us moved.
I didn’t know then, that the spell had reached beyond the boundaries of everything I understood.
I did not know that three otherworldly beings had heard the unfinished call.
And I did not know that all three of them had chosen to answer it.
At the time, I believed the magic had failed.
The first answer was already preparing to come.
