WITCHE'S BEAST *(needs editing )

Chapter 25

Everlina

I couldn't explain myself my behavior today, the loss of control, the way the magic inside me had rejected my body. Everything happened so fast. None of this was part of the plan. I knew dabbling in another witch's magic was dangerous, but I expected it to harm me, not my friends. Instead, Clara... sweet, patient Clara... lay unconscious because of me.

She had always been like an older sister guiding me, protecting me, feeding me, loving me. And now she was stuck between the world of the living and the dead. My actions cost me the closest thing I had to family. To bring her back, I would need a dead man's spell a spell so dark, so forbidden, it was practically suicide.

I sat beside her for hours, tears slipping silently down my cheeks. Her skin was pale, her lips slightly parted, her pulse faint barely a thread connecting her to this world. Guilt clawed at me until I picked at my fingernail so hard it bled. I deserved pain. I deserved punishment. And yet none of it would wake her.

We had captured Rodger. He was locked in the basement behind a thick line of mountain ash so he couldn't escape. He should have been the one lying here not Clara. Everything he did had pushed me to this edge, forced me into choices I never wanted to make. And Kalidah's magic... it still clung to me, embedded in my core like a parasite. Dark. Hungry. Alive.

Now I understood why Kalidah died alone. Why her power consumed her spirit the same way it was beginning to consume mine. Everyone envied her strength, but they never knew the price she paid: loneliness, destruction, and heartbreak carved into her soul.

"Lina, you can't beat yourself up like this. She's not dead. She will wake," Sia whispered as she and Lyra sat beside me.

"She's dying," I choked out. "Clara's magic is alive in me. I can't even return it to her it would reject her body mixed with mine. She'd die instantly."

"Don't talk like that," Sia pleaded as she took my hand. "Clara is fighting to come back to us. Please have faith."

I pulled my hands away. I didn't trust myself. The magic was unstable... dangerous... corrupting. I felt it feeding on every source of energy around me just to stay alive inside my body.

"It's still there," I whispered. "I don't want to hurt anyone anymore."

"You didn't do this deliberately," Lyra said, cupping my face. "Kalidah's magic did this. Anyone touched by it would have suffered even you."

Her voice softened and she pulled me into her arms. Sia hugged me from the other side. They were my sanity, my family, the only reason I survived my childhood. I held onto them for a moment, then forced myself to pull away. I needed to clean myself up before Aaron returned. He couldn't see me like this broken, guilty, and unstable. It would destroy him.

I bathed until the water turned cold and my skin wrinkled. But even that didn't wash away the dread. I needed answers about the dead man's spell and what it demanded. Agatha was the only one who might know. I didn't care what it would cost me. I would deal with the consequences later. Saving Clara came first.

I went to the kitchen to help Agatha and Annabelle, with Cynthia hovering nearby. I started drying dishes, but the room went silent as they all stared at me like I was a ghost.

"What?" I snapped.

They all returned to their tasks, but Annabelle spoke first.

"Everlina... I'm sorry you had to suffer that magic. With every person, the magic would have affected them differently. With your friend in a coma... I don't know if there's even a way to help her."

An apology was the last thing I needed. A solution was what mattered.

"What if I told you I think there is a way?" I said.

Agatha spun toward me instantly. "How? Tell me."

I hesitated it wouldn't be easy convincing them. Witches feared forbidden magic more than anything.

"The dead man's spell."

The room froze. Cynthia's face turned white. Agatha shook her head slowly.

"No. Count me out. I can't it's too risky, too dangerous."

I laughed bitterly. "Everything we've done so far has been dangerous."

Agatha slammed the pot lid closed. "Do you even know why it's called the dead man's spell? You have to be dead to contact the world of the dead. If anything goes wrong, your spirit gets trapped there. You die here and live there. It's too perilous."

I knew all that. I also knew something else Agatha was fascinated by forbidden magic. The gleam in her eyes betrayed her. She loved danger. It thrilled her.

And I had already figured her out.

That realization scared her more than the spell itself.