Page 48 of Incoronate
So this is what the anchoring spell felt like.
I didn’t know much about it yet and still had no clue about the rules or the limits or how deep the connection would run once I was fully healed. But I knew enough to know this was going to change things.
I didn’t hate it though, even if it would take some getting used to.
Blowing out a breath, I looked around my room again, the memory of last night coming back to me in flashes. Burning candles, the smell of dark magic, the cords biting against my wrists, the sensation of my own soul being pried open. Trace’s light. Dominic’s darkness. Both of them pushing and burrowing inside me in a way I still didn’t know how to describe.
The sisters hadn’t stayed very long after the ritual ended nor had they provided any concrete information, but they had delivered a final warning on their way out. The tetherwouldstop the overload of magic from eating me alive by giving it somewhere to go, somewhere safer to bleed. It would stabilize the corruption that had been accelerating toward a finish line I didn’t want to reach, and it would stop it from killing me. But whatever magic was in me still stood. And that included my bond to the Horsemen.
It wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear but it hadn’t come as a surprise either. The anchoring spell wasn’t meant to undo or cure what was happening to me or what had caused it in the first place. No magic could do that. It had simply given me a way to carry the load without breaking me.
The Horsemen still had a claim on me and the compulsion would still come. That part hadn’t changed at all. I would still have to face them when the time came. But I had Trace and Dominic now. My anchors. The two people who had willingly tied themselves to me, knowing exactly what it might cost them and doing it anyway.
They weren’t here to save me from it. They couldn’t do that. But they would help me bear the cost of whatever came next so that when the Horsemen finally did come for me, I wouldn’t be standing in front of them alone.
AndI had the Roderick sisters on my side. At least for a little while. That part still felt completely surreal. Wrong, even. A few weeks ago, I’d viewed them as enemies. As dangerous, unpredictable forces that couldn’t be trusted so far as I could throw them. But yesterday changed all of that. I was alive todayonlybecause of them and that wasn’t something I’d easily forget.
It was a strange thing, owing your life to the people who had once tried to take it. Stranger still to find yourself grateful for it. For most of my life, I’d believed in good and evil the way most people believed in the ground under their feet. Fixed. Reliable. A line drawn so clearly in the sand that you could stand on one side of it and know exactly who you were. But that line was a farce. A mirage that constantly blurred and moved beneath me until I lost track of which side I was supposed to be on entirely.
That was the truth no one ever bothered to tell you when they handed you your calling and your weapon and your place in the war. That nothing was black and white in this world. Especially not people. That survival and righteousness didn’t always point in the same direction. That sometimes the heroes let you down and sometimes the monsters saved you. Andsometimes you had to make peace with the fact that you’d never fully understand which was which.
The anchoring spell had proven that much.
Light and dark weren’t enemies. If last night had taught me anything, it was that they were two halves of the same breath, each one doing what the other couldn’t do alone. Trace’s warmth hadn’t pushed Dominic’s darkness away inside me. It had made room for it. And Dominic’s darkness hadn’t dimmed Trace’s light. It had framed it, made it visible in a way the daylight never could.
Maybe that was the lesson I’d been refusing to learn all along. That I carried both in me. The capacity for mercy and for violence. For sacrifice and for selfishness. That I didn’t have to choose between the two of them or between the parts of myself that belonged to each of them. I could be both and I could love both. I could hold the light in one hand and the dark in the other and be whole because of it, not in spite of it.
And maybe, just maybe, that truth would be the thing that would carry me through what was coming next.
I turned back to Dominic, feeling more grounded and more like myself than I had in months, and knowing it was because of them.
“Where’s Trace?” I asked, needing to see him too. To confirm with my own eyes that he was okay and thank him for what he had done for me.
“He’s feeding downstairs with Gabriel,” replied Dominic, lifting his glass and swirling the liquid inside. “Do you want me to bring him up?” he asked, his expression unreadable.
“No. It’s okay,” I said, not wanting to disturb him from what he needed. I would have plenty of time to talk to him after he was done and back to himself.
“As you wish, angel.”
I pushed myself up against the headboard, wincing as my muscles protested the movement. Everything felt tender and used up, like I’d run a marathon while someone had been systematically breaking every bone in my body.
The movement drew his attention. His gaze quickly sharpened, tracking over me as he cataloged every wince and grimace. But beneath that careful assessment, I caught something else. That same look from before that had the unmistakable glint of fear.
I frowned at him. “I’m okay. You don’t have to look so worried.”
His jaw ticked almost imperceptibly. “That appears to be beyond my control anymore.”
The admission caught me off guard because Dominic didn’tdoworry. He didn’t do vulnerability. He did cocky and controlled. Dry-wit and certainty.
I studied his face properly then. The tension in his jaw. The way his fingers gripped the tumbler just a fraction too tightly. The careful way he was holding himself, as if he were keeping something massive contained behind his ribs. The cracks were more than showing in his perfectly maintained façade and I knew exactly why.
“You were scared,” I said softly. It wasn’t a question.
His eyes snapped to mine. For a moment, he looked as though he might deny it. As though he might deflect or make some cutting remark that would steer the conversation away from anything resembling vulnerability. But then his expression softened, just slightly, and he set his glass down again.
“Of losing you?” He huffed out a breath but there was no humor behind it. “I was terrified.”
The words were simple, unadorned, and they landed so deep within me that I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to forget them.
