Page 44 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

"It's working." Stella's eyes were huge over the cage. "Pheebs, Kaltherax is coming apart, he's actually⁠—"

My magic probed the silver still loose in the house. Shit. "He's not dying. He's looking for another way," I cut her off mid-sentence.

Kaltherax was pooling at the center of the living room inside our half-formed cage. "He's giving up the rest and is going to finish in here. He’s going to free Orenthiel right where we're standing."

"Contained is what the German said we wanted," Stella noted as Wilhelm staggered up off the kitchen floor.

He was ash-grey and breathing like a bellows. "No! No! Not good. Contained in your home is not the same as being contained in the yard. That box is the only thing left standing between him and your children."

"Okay, we can't let the box break—” I didn't get to finish the thought before the silver consolidated. The partial pieces that had been smoke a heartbeat ago rushed back together inside the cage. They merged, condensed, and grew solid.

It rose. Taller than my ceiling should have allowed. The crown of his head pressed the green light of the cage upward into a dome we hadn't given it. The fabric hanging off his frame moved in an absent breeze. I'd seen pieces of that face for two weeks in dreams. Seeing it whole, I realized it was a smooth pale oval with no nose, no mouth, and two hollows where eyes belonged. They were really two pits of nothing that turned toward me and held.

Hades had told me not to linger. I lasted exactly as long as it took for those hollows to find mine. Then I wrenched my gaze down to the cage and gripped it with everything I had left. Whatever was looking out of that face had been waiting longer than the house had stood, and it was determined not to fail.

"It's not getting out." Stella's whisper shook. "The cage is holding."

My head was shaking from side to side as she spoke. "It's going to push through." The lattice between us groaned. The magical ribs flexed outward, and a hairline crack opened along one strand of white-gold. It sounded like ice giving under a boot. My mind was scrambling for what to do when my oldest son’s voice echoed around the room.

"Nina!" Jean-Marc's shout came from the eastern wall. I risked one glance to see my son vaulting a toppled chair to skid to a stop beside his sister. Blood streamed from Nina's nose. It dribbled down over her lips and chin, then off her jaw onto her collar. A second breach had torn open beside the one she was fighting.

"She can't hold two," Jean-Marc explained as if he sensed me watching him. “I've got the left one, Neen. You can give that one to me. All you need to do is keep the right!"

"You don't know how to seal a breach. You haven't practiced." Nina's voice was furious and exactly mine when I refused to admit when I was failing. "Jean-Marc, get back, you'll⁠—"

"I watched you do it forty times last night. Now shut up and let me help you." He jammed his hands into the tear. He didn’t hold the Pleiades power. He had the stubborn ordinary force of a kid who refused to watch his sister drown alone. That love was more powerful than anything anyone else in the room could have done aside from me.

Somehow, the two of them sealed both rifts at once. Within seconds, his nose was bleeding too. My breath caught when I saw the red lines running down two faces I loved most in the world. "We did it," Jean-Marc marveled while I fought to hold Kaltherax inside the cage. “Don't you dare say I shouldn't have helped. I'll lose it."

"I wasn't going to. I was going to say you're bleeding on my shoes." Nina swayed and caught herself on his shoulder.

I had to drag my eyes off them before Kaltherax broke out of the cage. It was cracking faster now. A second fissure raced up the dome to meet the first.

The back door banged again, and Aidon came through. He lurched, and his hands trailed smoke that curled black off his fingertips. It stank of scorched earth. He'd spent too much of his power out there. I felt the hollow in his core through our bond. The place where his power normally filled had poured out of him into the anchor. He crossed the floor on legs that wobbled and dropped both hands against the cage beside mine.

"Move over, Queenie." His death magic threaded into the green and gold. His was black and absolute. The cracks stopped spreading. The dome firmed up around Kaltherax.

"This won’t hold long. How long do you need?" I asked

"Longer than thirty seconds, which is about what you just gave me," he admitted.

My power threatened to give out. "Aidon, I can’t⁠—"

"You can," he insisted, cutting me off before he turned his head and pressed his mouth to my temple. "I know it's leaning harder. It knows we're running out, but we can’t give up."

As if he’d heard us, Kaltherax lifted one arm, and it put a long pale hand flat against the green light. His fingers splayed wide. Each one was longer than it should have been by a full knuckle. The cage screamed when he pushed.

It was the sound made from straining magic and the wood of my house bending past where wood was meant to bend. The wall behind the pantry door split from floor to ceiling with a crack that sprayed plaster across the room. Dust hung in the silver light. Somewhere under all of it, Tarja was yowling. The babies had started to cry through the sealed door. Their three thin voices rose together the way they always did.

"It’s not going to hold, Phoebe!" Mom's voice came through the pocket room door.

"I’m going to bring them out,” I informed them. “They won't survive behind the door if Kaltherax breaks through."

The hand pressed against the cage again. Cracks spiderwebbed wider, and the whole structure groaned toward collapse. Aidon's eyes met mine over our stacked hands. Smoke curled from his skin. Blood still stained my lip from his kiss.

In his face, I saw the same truth ripping through me. We'd spent a long time trying to keep our children from this moment, and we’d reached an impossible fork in the road. He nodded. I nodded back.

Pulling my hands from the green light nearly broke me. But beneath the fear was a certainty I couldn't explain. My babies moved in perfect rhythm, even in their sleep. They'd been preparing for situations like this. I ran for the pantry door, not knowing whether I would be carrying my children toward salvation. Or delivering them to the darkness myself.