Page 45 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

CHAPTER 19

"Hand me Thaniel. Don’t bother with the carrier. You can't fight with a child strapped over your heart." Nana had abandoned her position and come to help. Her hands were already out for my son the second I cleared the pocket room threshold. "Mollie can hold Melaina. You take Nyssa. Come on! Let’s move before that thing finishes deciding which one of them it wants first."

"There's no decision to be made. It wants all three. And the instant I walked them in here, it thought it won." I balanced Nyssa in the crook of my elbow

The pewter head inside the cage swiveled toward us so fast the fabric hanging off it cracked like a sail catching wind. "Ah shit. Nana, you and Mom create a protective ring around them. Make it tight. We don’t want to give it space to reach through."

"I have been warding babies since before your mother could walk,” Elena announced as she joined us and took Nyssa from me. “We’ve got this. You go back to the cage." She took Nyssa, holding her against her shoulder as she dropped to her knees on the splintered boards. Mom folded down across from her. Selene helped Nana sit and then joined her. Mythia hovered nearby, keeping the circle around my children tight.

I went back to helping Stella and Aidon contain Kaltherax. Mom, Selene, and Nana joined Elena’s chanting. It didn’t take long for me to feel their power condensing behind me.

"There.” Elena sounded satisfied. “Anything that wants them comes through me.”

“Truly terrifying,” Nana quipped.

“Hey, I’m a meaner door than you'd think," Elena insisted.

I had to trust them to keep my babies safe because Stella was bent nearly double across from us. Sweat cut tracks through the plaster dust on her face. The green of her magic had gone thin and was beginning to flicker.

"Stells, talk to me, how long⁠—"

"Don't ask me how long,” she snapped. “Ask me what I'd give to be drinking a margarita on a beach right now. The answer to that one's nicer." Her arms shook with the effort of holding the lattice.

She bared her teeth at the creature pressing its long, pale hand against the green. "It's leaning its whole weight on the eastern rib. If your babies are going to do something, Pheebs, I would adore it if they did it before my arms come off."

They were already doing it. I felt it start before I saw it. The gathering of their power that I'd come to expect from them. The air over the rug brightened. Melaina's fists opened. The heat that rolled out of her was scorching. The temperature inside the cage shot up so fast the green strands warped. The air turned white and shimmered. The smell of scorched fabric filled the room as the edges of Kaltherax's draped form blackened and curled.

"Mother of—she's cooking it." Selene had thrown an arm up against the heat pouring off the cage. Her other hand was pressed flat to the rug where her protection spell met Nana's. "The rug's going to catch, the whole ring's going to⁠—"

"It won't catch, look at the floor,” I instructed.

The boards under the babies hadn't so much as smoked. Whatever Melaina was doing, she was pointing the heat at the one thing in the room that wanted to hurt her and her siblings. Kaltherax pulled back from the white heat. His head bent away.

As if it signaled our son, Thaniel's current snapped out of his tiny fingers. It wasn't the little sparks I'd been mopping up after for weeks. This was a single unbroken thread of electricity leaping from his fingers. They found every tear still bleeding silver into my house. Aidon’s power joined theirs and prodded them in the right direction.

Where Thaniel’s sparks touched the edges of those openings, it didn't stop. It ran back along whatever connected them. And into the thing those tears had assembled. Kaltherax convulsed inside the cage like a marionette with every string yanked at the same time. Nysa’s shadows threaded through the power her siblings were emitting, lending it substance.

"That's feedback.," Wilhelm muttered as he swayed on his feet. "The boy's running it back through Kaltherax’s own connections. I've read about this, but didn't believe it was possible. Astrid, are you seeing⁠—"

"I am seeing a four-month-old do what grown adults could not, so kindly stop talking and let me work." Astrid hadn't moved from her knees. Her frost-blue magic covered the boards beneath her. "The third one is keeping this thing from running. She’s given their magic metal."

She was right. Nyssa's shadows shot across the cage and sank into the convulsing form of Kaltherax like fishhooks setting deep. Aidon’s joined hers. They launched barbs that hooked into the smoke, fabric, and whatever passed for a body. Kaltherax froze mid-convulsion. It tried to move toward the nearest tear and pour back through one of its own doors. Aidon and Nyssa's shadows held it where it was.

"It can't retreat." The words tore out of me in a half-sob. "It's hooked. Aidon, can you kill it now?"

"With pleasure, Queenie." He was past me before he finished my name.

His power blew through the room like a tornado. What was left poured into the cage walls in a black flood. The green and white-gold lattice flushed dark as his death magic braided through every strand. The ribs that had gone thin under Stella's failing grip went solid again. They began closing tighter around the pinned entity until the cage was less a box and more a fist.

“Nina!” Aidon’s agony was evident and had my heart dropping through the floor.

I turned and nearly threw up. Across the room, Nina was sealing the last tear with both hands buried in it. Her power was pouring into the breach, and the blood ran from her nose, ears, and the corners of both eyes. She looked like a crash victim with a serious head injury. Her face had gone the color of paper. Before I could move to help her, Jean-Marc was there. He didn't waste a breath asking whether he was allowed. My oldest just saw his sister carving herself open to help, and decided he was going to take some of the burden off her. He’d done things like that since he was small enough to climb my leg. He jammed his shoulder under her arm and threw his own magic into the tear beside hers before she gave the rest of herself to it.

"Neen, it's almost shut. I’ve got it from here. You can stop—" Jean-Marc had his own power up now. It was extraordinary and ordinary at the same time. His love and stubborn determination went into the breach and then into a protective dome over the two of them. "Nina. Nina, look at me, it's closed, let it go⁠—"

"I'll let it go when it's actually closed and not a second before, so quit yelling in my ear. You're worse than Mom." Nina's words slurred at the edges, but her fire made a sob break out of me. I absolutely loathed having my kids in danger like this. At the same time, I was so proud I wanted to crow to anyone who would listen about how courageous they were.

They held the seal until the silver bleeding out of that last breach guttered and died. Nina’s knees went, making me lurch toward her. Jean-Marc caught her. "Next time, don’t be so stubborn."