The spell brought Charlotte to her knees.

She lost track of time after four hours. With the first incantation, a thread of magic appeared, squirming up from the stone floor.

But it wasn't silver, as Charlotte was used to. It was black. Its darkness hummed like the plucked string of an instrument.

She was nearly afraid to touch it, worried that it would contaminate her in some way as the darkness had done for that witch, rotting in the spirit realm. Or like The Endless One, pressing against her magic and her mind for his freedom.

But Charlotte grabbed that black thread of magic anyway. The shock of power snapped her head back. Her knees gave way, striking the cold stone floor with a jolt of pain.

Charlotte held on. She gathered her strength of mind against the magic trying to turn her dark.

No matter what form craft took—spirit, hedge, water, or fire—there was always a shiver lurking underneath it, waiting to control those who wielded it. Most witches hardly noticed. It became nothing but a chattering little voice, stowed away and ignored if the witch knew how to manage her craft well.

For the rare few who faltered, magic bit down and controlled them in turn. A backwards state of affairs that resulted in a witch who destroyed, burned, tore apart, and drowned everything in her path.

Now that Charlotte had taken hold of another form of craft that wasn't her own, that she hadn't been familiar with since a young age, she felt the pull, the seductive whisper teasing and taunting her.

You could be far more powerful than you allow yourself to be.

Let go. You're holding too tight. Control isn't needed. Let yourself feel the magic burn in you. Burn everything. Burn.

Charlotte gritted her teeth and pushed the voice aside. She started over, focused on the incantation, shutting everything else out. The words weren't quite right. She couldn't read the language, but she could make an educated guess from the sketches.

Witchcraft tended to be exact, based on tried and true knowledge. Approximations were dangerous, producing a spell far off the mark, mangled beyond recognition or discipline.

But an approximation was all she had to go on.

She already knew she wouldn't succeed, not on the first try. She simply needed to get close, to see if she could feel some change, a tiny ripple of fear from The Endless One. That would be enough to tell her she had found the right direction.

Charlotte conjured another black thread, this one from the stone wall of Laeves Keep. Stone. Rock. Dirt. All variances of earth craft. The grit of it was strange to feel, rasping in her veins, scratching at her fingertips as she summoned it.

Spirit craft was smooth, silky, and feathery light. It was a joy to work with, so long as she wasn't encountering wayward or violent spirits who didn't wish to speak with her, no matter how she entreated them to cooperate and find peace.

Charlotte managed to balance the pull of the second string much better. But she was only two pages into the text.

The spell required over fifteen threads of magic, spun from earth, stone, trees, and sky. All the while, she had to maintain the incantation without faltering or stumbling—a low, mumbling chant that rose to a grand crescendo with each page she turned.

When fifteen threads of foreign magic were twined around Charlotte's fingers, tangling up her arms, the building pressure was making it hard to breathe, each gasp of air she pulled in a rough, rattling wheeze. Sweat was streaming down her spine, soaking her clothes to a chilled dampness.

The taste of dirt and moss coated her mouth to a dry thickness. Her hands were shaking, palms spread open in a welcome gesture to pull magic from every nearby source of earth craft she could reach.

She felt...she felt as if she had been buried alive.

To think a hedge witch lived with this kind of heavy, stalwart, oppressive magic was difficult to comprehend, whether a hedge witch knew how to manage it from a young age or not.

Charlotte's throat worked as she swallowed, sucked in a tiny breath of air.

Swallowed.

Another breath.

Then, with phantom grit in her mouth, the crushing weight of earth and moss bearing down upon her shoulders, along with the burrowing bite of roots chewing through stone and mountainside to reach the heart of the earth at her feet...Charlotte let her voice carry her the rest of the way to finish the last fifty pages of the incantation.

She could only take one illustration at a time, one page at a time. The words were strange, foreign in her mouth, like rolling a mouthful of pebbles around, clanking against her teeth, nudging at the back of her throat.

"What are you doing?"

A voice. A voice Charlotte was familiar with but couldn't quite place, not with the thrum of craft rippling over her skin, pounding in time with her heart. It sounded too distant, too muffled to identify.

"Leave that alone. You're wasting your time."

A bubble of triumph welled up in her chest. That was The Endless One's voice.

And he definitely carried a note of fear in his tone.

Charlotte spoke louder, drowning out The Endless One's protests. The threads of magic crackled and snapped. It wrapped around her own magic, spirit and earth combined.

The wraithstone that rested so cold and hard beneath the collar of Charlotte's dress before, now grew warmer and warmer until it glowed, half black with earth craft, half silver with spirit craft.

She turned the last page of the Book of Shadows. The incantation was over, echoing in the air, resounding off the stones until the library was full of a thousand variations of Charlotte's voice and the remnants of a dead language.

Now all she had to do was pull and the magic, lodged into the mountains, into the trees, into the stones of Laeves Keep, would strip the land clean of curses and fallen gods.

Her lungs were screaming for a decent breath. How long had it been since she started the spell? How much more could her body take before it gave out?

Charlotte's teeth chattered as if she had been tossed into a frozen pond. She extended her arms, reaching, reaching, reaching. Fisted her fingers around the threads of earth and spirit magic.

And she pulled.

She pulled and pulled until her boot heels screeched on the stone floor of Laeves Keep. She pulled until her back hit the wall of the library. She pulled until her arms trembled and the magic smoked from the power she poured into it.

All at once, the threads went cold and silent. No witchcraft sang along the strings. The black color that had seemed so intimidating before, ready to darken her mind to a point of no return, had faded to a dull, dusty brown.

Charlotte swayed. She placed one hand against the bookshelf at her back to steady herself.

Did it work?

For the first time in...countless...hours, she took a deep, full breath. Her lungs were no longer restricted by foreign magic that wasn't her own. But her skin still prickled as if a thousand needles were tearing the wrong stitches of witchcraft out of her.

Charlotte closed her eyes and waited for the constant push of The Endless One, testing the barriers she had raised around him. If she was too tired, she might miss his presence and he could break through, hit her while she was down.

"Charlotte?"

She startled, spun towards the library doorway.

Alexander. Her Alexander. Healthy. Breathing. Alive.

Ever since the moment Charlotte met him, she had witnessed some small part of the curse affecting him. A shadow across his eyes. A nervous twitch here or there when Charlotte muttered a protection charm under her breath that he couldn't possibly have heard but the curse in his blood reacted to nonetheless.

Now, she saw no trace of the curse clinging to him. She couldn't feel the chilled, cruel presence of The Endless One demanding to be released either.

Laeves Keep was warm, wreathed in the sweet smell of sage. And the man she loved, the man she was supposed to marry only a few days ago, was standing in the doorway.

Unharmed.

Unblemished.

It was too good to be true.

Without taking her gaze from him, Charlotte patted along the bookshelf until her fingers brushed the plain wooden box close to the wall. She lifted the lid and withdrew a curved silver dagger with an onyx stone set in the handle for mental strength.

Slowly, she crossed the room to stand in front of him, the knife clutched tight in her hand.

"Charlotte," Alexander said with a sideways glance. "It's me. Alexander."

She took him by the wrist—prepared for a fight, for The Endless One to turn him again.

There was nothing. His fingers didn't even twitch.

Charlotte turned his palm upward. Alexander tensed, muscles, skin, and sinew bunched beneath her grip. She didn't let go, didn't loosen her hold.

"If you really are Alexander Prescott," she said. "Then you know I have to do this. As a precaution."

Alexander hesitantly nodded but he kept his gaze locked with hers.

"Yes," he said. "I know. To ensure I am who I say I am. Do it."

Charlotte kissed the edge of the knife's blade.

The kiss of a witch is so subtle in its power, it cannot be ignored, Nivian always said.

Then Charlotte slashed a cut across Alexander's palm.

He sucked in a breath, grimaced. She searched his face, waiting for the spidery cracks to shatter him again for a third time.

No creeping venom blackening his veins.

His skin remained smooth, peppered with a shadow of stubble from being unable to shave for several days, trapped as he was.

Did she dare believe him to be real? Or was she so tired, so spent from that drawn out spell that she was hallucinating?

The Endless One had tricked her like this before, back in the woods, tempting her with the image of Alexander.

Still, the more she looked over Alexander, examining his face, his hands, his clothes, she saw no sign of decay. The stinking scent of rot didn't envelop him.

She couldn't find a single indication that The Endless One existed any longer. That could only mean...

"You freed me," Alexander said with a soft smile. He reached out and when he brushed his thumb over her chin, Charlotte didn't shy away.

It wasn't possible, she knew that. She had expected so much more resistance from an ancient curse and a fallen god who must have been desperate to avoid death.

And the spell...that spell was complicated and not one of her own. Far too intricate and vague to get right on the first time. Maybe after the third, fourth, fifth casting, there might have been success but not...not the first one.

With great care, Alexander held his arms out to her.

Shaking, exhausted, relieved, Charlotte stepped out of the shelter of the library and into the real, living warmth of his arms.