Then again, Peter’s parents had been the first to disappear and the only ones not caught in the fire. Could they have been a part of the Parrishables the whole time, and could their son be the one passing along information? He’d been one of the few who hadn’t gotten hurt so far.
After enough thought, it became clear that any one of my coven members could have been the one to sell us out. But I hated feeling that way—like I couldn’t trust anyone around me. So after a few hours of practice had gone by, I decided I’d had enough and it was time to unveil the culprit once and for all.
I knew exactly what words to say. Before I’d left my room, I’d committed the spell to memory.
“Hey, everyone! Can you all gather over here real quick? There’s something I want to talk to you about.” I looked around the yard to make sure everyone was still there. I hadn’t sent any of the naturally gifted witches off to hone their crafts alone today and Asher was still hanging out beside me and watching the others train.
Once everyone was assembled on the grass in the yard, they stood there staring up at me as if awaiting instructions. I took a deep breath and smiled confidently at them. It was the moment of truth.
“Are we learning a new spell?” Peter asked hopefully. Over the past couple of weeks, he’d gotten increasingly good at mastering new spells. Maybe being around the other twitches had inspired him to finally live up to his full potential. Or maybe he’d tapped in to some evil magic mojo and was on a casting high from the power boost.
Guess we were about to find out which it was.
“Not exactly,” I answered. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you guys about something. Ever since the Parrishables blew into town, they’ve had us running scared. And we’ve done a great job training for our day in battle. When we came here, I told you the cabin was a haven, a safe place to hide out in until we were ready. And although I thought it was true at the time, it’s come to my attention that it’s been infiltrated by the enemy.”
Gasps broke out in the group and I tried to search their faces for one with guilt and shame written on it. But all I saw was genuine fear—kids were looking around as if the Parrishables were about to burst out at any second and attack.
Since no one had come forward, it looked like I was going to have to perform the spell after all. I thought maybe if I gave the person the chance to turn themselves in, they would take it. But no bother. Ever since I’d found the spell, I’d been looking forward to seeing how it worked, anyway.
“We have a traitor among us. Someone who plans on selling us out to the Parrishables. This person’s been posing as a friend when they’re really our enemy. And it’s time to send them back to their true coven.”
“Who is it?”
“Are you serious?”
“I’m going to kill whoever it is,” Jasmine said with a growl that sounded completely genuine.
Clearing my throat, I concentrated on the lines I’d been waiting for hours to say:
As soon as I began to say the words, I could tell they were working. It felt like there was an electrical current flowing through my veins. The energy surging through my body almost startled me out of continuing, but I kept going, reciting word after word until I finished the spell.
As I came to the last line, my hands began to shine brightly, light emanating from both palms. My arms began to shake with the magical power that was filling up inside my body, building and building until I felt like I might explode from the force. The spell wasn’t particularly difficult—I’d performed harder ones on several occasions—but for some reason this one seemed to really affect me. Like it was coming from my very core. For a brief second, I worried that I had taken on something I couldn’t handle.
Just when I wasn’t sure I could take it anymore, the magic burst from my hands in two streams of light. I watched as the beams weaved around the group in front of me like slithering snakes, bending and curving as they looked for their targets. People were running around the yard now, scared they might be hurt by the streaks of light. I knew what they were really after, and that only one of them had to worry about what was going to happen when the light caught up to him.
My heart was racing from the intensity of the spell and anxiety over what we were about to find out. Then the heaviness in my stomach turned to nausea as I watched the first stream of magic hit Asher and the second hit Emory.
Chapter Twenty-Six
As soon as people realized they weren’t actually the targets of my spell, and that Asher and Emory had been singled out instead, the reaction was immediate. People were confused, angry, frightened—all the emotions that came along with betrayal—and no one bothered to hide their feelings.
Except for me. Because this was the first time I’d ever been in this sort of situation. And I had no idea how to deal with it.
I’d always rolled my eyes when my friends said it, but at that moment I truly understood what they meant when they said they could feel their heart breaking. Because that’s what it felt like to see the stream of light hit Asher straight in the chest. It was a deep ache, unlike anything I’d felt before. When I’d lost my mom, the pain was more like despair, like the feeling that nothing would ever be right again. But the betrayal of someone you cared about romantically? If I didn’t know it was impossible for a heart to physically bust in half, I would have bet that’s what was happening then.
I’d never felt so incredibly let down in my entire life, not by anyone. A dozen different thoughts started racing through my head, each one worse than the last. How was this possible? Had our whole flirtation been a part of the Parrishables’ evil plans to overtake the Cleri? Would everyone hate me because I’d been the one to bring Asher into our coven? How had I been so stupid to fall for a stranger when I knew from the beginning that there was something sketchy about the way he kept turning up everywhere I went? And worst of all, what was I possibly going to do about the fact that the only boy I’d ever kind of loved was playing for Team Evil?
As much as I didn’t want to admit it, that’s what it had come to. I could no longer deny the fact that my feelings for this beautiful dark-haired boy, who had the most magnetic eyes I’d ever seen, had grown into something like love. Could I really turn my back on that? And if I could manage to ignore my feelings, how was I ever going to be able to trust another guy with my heart again?
Trust. It was such a small word that held so much power—and potential for pain. Asher had taken my trust and stomped all over it. So even if I did have certain feelings for him, he obviously didn’t feel the same about me. Otherwise he wouldn’t have conned me into thinking he cared about me when he’d just been planning to hand me over to the Parrishables.
That’s when it dawned on me: someone like that didn’t deserve my love or my forgiveness.
Asher was a traitor and there was no way of atoning for that. And I wasn’t about to let my feelings put my coven in danger any longer. I narrowed my eyes at him as I came to my decision.
Asher looked down at where the light was illuminating his body and then back up at me. He ignored the madness that had erupted around us and kept his gaze steadily on my face. Despite the yelling and arguing that filled the air, Asher just stood there, mouth slightly open as if he was stunned into silence. And maybe he was. It was the first time I’d ever performed that spell, and for all I knew, it’d knocked the wind out of him on impact.