Cyndi Cylendar's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Cyndi drove home from the stone circle and did not sleep. She sat at her kitchen table until the sky went gray. She had lost the crowd. She had lost the vial. She still had one thing left: the last drop of Bella's magic dried on her palm, and the anger under it. She would not take a girl. She would take all of them at once. She would walk into Bella's house and end the line before Silver was confirmed. She went at noon. She did not knock. The front door gave under her hand because Bella did not lock her house in daylight. Bella stood in the front room with Heather beside her. Goldie and Sierra stood by the window, holding hands the way they always did now. Silver sat on the arm of a chair, tall hair catching the light from the window. They were waiting for her. Heather had seen it. Heather's purple board stood open against the far wall, ink still wet on the last line. "You should not be here," Bella said. "I am here," Cyndi said. She raised both hands and pulled every scrap of magic she had left into her palms. It was not much. It was enough to kill someone standing close. The air in the room went hot. Goldie flinched. Sierra did not. Silver stood up from the chair. Bella turned to Goldie and Sierra and lifted the chain from her own neck. She broke the clasp with her thumb and poured the last of her stored magic into their joined hands. "Time is yours," she said. "Both of you. Hold it together." The magic climbed their arms and settled. Goldie's five counts became something longer. Sierra's thin thread became a rope. Then Bella turned to Silver and said, "The realms are yours. Rule them better than I did." Heather spoke their names aloud, all three, and the purple board wrote the words in ink and locked them there. Silver Powerforce. Goldie Cylendar. Sierra Cylendar. Signed. Cyndi threw everything she had. The room went white. Bella stepped in front of the girls and Heather stepped in beside her, and the two sisters caught the blast against their chests with their arms open. The magic went into them and did not come back out. Bella's skin went gray first. Then Heather's. Their feet set into the floor. Their hands stayed open. Their faces stopped. Stone. Cyndi stood in the quiet with her hands empty. She turned to run. Goldie lifted one hand and the room stopped moving. Sierra stood at her shoulder and held the pause steady, longer than five counts, longer than ten. Silver walked around the frozen air to Cyndi and looked at her once. "You are done," Silver said. She lifted her hand and the same gray climbed Cyndi's arms, her throat, her face. Cyndi's last thought was that she had wanted the world and had not been given even the room she stood in. Then the stone closed over her eyes. Silver walked out of the house first. Goldie and Sierra followed, still holding hands. The purple board stayed on the wall behind them with three names locked in ink and two statues in the front room and a third statue where Cyndi had tried to stand. The realms had new keepers by nightfall. The peace between