Wisteria Von Vexx's Arc

Chapter 8 of 13

The book's new instructions named what they needed next. A physical anchor for both their powers. Something they would bind to the ritual permanently, something that would hold the connection between them even when the magic tried to pull it apart. The text didn't specify what object to use, but it made the cost clear: whatever they chose would be lost to them forever, claimed by the ritual and transformed into something else entirely. Wisteria looked at Alastair across the pedestal, the question hanging between them like smoke. They had to decide what they were willing to give up. But when she tried to think of what to offer, her mind went to the things that mattered. The ring already fused to her hand. The music box that reminded her why she'd survived seventeen years. The letter she'd written that the magic had already claimed. Everything she treasured felt too essential to surrender, and she realized that was exactly the problem. The ritual didn't want something expendable. It wanted something that would cost her. She walked to the bench near the conservatory entrance, where vines had grown thick over the weathered wood. Alastair followed without speaking. She sat down and stared at the jeweled bowl he'd brought from the castle vault, sitting on the ground between them. It had belonged to his family before he'd been turned, one of the few possessions he'd kept through centuries of losing everything else. He was offering it as the anchor. She understood what that meant. Wisteria reached into her pocket and pulled out the flower she'd pressed between the pages of her journal last spring. Its petals had turned ash-gray, brittle as bone, but she'd kept it because Alastair had picked it for her on a morning when the world felt less heavy. She placed it in the bowl. He didn't ask why. He knew. The ritual would take the bowl and everything it held, fusing their sacrifice into something neither of them could reclaim. She nodded once, and he lifted the bowl carefully. They had their anchor, and she understood now what it meant to choose what you'd lose.