Cresent Prophecy

me said. “She’ll come. She’ll come, and you’ll be sorry.”
Fear, fear, fear… Then a wrenching, burning, searing agony and…nothing. Darkness.
I wasn’t sure how long I floated. There was no direction where I was. No up, down, or side to side.
It started as a simple dot in the black. A pinprick of color began to grow, larger and larger until I realized I was looking at a flower.
It was a simple thing—a purple star with a yellow center—but I knew it was deadly when put into the right potion. Lucy had taught me about it, and I’d seen it in the pages of my spell book. Nightshade.
The image was pounded into my brain like I was being hit over and over with a sledgehammer. Nightshade, nightshade, nightshade.
It was a warning, but what for? Was I being poisoned? Did the flower represent something or someone?
Pain erupted in my head, and I was wrenched away from the image, light and color bursting all around me. I fell to my knees, my fingers curling in the leaf litter at the base of the hawthorn. Gasping for breath, I fought for clarity as I was struck again.
My shoulder slammed into the ground, and I fell onto my back, crying out in pain.
Someone was standing over me, holding a large branch. My vision wavered, and I tried to push myself up, but my head was spinning.
Curly wild hair… No!
Lucy.
“I’m sorry, Skye,” she said, raising the branch again.
The Three of Swords was finally playing out to its full extent. I’d forgotten all about the warning, not to mention I’d disregarded listening to the hawthorn until it was too late. I was so stupid!
Lucy was the third sword.

Chapter 18
Coming to was the strangest sensation.
It wasn’t like waking up in the morning. It was like trying to swim through a darkness that had no shape or form. Almost as if my mind was trying to wade through quicksand.
My head throbbed, and I was having a hard time concentrating. This wasn’t natural. Not one bit.
Moving my arms, I was met with resistance, and it took me a full minute to realize I’d been tied to something. I was lying down, but where was I?
Turning my head, I grimaced when I saw Lucy kneeling at the side of what looked like a clearing. There were trees and warm, orange lights. Torches?
Immediately, the prophecy came to mind, and I began to panic. Lucy was performing the ritual to break the curse. The curse that kept Carman from returning to Ireland.
I pulled at the restraints, but I was stuck fast. I was tied down with magic to a stone slab deep in the forest. Had to be.
“Strugglin’ will do you no good,” Lucy said without turning around.
“How could you?” I demanded.
“How could I?” She turned around and snarled. “I had no choice. Unlike you.”
“Nightshade,” I said with a moan, my head practically splitting in two. She must’ve hit me with a real wallop. “Your coven is the Nightshade Witches…”
She narrowed her eyes, her lip curling. Every scrap of friendliness she’d ever shown me was gone. Her mask had dissolved, letting out the angry and bitter witch underneath.
“Took you long enough.”
“I probably never would’ve found out!” I exclaimed. “I’m alone, or have you forgotten? You were supposed to help me…”
“I was never supposed to do anythin’. Welcome to the real world, Skye, where everyone has their own agenda. It isn’t black and white.”
“Why did you teach me how to use my magic?” I demanded. “Why?”
“Trust,” she replied, her features twisting. “I’m sorry, Skye, I had to get you to let down your guard. I had to.”
“You had plenty of opportunities,” I said, trying to buy time or find a hole in her plan I could exploit. If I didn’t get out of this before she broke the curse, we were all up shit creek. “Why didn’t you take me the day you found me asleep by the hawthorn?”
Lucy didn’t reply, she just narrowed her eyes and began readying herself for the ritual.
No witch in their right mind would team up with Carman unless there was some kind of reward or leverage involved. C’mon, Skye, think!
Nightshade Witches had a grudge against the Crescents. Was it just because they wanted to rid the world of the one thing that was keeping Carman from returning and unleashing Armageddon? Or was it something more?
“She took something from you, didn’t she?”
Lucy stiffened.
“That’s what you were talking to the fae that had stolen Alex’s face about that day,” I went on. “He was threatening you.”
She rolled her eyes and continued her way around the clearing, setting up for the ritual. I could sense her magic every time she stopped. She was anchoring something in the shape of a pentagram. The four earthly elements—earth, air, fire, water—and the final element, spirit, to the symbol’s the fifth point.
“She has your family.” I guessed. “Am I right?”
“You have to do what you have to do,” she said. “And so do I. I’m sorry, Skye, I really liked you, but they’re more important to me than you’ll ever be.”
I would like to think she didn’t want to betray me—it was a comforting thought in the face of the battle to come—but Lucy felt she had to follow through with Carman’s demands to save her family…but she could still change her mind. It wasn’t too late.
“Your family might’ve done bad things, but you don’t have to,” I said, begging. “You can be different, Lucy.”
“They’re still me family!” she exclaimed. “She has me mother, me grandmother, me aunt, and me little sister! A fifteen-year-old kid!”
“Your sister is innocent, but everyone else murdered my family! They burned them alive, did you know that? Three Crescent Witches strung up and burned alive. And their death took my mother from me when I was a child. After all that, I still want to help you. Please, Lucy. We can beat her. We can get your family back, and Carman will get what’s coming to her. We won’t have