by Robin Hale
Ambient magic swept over my skin raising goosebumps and setting every inch of me alight with anticipation. The only thing that felt real, the only thing was the place where Rhea’s skin touched mine.
“We’re going to invoke the goddess,” Rhea murmured. “Ask for her blessings. It’s similar to the welcoming rite you did with Greenhollow but for smaller groups. I can lead this time. Just follow me, okay?”
I almost couldn’t hear her over the pounding of my heart, but I swept my suddenly-dry tongue across my lips and nodded.
The first touch of Rhea’s magic, the white light that spread out from her body like beams of sunlight on cloudy days, ignited every nerve in my body. It built slowly. Carefully. Rhea’s control was a physical presence, so different from the way the Greenhollow witches had joined their magic. Was that because she was a hedge witch? Did she need to be more cautious?
The light around her body highlighted the darkness of her eyes, her hair, the raised scars along her skin that drew my eyes to the seams on her clothing — how far did those scars extend? I wanted to chase them with my tongue.
Rhea’s magic called to mine with a promise of cool, refreshing rightness and finally touching it was the first lungful of air after a too-deep dive.
The world fell away. The music and laughter, the claws against trees and ambient hum of magic in the air disappeared beneath the weight of my connection with Rhea.
I could feel her through the way our power flowed together. The golden hum of my own magic drifted forward, forward in a rush to abandon me for the much-greener pastures that were Rhea Barnes.
Traitorous magic.
Not that I could blame it. She felt so inviting, so comforting on the other end of the connection that if I could have found a way to abandon my own skin and crawl into hers, I would’ve done it without a second thought.
Which was probably a little gross.
The ritual began. Rhea opened her eyes and I was enthralled. I stared, unwilling to look away, feeling the achingly sweet depth of Rhea’s vulnerability behind the way she reached out to me. She was basking in our connection as much as I was and it was the headiest feeling I’d ever had.
Her right hand let go of my own and she swept her palm slowly through the air between us. It was only natural to mirror her movement.
She reached up, up, and splayed her fingers toward the stars that were beginning to peek through the dimming sky, above where the full moon hung, still rising on its nightly path. Potential hummed in her calling and a thought sounded in the perfect stillness between us:
‘Come and be joined here.’
I sucked in a sharp breath, tasting Rhea’s magic, Rhea’s sweat, Rhea’s spark rather than the air itself. Had there once been a festival around us? I couldn’t remember it.
Instead there was power.
I understood all at once why we were called star-born. The perfect, dazzling starlight of the magic that responded to Rhea’s call — it must have been her call — slipped down between our hands.
We held it there suspended between us, woven in a basket of white and gold, our magic slipping in and around and twining together so smoothly I was certain we’d been casting together for lifetimes.
I’d felt connected to my coven at the welcoming, but nothing I had experienced could have prepared me for drawing down the moon with Rhea.
Her left hand clung to mine, tangling our fingers together and clutching desperately. She pulled like I was in danger of slipping away and I followed. I would follow her wherever she wanted me to be. The fronts of my thighs pressed against her legs, my belly against the cold metal of her belt, and I knew that she was feeling what I was feeling: I could move closer but I couldn’t get anywhere near as close as I wanted.
I wanted to live in that swirl of starlit magic with her. It was so close I could taste it. There was a secret hanging just out of my sight, just beyond my memory, that would let me build a world we could inhabit — the two of us — if only I could sort out how to get there.
The tension grew too great, too brutally perfect to sustain any further. My fingers were trembling with the strain of holding the power the goddess had granted, the power she used to tie us together and I knew that something irrevocable had shifted inside me.
Something had changed. I had changed. And I never wanted to go back.
14
Rhea
I wrapped my hand — power still thrumming through it in sympathetic vibrations — around Laurel’s own and ended the rite, letting the borrowed magic slip away from us back toward the cosmos. Back wherever it went when the goddess didn’t grant it to her children. That left us joining hands the way we’d joined magic and I pulled back first. I didn’t want to, but I knew the risk if I left it up to her. I drew my power back slowly, gently, aware of how unsettling it could be for a new caster. Awareness of Laurel shivered along my bones, echoed in the base of my skull and sang in my every nerve ending.
She was so close to me, so fucking close and I slid my arm around her waist, not ready to let her step back. I’d gone from swimming in the combination of our magic to tasting her breath on the air and I could feel the heat of her mouth, the energy shimmering along every inch of her. The tension in her body said that she felt the same desperation, the same uncertainty that I did.
I wanted to kiss her. Fuck, I wanted to kiss her.
But it was the first magical connection I’d had with another person in…more than a decade. I was pulled in by it. Drunk on it. And Laurel would be feeling as disoriented as I was. I couldn’t take advantage of the moment. Couldn’t do that to her, or to me. So I pulled back. I eased my body away from hers and tried to pretend that letting go of the warm weight of her didn’t defy every instinct I had.
My fingers trailed down her arm to take her hand again. I wasn’t going to steal the possibility of a first kiss from my future, more sober self but that didn’t mean I had to let go entirely.
Laurel’s pupils were blown wide, the hazel of her iris nearly swallowed by the inky blackness that spread across them. “That was…” she breathed.
“Yeah,” I agreed. The word tumbled out of my throat having fought its way through sandpaper and I swallowed hard, falling back to nodding to get my point across.
My magic was still straining at my grip, fighting the hold I’d had it under for years. Feeling that connection again with someone after so long without it…I’d been wandering through the desert and then tried to limit myself to a single mouthful of water. I was aching for another taste — of my own power, of hers, of the way I could feel her soul calling to mine.
Laurel’s eyes were losing that glazed, glassy sheen. Her breathing was going back to normal but her fingers still flexed in my grip to make sure I was there.
As if I could leave her.
“Is that…” Laurel’s head cocked to the side and she wrinkled her nose in a way that shouldn’t have been so damn cute. “The music changed.”
I tore my eyes away from the other witch’s face and considered the festival around us. The world came back into focus again. It was dark. Enchanted lights hung low over the crowd and the sky was full of stars and the enormous shape of the full moon. The music that filtered through the night air was familiar, and a weight settled into my stomach.
“The vampires have started their dancing,” I said with a nod. “You’ll probably like it.”
I cocked my head toward the sound and led Laurel through the crowds.
I loved the way she watched the festival. She looked around her with unselfconscious delight. She didn’t try to appear aloof, or unaffected. She smiled and radiated love for every tiny detail — things that I hadn’t consciously noticed since I was a small girl clinging to my mother’s skirts. Had the carvings on the tent poles always been so beautiful? Had the shifters’ races always been so exciting? And the paper birds darting around the lamps — I’d forgotten how they’d enthralled me as a kid.
Watching Laurel see all of it for the first time was
like seeing it for the first time again myself, and her smiles were the best thing I’d seen — maybe ever.
The crowds shifted over toward the pavilion that the clans had set up, and I made sure to keep my eyes on Laurel’s face as I stepped out of her way.
She didn’t disappoint.
Astonishment spread across Laurel’s features, a time-lapse video of flowers blooming in sunlight. Her mouth opened, closed, and opened again on words she was trying to say but she couldn’t remember how.
Laurel wasn’t usually one for speechlessness. Incoherent rambling, sure. But not speechlessness. And despite the fact that I hadn’t had anything to do with getting the festival put together — aside from the things I prepared for Jean and the Book Wyrm — I was proud. Laurel’s approval of the festival hummed in my core the same as approval of me. Of the community that had created me.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Laurel said at last.
“Most people haven’t.” I turned to look at the dance floor filled with lavishly dressed, impossibly beautiful figures, twirling each other over the polished wood to music they might’ve heard when it was new.
I hooked my thumb in the belt loop on the back of Laurel’s jeans and felt her settle against my shoulder with a satisfied smile. It was going to be painful to talk to Jean after that night with how well things were going, but it was worth it. Laurel’s hair drifted against my neck and her scent filled my nose and that moment was completely, utterly perfect.
I should’ve known it wouldn’t last.
It was ridiculous that I hadn’t noticed him immediately. I’d had a sixth sense for Absalon of Clan Leinth for more than a decade — and I’d had more than enough opportunity to hone it to a razor fine edge. Apparently, the only thing that was able to wipe out my awareness of him was the way I dove head-first into Laurel, ignoring everything else.
“That’s — Rhea, I’ve felt that...signature before.” Laurel went rigid, no longer relaxed against me but coiled and tense. Did she think she might have to run?
Or fight?
I followed the line of her stare and cold horror curdled my gut: Absalon. Absalon, the bastard favorite of Clan Leinth and the Council, lingered on the other side of the dance floor, hand on the back of some fledge’s neck — and who the hell told Absalon that he was allowed to have fledges again? Who was it who decided he could keep the ones he’d already made?
The exact kind of magic he was working wasn’t obvious to me. Not from that distance and not with so many people in the way, but there was a charm in his hands. A talisman. Typical for a vampire who’d gleefully borrowed the power of witches and used it for his own gain.
Laurel didn’t look conflicted at all about what she was seeing.
“I’ve seen him in my dreams. He was in that clearing with my mother — I’m going to go ask him what he was doing at Barleywick,” Laurel said abruptly, decision etched into the clenched muscle of her jaw. She started to move away and I pulled her back against me reflexively, bile burning in the back of my throat.
Absalon looked up from the fledge, cold gray eyes locking onto Laurel while a strange smile spread across his face. My blood ran cold.
“Don’t,” I asked — begged — on a half-breath. “Just…don’t go over there. Okay?”
Laurel turned curious hazel eyes to face me and there was no getting out from under the weight of that inquisitive stare. “Why are you afraid of him?”
“I’m not. Not exactly. He’s — he could cause some trouble for me with the Council, and I — look, why don’t we get out of here.” I hated saying it, hated letting Absalon’s presence rile me up enough to chase me away from a perfect evening. But even more than that, I needed to get Laurel far enough away that Absalon couldn’t touch her. “Let me take you home. I’ll — I’ll explain on the way.”
Laurel hesitated and I could see on her face that she wanted to argue the point, wanted to confront him if he was so upsetting to me — and goddess, what that felt like. To have someone so ferociously guarding my back after so long alone? It didn’t matter that Laurel’s experience with her magic was fumbling and awkward still, I didn’t have any doubts that she would do everything in her power to keep me safe from Absalon. It was sweet. So damn sweet. But impossible.
“Okay,” Laurel said after a long pause. “Honestly, I don’t think I could relax enough to enjoy any more of the festival knowing that he’s here, whoever the heck he is.” Soft fingers gently squeezed mine. “Let’s get out of here.”
Driving back toward the city and away from the community festival gone sour was a vicious reminder that I was an outsider. Practically a pariah. And even with all the shit that had gone down, Absalon was a valued member of the star-born community — welcomed with open arms.
The growing distance from my truck to that bastard wasn’t enough to get my heartrate back down to normal levels. Not yet, anyway. My mouth was dry, my knuckles white on the steering wheel and I didn’t know how I was going to explain…everything.
I hadn’t talked about it since I’d given my testimony to the Council more than ten years ago. That day had been drenched in shame, fear, the sort of quivering grief that had stolen my voice until I’d been forced to speak through someone else. How could I bring that to Laurel? How could I show her the worst part of myself, the part that I was still trying to atone for?
I’d asked her to come with me to the Harvest Moon because I thought I could have a single night of normalcy. I thought the night of peace treaties could extend to me. But the night was rushing toward over and tomorrow I’d still be the same person I’d always been. How could I show her that?
I navigated the route back to her apartment with certainty pressing me down into the seat. This was the last time I’d see her. But she deserved to know the truth about me, so I’d figure out some way to tell her.
“Absalon is a member of Clan Leinth. It’s one of the older vampire clans, popular with the Council. They hold a lot of property and wealth. Powerful group.” The sound of the truck’s air circulating through the vents was the only sound in the cab to compete with my flat, mechanical voice.
Laurel had gone still, watching me with patient concern.
“You felt his — his signature,” I wasn’t quite sure what that entailed, but I had a good enough idea to guess. “At Barleywick because of something that happened about…thirteen years ago.” I swallowed hard, throat clicking in dry protest. “He wasn’t there that day. At least, I don’t see how he could’ve been. But one of his fledges — a fledge is a newly created vampire. They’re young. They haven’t gained all of their powers, they sometimes have — trouble. Controlling themselves.” My throat clenched shut, pain spreading through the muscle of my neck like spiderwebs through an attic.
Could I leave it at this part? Could I tell her what had happened according to the Council and leave out the part that seared guilt into my gut?
I wished that I could. I knew that I couldn’t.
“You asked me once,” I said. “About my coven. Whether Greenhollow was mine.”
I registered Laurel’s nod out of the corner of my eye but couldn’t bring myself to face her. I kept my eyes on the road.
“I had a coven,” I said and it was a confession. “Once. My mother led it and my aunts were its foundation and my grandmother knew more about magic than any five people you’ve ever met.” The words tumbled over each other.
“Rhea…” Laurel whispered and I could tell by the sound of trepidation, the pain that was teetering on the edge of something that Laurel knew where this was going.
“Absalon had a fledge. And I had a coven. And neither of those things are alive anymore.” My heartbeat thudded in my ears and my palms were sweaty on the vinyl of the steering wheel. “Barleywick died that night. And Absalon killed the fledge right after.”
“Oh god, Rhea. I’m so sorry.” Laurel’s hand was a smooth, cool weight on my thigh as she reached across the gap between us.
I didn’t deserve
her comfort.
I pulled into a rare open space in front of Laurel’s building and nodded once. “I’ll come up. There’s…there’s more to tell.”
Once I came around the side of the truck, I had Laurel’s hands wrapping around mine, tugging me after her up the narrow staircase and into her room.
“I’m going to put some tea on,” Laurel said. “Sorry, I don’t really have furniture? Go ahead and sit on the bed.”
I sank down onto the mattress and tangled my fingers in her comforter. The whole room smelled of her and I wrapped myself in it while Laurel went through the motions of making tea and being a decent host. That would’ve been her mom’s influence. I’d been raised with a Midwestern sense of hospitality, too, even if my mom wouldn’t have recognized it in me anymore.
I lost track of the passage of time, stroking the even weave of the comforter beneath my hands in a self-soothing ritual primarily used by toddlers and the grief-stricken, but it wasn’t too long before Laurel was pressing a steaming mug into my hands. She settled onto the bed next to me, folding her legs and tucking her feet beneath her so that she was poised to hang on my every word.
Goddess, I wished she would look away. But that was cowardice.
“I’m starting to worry that — with how I’ve been dreaming of him and the stuff with my window…I’m worried he’s been in my room.” Laurel’s voice was hushed and she cringed like the admission embarrassed her.
Thankfully, I could reassure her. “He hasn’t been,” I promised. “He couldn’t have gotten in.”
“But if a fledge could get into your coven’s home…” Laurel trailed off, pressing white teeth into her lip, sympathy and fear in her eyes. “He must be older, more powerful. Why couldn’t he get in?”
I shook my head and reached a hand out to wrap around Laurel’s knee. “You’re a witch, Laurel. I know your magic is new to you, but you’ve been a witch your whole life. Anywhere you’ve lived, anywhere you’ve come home to…your magic will put up wards without any conscious interference from you. Absalon — any vampire — would be entirely locked out.”