She takes a sharp breath, then exhales slowly. “Explain to me exactly what you mean.”
“Rush your magic to us. We’re strong enough to hold it. There aren’t enough of us to undo the damage the rushes have caused with our magic alone, but with your excess magic as well, we’d be able to. We could fix the currents and heal the island. And the mainlanders would never know that your magic is what nearly killed their ruling family.”
“This was your idea?” Her tone is sharp and pointed, and my chest hurts as I recognize what’s in her voice: betrayal. She feels betrayed. By me.
“Yes.”
“Absolutely not.” She says it with finality, strong words that land heavy in the space separating us. My father is staring off into the distance the way he does when he’s deep in thought. His hand is still firmly around his pestle, but he hasn’t started working again.
He’s considering what I said.
“Ingrid,” Galen says from beside me, “this would work. It’s a smart idea, one I wish I had come up with on my own.”
“It’s a smart idea for you,” my mother says. “It would make your coven significantly stronger. You could use that power for anything. It’s off the table.”
They stare each other down, and I realize how tenuous their relationship is. The new coven protects the old coven by keeping their existence a secret. If the mainland knew about us, they would do everything in their power to eradicate the use of high magic. And my mother is right—if the new coven rushed their excess magic to us, the power dynamics would shift dramatically.
We’d be strong enough to put up a fight, far stronger than we are today. If we weren’t careful with all that magic, we could accidentally get the attention of the mainland, and that would completely destroy the relationship the new coven has spent generations working to build.
“What if we spelled it?” I say, and my mother and Galen both turn to look at me. “What if we bound the excess magic to the full moon, ensuring we could only use it once a month? We would meet you at your rushes, and you would know exactly when and how the magic was being used because you could watch us do it.”
“That would give them an awful lot of power over us,” Galen says.
“Not really,” I counter. “You’d still be stronger than you are now. You could make the currents worse if you were dissatisfied with how you were being treated. The magic would be bound to the moon, but you could still use it for whatever you wanted. It would just make it difficult for you to hide anything from the new coven.”
Galen isn’t looking at me, though. He’s looking at my mother. They watch each other, neither of them saying a word.
“The mainland protects the new coven. The new coven protects us. And we protect the earth.” As soon as I say it, I’m sure this is how it’s supposed to be. I’m completely overcome, realizing that the path I gave up, the life I turned my back on, was all in service of something bigger than me. Bigger than Landon and bigger than the new coven and bigger than high magic.
My mother is considering my words—I know she is—and it’s more progress than Galen ever could have made on his own.
This is my role, and I feel my roots take hold in this soil and drink of its nourishment until I punch through the earth and bloom.
Wolfe takes my hand in his. “She’s right, Dad,” he says, his voice sure. Steady.
“I know she is,” Galen says. “What do you say, Ingrid?”
My mother doesn’t respond. She leans back in her chair and looks past us, thinking things over. “I say it’s worth trying,” she finally says. “We’ll have to set clear boundaries before we begin, and given that my coven thinks yours no longer exists, we will have to get on the same page before presenting this idea, making it clear that you are as much a surprise to me as you are to them. And there is the matter of ensuring this stays hidden from the mainland. We can go over the details once we’ve both had time to consider the arrangement and speak with our councils. And we will of course stop rushing our magic to you at once if you do anything that is even slightly questionable. But it’s worth trying.”
Everyone stands, and my dad walks over to me and wraps his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. “I’m proud of you,” he says.
“Me too,” I say.
He looks down at me and smiles. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”
My mother walks to the other side of my dad and leans into him. “What a wholly unexpected turn of events,” she says.
“She’s your daughter.”
She looks at me then, a small smile pulling at her lips. “Yes, she is.”
She squeezes my hand as she passes by me. “Lock up when you leave,” she says, and then she and my dad are out the door, hugging each other as they go.
It’s such a casual request, something she’s said to me hundreds of times. Lock up when you leave. And it fills my chest with all the things I’ve been too afraid to hope for. There will be clashes between the covens as we figure out this new relationship, and it will unquestionably change things, but not all change is bad.
There is growth in change.
Beauty and fulfillment.
Joy.
“If you ever doubted your place in the world, Tana, I hope those voices have been quieted,” Galen says. “I’ll meet you back at the manor.”
When the door closes behind Galen, Wolfe pulls me into him and buries his face in my neck. “Now that everyone else is gone, I have a few demands of my own,” he says, his lips moving against my skin, sending a shiver down my spine.
“Tell me.”
He lifts his head and meets my eyes as a seriousness takes over his expression. “Let me love you,” he says, his voice quiet and soft, pouring over me like a hot bath on a winter’s night. “Let me love you until you’re sure it’s magic.”
And before I have time to respond, he kisses me, his lips soft and slow against my own. I pull him closer, backing into the wooden island in the center of the room. My dad’s pestle falls to the floor, but I don’t move away.
Wolfe brings his hands to my hips and lifts me onto the counter, kissing me as he does. I wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist, hugging him close as his lips trail down my skin and onto my chest.
My head falls back, and I whisper his name, hoping he hears that I’m already sure. Hoping he knows that to me, he is magic, a spell I will practice over and over for the rest of my life.
I am bewitched, every part of me.
And as long as he says my name and touches my skin and exists on this beautiful Earth, I always will be.
forty-three
It’s a cold winter night. The sky is clear, and stars shine brightly overhead. The full moon is tomorrow, and it will be the first time the new coven rushes their magic to us. The manor is alive with anticipation, a thrill I can almost see moving through the air.
But I know the anticipation we feel is likely a mirror of the dread the new coven feels. That my parents and Ivy feel. Giving us more power goes against everything they believe in, and it will take a lot of time to build trust between us.
Maybe one day, the new coven won’t feel the need to watch us use their magic. Maybe they will see the healing island and the calmer seas and know we’re being faithful to our word.
It’s that thought that gets me excited, a future I believe in with the entirety of my being. And I will work for it as hard as I possibly can.
I wrap my arms around my chest and watch my breath drift out in front of me before vanishing. The waves roll onto the shore, one after the other, the constant harmony to my life. The noise is still with me regardless of what side of the island I’m on or what kind of magic I practice.
A flash catches my eye, and I turn to see a small, circular light dancing at the periphery of the woods. As soon as I spot it, it dashes into the forest, and I jump up and follow it.