Page 62 of Big Little Spells

Everything that isn’t a strength turns to smoke and blows away.

On the other side, I step from the fire and find I am intact. Unharmed. Nothing has changed outside of me. I’m not burned. Even my dress is still the same snowy white. It’s only inside me that everything is uncluttered and new, burned down to diamonds.

Something makes me look down at my ring, to find it on fire. I think to slap at the flame, or toss the ring aside, but I take a breath and understand...it’s not hot. It doesn’t hurt. The ring itself isn’t melting or even being ruined by the flames, though it’s changing as I watch. Rearranging itself, until the petals resolidify. It’s still a flower, my grandmother’s flower, and the crystal Nicholas gave me is still lodged in the middle, but it’s all arranged in a new symbol.

I’ve seen this symbol. In that same damn book.

I turn to look up at him, still entirely himself, but in my head it’s my grandmother’s voice I hear. Just as if she’s standing behind me, whispering into my ear.

Blood of my blood. Heart of my heart. First of the year, last of the year: Two sides of a coin. You are the sign. The moment. Be brave. Be strong. Believe.

I’ve heard those words before, not always in that exact order, but always from my grandmother. Emerson and I, first and last, two sides, the sign. I don’t want to hear them here. With Nicholas or anyone.

“What the hell does this mean?” I demand of Nicholas, because now it hurts.

Not the fire. Not my ring. But feeling like my grandmother is right here, pulling these strings. When she can’t possibly think that old prophecy is about me any longer. When I broke her heart, when I disappointed and failed her. It wasn’t the way I disappointed my parents. It wasn’t about the family’s image or standing or our place.

It was about breaking promises, sacred trusts, and shirking sacred responsibilities. It was about going against everything she’d always taught me. I let the magic consume me, turn dark, and all on our sacred bricks.

It was real, my betrayal. Important. The end of...everything for me.

I look to Nicholas for answers. He points to the book, hovering before us once again.

“Read, Rebekah,” he says.

Again.

I don’t want to, but here I am anyway, moving against what I want. Moving instead toward the book that seems to wait for me, as if it’s sentient and knows exactly how I feel about it. When I get close enough, I see it’s opened to the same page, the Beltane ritual.

But on the bottom is a symbol.

Not just any symbol, but the one on my ring—an X of flower petals with a circle in the middle. And underneath, ancient script.

This time, I don’t need his help translating. Something’s changed. Strengthened. I know without asking that Nicholas will likely chalk it up to taking off all my metal, but I think it’s something else. The fire. The stone. My embrace of both.

Or more likely by far, my grandmother.

Because if any witch could be just as powerful in the grave as in the world, it’s her.

I suck in a breath and read.

This is the symbol of the Chaos Diviner. A power bestowed on very few. When the world descends into chaos, disorder, and imbalance, the Chaos Diviner finds the center of her power. This power will either destroy or heal. It will either kill, or it will birth. Destruction happens alone. Healing happens with the guidance of Who is Meant. Only then can chaos become light.

My heart is kicking at me, and I can feel it in my throat. There are earthquakes inside me, and I’m suddenly much too aware that I’m on a widow’s walk in the middle of the night with an immortal witch.

In other words, this is too much. All of this is too much. The killing and birthing in particular, the chaos part when I’ve worked so hard for calm and control, but...who is meant? What is that?

It echoes inside of me, like it or not. I do not believe in destiny, in things that are meant. I was meant to be a powerful witch from birth, and instead I was labeled spell dim and forced into exile. And I was meant to die out there, I’m sure of it, but here I am.

I choose my destiny, despite what I’m meant to do. If I have a code, that’s it.

Who is meant is bullshit.

And here I am, staring at Nicholas Frost.

I remember that strange urge outside the bar to put my hands on him. My grandmother’s words in my head. All the ways he’s kept himself physically distant from me before now—his magic might have touched me, but never him.

I turn to face him, once again painfully aware...of him. Of me. I’m in white and he’s in black. He’s centuries old, I’m relatively new. I’ve walked through the fire and he doesn’t need to. I have none of my usual protections, and yet the ring from my grandmother and the stone from Nicholas seem all the protection I could ever need.

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