Page 64 of Big Little Spells

Far away from him.

Maybe all the way back to Sedona, and on some level, I should want that.

But I don’t.

I refuse to go. And I refuse to stop fighting. So, the battle goes on.

And it’s no joke. Nicholas’s eyes blaze a blue fury. My muscles shake with the exertion of throwing it right back at him. It’s magic, but it’s deeply physical. It’s energy and force, but unlike the spells I used to cast when I was younger or the work I did with everyone to hold back that flood, something within me is also...expanding. I’ve never felt anything like it before. I have to wonder if it’s the whole clarifying crystal plus Grandma’s magic plus whatever the hell stuff Chaos Diviner comes with.

Or, you know, him.

Who is meant.

And I can feel it then. Beneath all the power I’m expending is a new pulse beating within me. It’s been beating in me since he yanked me out of Sedona to come back here and help clean up this mess. It’s only gotten worse since I’ve been home.

Or better, something in me whispers.

Since those moments outside the bar. Since the dance earlier tonight.

Since he led me through a fire with only the sound of his voice.

It’s everywhere. My temples, my neck. My wrists. And deep between my legs, as if I really am the sacrificial virgin I’m dressed as tonight.

I know, now, without a shred of ego, that I can hold him off a few more times yet. I know this with a quiet certainty, as if I’m looking at a fuel gauge instead of taking stock of the power inside me. Yet if this is a contest of endurance, he’ll win. I know that too, with the same certainty, as if expending power in this way has clarified not only my own magic, but given me a frank insight into the power around me too.

Nicholas is, unsurprisingly, far more powerful than I am. But who says I have to play by his rules?

I’m an adult. We are equals, whether he wants to admit that or not. And maybe it’s time I stop thinking like I’m still a teenager, no matter how many high school horror reenactments the Joywood have in store for me. The fact is, I can make some of my own rules now.

I hold up my hands in a kind of surrender, though it’s not one. Not really. “You can send me away, Nicholas. Banish me if you want. Why not? Exile suits me just fine.” Part of me thinks he’ll just blast me back to Sedona, but another part of me—not the rebellious part, but the powerful part, and I’ll have to think about why they’re not the same—is still. Because maybe I know better. I watch that blaze in his eyes, and more, I feel it. Everywhere. Like he’s part of me. I go on. “At the end of this testing period, I’ll be lucky if I get exiled again, but I’m not giving up. Not because of them and not because of you. Something changed today, Nicholas. I won’t rest until I know what it is.”

He doesn’t raise or lower his hands, but he doesn’t fling any of that intense magic of his my way either. There is no spell to tug me somewhere else.

Nicholas looks down at me, the blue flame changed to icy condescension, but that feels a lot like a win. “You will regret it,” he says.

It’s not that I don’t believe him. His conviction rings through every word. It’s just that regret is a choice. Life just isn’t going to go perfectly or even the way you want. And if you live in all those old wishes, holding on tight to how it should have been, you shrivel up.

I know. I learned and I grew out there. I might be back in this place, but I haven’t shriveled here the way I could have. The way anyone would in the face of so many bad memories and worse choices. Instead, I’ve stood in my power, the way those ten years on my own taught me to. You learn or you die. Sometimes that death is long and drawn out and looks a lot like fear, but it’s a death all the same. You learn so you can live.

“I don’t believe in regret,” I return, somewhat surprised at how calm I sound. How at peace I feel when the night started with a prom, had a fire walking interlude, and has just now been all about hurling power at each other like we’re trying to make our own thunderstorm.

But there is no peace in him. There is something like a crack in the air, like he’s reached his breaking point, and it echoes around him. In the sky, in the wind.

And in me, over and over again.

His fine, nearly cruel mouth flattens into a shape that should scare me, but that’s not at all how I feel.

“Then I will teach it to you,” he tells me, like a vow.

Or a curse.

I don’t get the impression he moves, but somehow he is close. So close that he could reach out and touch me—and he does. His hands wrap around my upper arms, bared to the night air, and I understand immediately why he’s been so careful not to touch me before now—not when we’re alone like this, and there’s nothing to take the edge off the intensity or how it wallops me.

I get it then, a new level of clarity. It washes through me, bright and unflinching. That I wanted this long before I understood what it was. Who I was.

What he was then and still is now.

And this time, when his power slams into me, it isn’t magic.

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