Page 118 of Big Little Spells

I manage to move an arm. Then my neck.

Finally, I can see the scene erupting around me, and it’s chaos.

Chaos that was dimmed for me while I was spellbound. I have to assume that was deliberate.

My friends haven’t been muted and frozen solid like I have, but they all have their hands full. Jacob is working with other Healers to help the children. Georgie and Sage are arguing with Happy Ambrose and Gil—over books—while a crowd of Historians and Praeceptors press in and argue around them, yelling and shouting as well.

A group including Zander’s family surround Festus, hurling angry shouts at him while he tries to create enough magic to put them off, but Zander is with Ellowyn and Emerson, creating a kind of barrier that keeps Carol’s and Felicia’s magic from getting through.

With my ghostly help, and everyone else preoccupied, I throw off the vestiges of the spell and rush the stage, throwing myself up to the stage floor and diving over to Nicholas.

My immortal, who sacrificed himself for the truth. For information that will allow the Joywood to be stopped. Defeated.

When I finally reach him, he’s gray and motionless. I make a sound I hardly recognize, terrified he’s dead already.

But he isn’t cold. And there’s a flicker of something in his eyes.

Touch him.

And I realize that all this time, my grandmother’s voice has been urging me to touch him and it wasn’t in general. It was for this. Because time isn’t linear—hers or ours.

I put my hand over his heart, where the rock I gave him sits, cold and pointless.

“You lived forever. You can’t die now,” I whisper. “You dick.”

And when I touch the stone, it blooms with heat.

Another thundering crack echoes through the air, and blistering pain scorches through me, but I press harder. My hand. His heart. My love.

I have loved you across time.

I feel the magic of the elements. The old gods charging through my veins. His magic and mine.

Time doesn’t go one way. It isn’t just the now or then. It’s all things, and I am in tune with the weaving, waving nature of it all.

Chaos.

Diviner.

Me.

And us.

That’s the one thing no one is ever prepared for. That we’re an us.

I call my friends to me once more, then I press my magic into him. I give him all my love. I remind him who is meant.

I feel my friends around me. Chanting the words we infused into the stone. Helping heal him.

For me. For us.

Because this might be the end of Nicholas Frost, immortal witch. I might be the death of him.

Literally, just as he told me at Beltane.

But this is only the beginning.

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