Page 70 of Big Little Spells

“Are you going to...expand on that?” I ask softly.

Nicholas only shakes his head.

I know this all goes deeper than him simply not wanting to tell me things—though that’s part of it. But this just confirms that there’s a maze of information he cannot divulge, like it or not. By curse or prophesy or even maybe the freaking Joywood.

Because another thing I know is this: he isn’t their friend, but that doesn’t make him their enemy.

Kind of like us.

I study him now, tall and dark and covered in stars. There are so many things I want to ask him. Even though my visions of his past are clear, they aren’t complete. I know he’s killed men—with actual weapons, the magical flick of his wrist, even his own fists in a darker age. I reach up and touch his face again anyway.

Maybe I should be appalled, but I understand too well the mistakes we make and sins we commit. When we haven’t healed what’s broken within us. When the dark is too tempting.

I want to ask him everything, to go through the story of Nicholas Frost step by step, starting way back when he was born with a different name entirely straight through to now. I want to inhabit each and every moment with him.

But as my thumb drags across his impossibly high cheekbone, I understand that these would only be pieces. Hundreds and hundreds of pieces, when what I really want is a bigger picture. The why of this moment.

And there is only one question I can ask here and now and hope with all I am that he answers. Because immortality is not a simple spell. It’s sustained magic across a great many spells and rituals and ultimately, it comes from sacrifice. It comes from giving up something to get forever.

Allegedly.

His hand rises to cover mine, there against his aristocratic cheekbone.

“Nicholas,” I whisper, my gaze intent on his. “What did you give up to live forever?”

He does not pause, not even a second’s hesitation, before he answers, his voice harsh. “Everything.” He lifts my hand off his face, but instead of dropping it like I expect he will, he holds it in his. “There is nothing I wouldn’t have done for the power I coveted. Nothing that could have stopped me from taking that final step.”

There is something about the word step that echoes within me. That produces a stream of visions—possibilities. They are unclear, but I can see they all involve those same students from the prom this evening. Crowds of teenagers, other witches, and me and my friends. Carol holding court in all of them.

And then I know. Litha.

Storms. Lightning. Death. Destruction. All the things the Chaos Diviner description warned about. Or promised.

But there is light too. Possibility and laughter and hope.

I let the visions run through me. I try to let them do as they will rather than inflicting my own narrative on them. And Nicholas studies me as if he knows very well that I’m seeing the possibilities before me. He squeezes my hand, grounding me in the present rather than in my visions, so I remember that I am the one watching them—I am not lost in them.

“You must take this seriously, Rebekah,” he says when they clear. “This next step rests on you.”

“Not really.” He sighs as if to argue with me, but I don’t let him. “The book said we have to work together. Assuming that since you’re the man who brought me the clarifying stone and led me through the fire and tutored me as an adolescent, you’re also the one who is meant.”

I wait for him to argue that.

When I really don’t want to hear his arguments.

Which is when it hits me. Those visions aren’t just a random high school montage. When have visions ever been random? “The flood was Emerson’s defining moment. It’s what truly made her into a Confluence Warrior. So I guess that means the test at Litha will be mine.”

Nicholas nods as if he’s been waiting for me to get here.

“They will test you, yes. Thoroughly. But they will not let you win.” For the briefest of moment, I swear, I see true regret on his face. “It is a required step in what they want.”

Required step. Steps again. “What the hell does that mean?”

He drops my hand then and turns, directing his gaze back toward the world outside and the long Beltane night that still wears on. “Perhaps you should ask your Historian.”

I know now that while sometimes he refuses to answer out of pure spite, or pride or arrogance or any of the other things he’s full of, sometimes he doesn’t give a straight answer because he can’t.

Maybe he even chose this consequence of his own free will, a blood oath for immortality, never imagining how long forever might be or where it might lead him. Just one of the reasons most witches have a deep abhorrence of even the idea of immortality. Forever always comes at a price, and rarely one you can anticipate.

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