Page 69 of Big Little Spells

“But there would be some, surely, if they knew you were feeding us hints.” I step toward him. I can’t help it. “They’re afraid of us, Nicholas.” I know he’s part of that us. He can’t seem to help himself. The good news about that is that I don’t have to waste any time convincing him. But there is something I’m not sure I can leave this house without asking. “This whole Chaos Diviner thing has something to do with who is meant. That’s what the book said.”

I’m closer to him now. I can smell him, vetiver and woodsmoke, magic and me. I want to touch him, but I can see he expects that, so I don’t. I stop a breath away from him, and I refuse to drop his gaze.

He shakes his head, though it looks like it’s hard for him. Like he would keep himself from it if he could. “Meant isn’t always what you think it is.”

I’m sick of the evasion, the I am the immortal night bullshit. “For fuck’s sake, Nicholas, you’ve been inside me. Would it kill you to be direct even once?”

“You want direct? All right.”

I’ve seen this look before, in those snatches of him throughout time. With swords and daggers. This is the look innumerable witches and humans, monsters and creatures alike have seen before they met their bloody end at his hands.

And even now, breath caught in my throat, I can’t regret it.

“I am not your destiny, but you are mine.” His eyes are a blue fire, and the way he speaks isn’t just ripe with emotion. It’s also the endless years of power and knowledge and everything else he is. A dark certainty and whole centuries in every word. “It is a prophecy. Possibly it is a curse, but it is certainly no choice. And it is not romantic, despite the pleasure I have taken in you.”

“Nicholas...”

I don’t know if that’s a protest or a promise, but he leans in closer, and there isn’t the faintest trace of the lover I discovered tonight on his hard face. There is only grim fate and that same certainty, like an iron mask.

“You will be the death of me, Rebekah,” he tells me, with finality. “It is written. And I can assure you that the prophecy in question is quite literal.”

19

“THAT’S A LITTLE DRAMATIC,” I say, hoping he’ll smile back. Assuming he ever smiles. I don’t expect him to laugh—the fabric of the universe might tear apart. “Don’t you think?”

But all he does is gaze down at me, his eyes dark and his mouth a flat line.

Until I have no choice but to believe him.

To believe that he believes what he’s telling me, anyway. That he truly thinks that I will be the death of him. Has he always believed this? Even back when I was a kid? Was that what all the lurking and secret suggestions were about?

I can’t get my head around that.

And yet the book that told me I’m a Chaos Diviner also mentioned other fun stuff like killing and death and destruction. If the right paths weren’t chosen, no pressure.

Someday I’d love to hear about a happy prophecy.

But I can’t just accept what he’s telling me. “Not all prophecies come true. You’ve lived long enough to know that firsthand.”

“That doesn’t mean this one won’t.”

There is something very nearly like kindness in those words. Like Nicholas can see all the same possibilities I do, in the detailed way I haven’t been able to for so long. Yet for all his power and magic and longevity, he isn’t a Diviner.

So he doesn’t know. At best, he hopes.

Everything in me softens at the idea of Nicholas hoping for anything. But... “I think if I was going to be your literal death, it would have happened by now.”

His mouth tightens ever so slightly. I can tell he’s trying to look foreboding and it’s not that he doesn’t, it’s just that I know too much now. The marks on his body, scars of lifetimes lived. The way his hands feel on me, inside me. The look on his face when everything is swept away except the pleasure, almost too much to bear, of being one.

“There is plenty of time yet for prophecies and fate to take a hand,” he says coolly. “I’ve lived long enough that the bloom of immortality has worn off. I do not fear my death.”

“Then what do you fear?”

Again it looks as if he is trying to be kind, rusty though the urge must be. “What it will do to those who survive it.”

Meaning...me.

That hits me hard, but I try to contain any reaction. If I somehow cause his death, he’s worried about how I’ll handle it?

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