Page 125 of Truly Madly Magically

It’s a relief. Another indication that choices are what create a legacy, not dramatic intervals with black magic covens and all the rest.

Life can just go on, filled with family and friends and the jobs we do, the businesses we run, the world we know.

Some things will change. Our responsibilities will grow, and there will be demands on us I’m sure I can’t predict, but the best gift is that we get to keep being us.

We didn’t have to transform ourselves to win.

All we had to do was tell the truth.

I look over at Zander as he drives, and I carefully rub my palm down his arm, avoiding his scar. I know it must still pain him, even with the Healing and the teas I’ve pushed on him today.

“How are you holding up?” I ask.

“All right. Dad forced me to take a nap while you were at the tea shop. No work allowed for the next three days again—Grandma’s orders.” He rolls his eyes, but I can see he’s not fully himself yet.

I trace outside the jagged scar. I imagine that while it might fade, it will never fully go away. We’ve all been marked by what happened this year. Maybe it’s a good reminder.

As for me, I don’t have scars. But I have new eyes and a baby on the way.

I don’t think I’ll be forgetting any of this anytime soon.

Zander parks in the ferry lot and we walk along the river, letting the water lead us and whisper to us as we go. Songs and secrets. St. Cyprian’s soul, rushing into the bright gold confluence in the distance.

Nix is buzzing. There are many costumes, much merriment, and humans wearing witch hats and those funny wart noses while standing next to actual witches dressed in regular street clothes. Our coven is already here, and we wind our way through the crowd to join them at the same booth we sat in when Rebekah first came home.

Except this time, instead of making a dramatic entrance, Frost is one of us.

We’re the ruling coven, I keep having to remind myself, especially when I see the avid attention we get. The sidelong looks and whispered conversations from all the witches packed in here.

Zander signals his cousin for some drinks, and once Zeb brings them over, Emerson lifts her glass. “I’m going to give a toast.”

“You’re going to give a speech, you mean,” Rebekah returns, grinning.

“I can be brief,” Emerson says loftily. Then she laughs. “But why should I be? For over seven months now, we’ve been fighting for our lives. And for a lot longer than that, in our different ways, we’ve been fighting to just...be us. Think of all the ways they tried to take us down, take us out. And in the end, it wasn’t a battle that won this war, it was us. Just us. It was our community believing in right and good and light. Hard work and building instead of belittling and believing—”

“Emerson,” Rebekah groans, but her eyes look a little too bright.

“And a ton of other things that we represent,” Emerson continues, bumping her shoulder against her sister’s. “It’s not about power for us. It’s about doing what’s right. That’s what we’ll keep doing. Every one of us has sacrificed something, learned something, grown up some, and now we’re here. It’s not the ending point. It’s only the beginning.”

“But let’s celebrate like it’s an end to threats against our lives,” I offer, lifting my glass of sparkling water.

“Hear, hear,” Zander says, tapping his glass to the table.

An effective cutting-off point before Emerson continues on, before she inevitably starts listing our individual positive points until we all need to run away and hide.

Instead, we spend the next few hours talking. Not about the past twenty-four hours, weirdly enough. Someday, I think, we’ll want to rehash it. Minute by minute. But it’s almost too real just now. We came too close to losing everything, time and time again.

We set it aside for now. Until we’re ready, I think.

Before midnight, we’re all drooping. And tonight, we don’t have to go back to Wilde House and hunker down together. We’re safe.

That takes a moment to really hit all of us. We’re safe.

We split off into our usual pairs. Jacob and Emerson to the North farm, Rebekah and Frost to Frost House. Georgie finds Sage—and I don’t let myself wonder if they’ll go to Wilde House together or like...go research in a library.

I try to be happy that Georgie has made a choice she claims she wants. I brush aside the odd look I saw on her face when Emerson mentioned sacrifices.

Tonight, I let Zander take me to his place, because he’s still healing and the Guardian in him needs that proximity to the confluence, but I pick a half-hearted argument about where we’ll live, for old times’ sake. His place is too run-down. My place is too small—both things magic could easily fix—but there’s something about the fake argument that feels like home.

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