Page 8 of Truly Madly Magically

Then it shoots up and flies away from everyone—

Except it veers toward me at the last second.

Right at me.

Right at the baby, as if it knows.

I fling up a protection spell, but it claws through it. A brutal slice, and then there’s a searing pain across my abdomen—

Then it’s gone. Like it was never there.

3

“WHAT WAS THAT?” Rebekah demands immediately, sounding particularly outraged as she stares at the place where the shadow disappeared.

This is partially because my best friend is also our coven’s Diviner, and she takes it personally when surprised by things she feels she should have foretold.

Nicholas Frost, her outrageously powerful boyfriend—if that’s what you call a formerly immortal witch—shakes his head as he stands beside her. He’s bleeding from the corner of his lip a little, but that’s the only indication that he sacrificed his immortality for Rebekah back in June.

When Zander can’t even let me fight my own battles ten years later.

“A problem, but one we handled,” Frost says in his usual resonant voice. “For tonight.” He’s never one to get carried away with the optimism, which is maybe what happens when you have centuries under your belt.

“How cheerful,” Rebekah replies, but there’s laughter in her voice, and the way she looks at him is all heat and joy.

I glance over at Zander. He’s holding his arm at a very wrong angle, gritting his teeth against what must be some considerable pain. I don’t like any part of that, and I’m about to reach out to him, no matter how telling that would be right now—

Rebekah takes me by the arm. “You’re hurt. You’re...” She trails off.

In a very significant way.

Significant enough that everyone looks away from the sky and the shadows, to me.

Standing here in all this moonlight with no glamour, because I lost it somewhere along the fight. A four-month pregnancy isn’t a huge baby bump or anything, but I’ve been hiding it. While seeing these people every day. So they notice the difference between my glamoured stomach and my actual, pregnant stomach.

They all notice.

I can’t focus on that disaster because I’m also looking down, and I see the angry claw mark across my tiny swell of belly. Once I do, I feel it. For a moment, my brain goes entirely blank, then fills with nothing but terror. I almost pass out. All I can hear is Zander talking about our child.

Our child. A little person we made, but the shadow—

Then Jacob is next to me. He murmurs some Healer words as his magic seeps into me, but I’m not really listening. I’m looking at the angry claw mark and hearing nothing but a kind of low buzz in my ears. Panic and a million other things.

Things I don’t want to name.

Slowly, the marks stop bleeding and start stitching back together. Jacob’s work is swift and good. He heals me, and not for the first time this year. Not even the first time this long, hot summer.

“Is everything okay?” I whisper at him.

Jacob holds my scared gaze and gives my arm a reassuring squeeze, wordlessly telling me the baby is fine. I begin to breathe normally again, which is when I realize I...wasn’t.

The terror inside of me slowly recedes. Only then do I remember Zander’s arm. I turn around to find him, to make sure he’s okay too—

Jacob’s already moving over to him, and though Zander’s injuries are different, our Healer repeats the same process.

He calls on his magic so Zander’s broken arm starts to straighten. The gash on his cheek and the deeper one across his eyebrow begin to fill in. There’s a long scratch across his neck that looks ugly, and I have to force myself to keep still, to keep from doing something incredibly stupid and revealing, like running to his side.

Or like...having his baby? Ruth asks dryly.

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