Page 91 of Truly Madly Magically

Not because there’s anything wrong with saying it.

“She’s a liar,” I grit out, because that’s another truth, and I just proved it—but I’m in so much damn pain, and whatever Jacob is doing isn’t quite as helpful as it usually is.

I need to get her somewhere else, Jacob tells us in our heads, and I suspect it says something about my state that he tells me too. Or doesn’t take the time to not tell me, more like.

“Riverwood,” comes the Undine’s impossible voice. “Do you have a rebuttal?”

I know Emerson has a million things she wants to say, but she shakes her head, her eyes flashing gold. “My only rebuttal is this. Justice is taking care of people who are hurting. Not hurting people more.”

The glowing eyes turn to the other side of the dais. “Joywood, what say you?”

They all look at each other, a ripple of bright bloodred. And I know. They’re going to drag it out. I’m on fire from the inside out, but they know that already, and they want this to hurt.

Before I can come up with any strategies to protect my child no matter what they throw at me, I hear my mother’s unmistakable voice, shouting in the crowd. “You end this, Carol. Maeve. I’m not going to stand here and let you hurt my daughter again.”

“Tanith, sit down,” Carol orders her, sounding bored.

“Mina,” Maeve adds, with her particular brand of sniveling malevolence, “maybe you could try controlling your partner. For her own good.”

The sound of Mina’s incredulous laughter is almost as good as Jacob’s Healer magic as it tangles with the wash of pain inside me.

“The covens have spoken,” the Undine belts out in her dispassionate way. “This is how they see justice. Consider this as you make your decision come Samhain.”

“We aren’t finished,” Carol retorts, outraged.

When even I know you can’t argue with a stone statue.

“When you addressed the audience, you ended your time.” Then, with no further explanation and allowing no other hint of argument, the Undine goes dark.

This time, instead of fake-walking back to Wilde House, my coven flies me there, my mother at our heels.

“I’m getting really fucking tired of being everybody’s voodoo doll,” I grit out while they lay me out on my bed. Again. Jacob is still working on me, but this time, everyone else has shoved their way into the room. It’s not big enough, but someone has the presence of mind to utter a spell that makes it bigger.

Everyone breathes. Another wave hits me, I writhe, and it takes a moment to breathe my way back.

“Can you tell me what happened? Or what it felt like?” Jacob asks, his magic probing around inside of me.

“It was like half my body...” I trail off as it dawns on me what Jacob might already know. “The human half.” It all clicks into place, horrible though it is. It even makes a certain, poetic sort of sense, if you’re evil. Human blood helped me once, but it’s also its own kind of target. “I got around the poison by having human blood, but the Joywood can get around the Undine by attacking the nonwitch part of me. The Undine doesn’t care about humans.”

“That’s bullshit. This is bullshit.” Zander shoves his hands through his hair, a whole Midwest summer of storms in his gaze. “There has to be some kind of recourse.”

“The recourse is the people.” Emerson sounds like she’s thinking aloud. “They get to choose what to believe. Who they agree with. The point isn’t right or wrong, or even truth versus lies, it’s that there’s a choice. Once we win—”

“I don’t care about choice or winning or anything else if they’re going to attack her,” Zander roars. Maybe acting so unbothered and unneedled the past few days hasn’t been quite so easy for him. I want to live long enough to revel in that. “This can’t keep happening. We have to stop it.”

“We need to be careful,” Emerson agrees. “What’s the alternative, Zander?”

“I don’t know, maybe one where the pregnant woman carrying our daughter isn’t fending off every single fucking attack?”

“So we should...what? Quit? Let them win?” Rebekah demands. “Do you think that’s what Ellowyn wants?”

He glares at her. “It’s too big a risk.”

“I’m not weak,” I manage to get out. “Or dead yet either, by the way.”

My mother and Jacob murmur words over a mug. My herbs, my mother’s words, and a Healer’s touch. I’ll have to drink it to heal me, because that’s what a human would need.

And hey, that’s half me.

---