Page 117 of Truly Madly Magically

Before she can respond to him, Felicia whispers something. Carol seethes, visibly, her gaze cutting to mine.

I feel the mute spell let go of me.

“You’re right, of course, Gus,” she says through clenched teeth. Always ready to play it up for the menfolk.

I know that’s not what changed her mind. She’s good at redirecting too. That means it has to be whatever Felicia said to her that got me my voice back.

Felicia is a shitty Diviner, but she’s still a Diviner, Rebekah says with great satisfaction to the rest of us. She must have told Carol that none of the potential outcomes of this were good for them if they kept everyone muted.

That doesn’t fill me with great confidence for the things I might say with my newly returned voice, but I’m not who they think I am. They think I’m that weak, scared Summoner I was for years.

I’m not.

I’m a Revelare. I can also see the future. I can reach into the possibilities. I know what can happen.

I can see it all clearly, down one path and another.

The Joywood can win, sure. There are a lot of possibilities that they might, unfurling out in front of me.

I know what scares them are all the other possibilities.

So many more possibilities, crowding up my vision and likely Felicia’s too, and all of them point to the same thing:

That we’re the ones who win instead.

28

THE JOYWOOD SEEM a little off their game, and I don’t think it’s because I want them to be and have seen that they might be, in certain futures.

I feel it. Even bound at their feet.

Maybe it’s their inability to kill me the way I know they want to. Maybe it’s poor Happy Ambrose’s still, stiff body there before us. Maybe it’s the fact that no matter how hard they try, no matter how many digs they make and little skirmishes they win, they can’t understand us. They can’t stop us.

We keep defying expectations.

Emerson senses this too, because she tamps down her rage. I can feel it all along our internal coven channel. She’s calm now. In control. She even smiles over at Carol.

“While I appreciate you releasing Ellowyn’s voice, if not the bindings on the rest of her,” Emerson says in that cool, calm leader’s voice of hers, “you’re going to have to let the people who support us talk as well, Carol. All this muting keeps us from truly diving into a discussion of our beliefs, as the Undine has stated is our goal here. The ascension ritual is about explaining who we are, not silencing everyone who might disagree.”

Carol sniffs, her eyes as narrow as her hair is big. “We have made it very clear what our beliefs are.”

“Yes, you have,” Emerson returns with that enviable calm, as if this is a tea party and she is the one pouring. “I’d like to talk to our citizens. About their beliefs. Their concerns. What they’d like to see us build.” She turns to the audience gathered and everyone watching from afar. “Because the Riverwood is about building a community and serving that community. Not wielding fear, questionable ‘protection,’ and desperate accusations like a hammer.”

There’s a beat where it almost seems like the Joywood can’t believe Emerson said that. When they should have known she would. She spent ten years saying all kinds of things, a lot like that, directly to their faces when she was the only one at the town council meetings who didn’t know she was a witch—and so was everyone else.

The thing about Emerson is that she’s consistent. True blue, straight down into her soul.

People always seem to find that confronting.

“This is supposed to be about your coven conspiring to kill one of our own!” Maeve shouts into the silence. She’s spluttering, red-faced, her blind pigeon making low sounds like he’s pissed too.

I get it. She can’t understand why Emerson isn’t jumping at the bait. A dead body. A young human accused. Her very own friend and her coven’s Summoner—because I don’t think they know my true designation—tied up and accused of masterminding it all.

We’re all supposed to be so focused on this little curveball that we forget what else is at stake here.

That’s not how Emerson Wilde rolls. It never has been. She waves this away. Her eyes glow gold, and I think she looks exactly like a leader should. Not expensive and otherworldly in a theatrical cloak, not condescending and terrifying with a sickly sweet smile and Medusa hair, but like one of us.

Like she’ll fight with us. For us.

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