Page 52 of Truly Madly Magically

He looks like he doesn’t know where to put that. “You think it’s all a coincidence?”

“I don’t think it’s that either.” It’s worse than a curse, is what I really think. Because he had to choose. They put that on him.

He shakes his head like it doesn’t matter. “I don’t need to rehash the past anymore. I don’t need you to forgive me, because I did the only thing I knew how to do. Maybe it was wrong, maybe it sucked, but it was all I could do. I can’t change the past ten years. Just like I can’t bring Mom back.” Once again, it’s all thunderstorm gray and my heart too wild against my ribs. “I’m telling you all this so you get why you can’t risk this. You can’t risk getting hurt. You can’t risk our baby. You can’t risk you, Ellowyn. The risk isn’t worth the loss.”

There are things I could say, but I don’t. That it isn’t up to him. That this is the thing I can’t refuse.

“I don’t want anything to happen,” I manage, very carefully, “to anyone I love.”

“That’s the problem,” Zander returns, his gaze as serious as his voice. As the grip his hand has on mine. “You keep thinking I don’t know you, but I do. You’ve got a self-destructive streak a mile wide, and I know it’s only begging to be turned into a martyr complex. I can’t have that. Ellowyn. I won’t.”

Every good movement needs a martyr, though. Everyone knows that.

I don’t say that in his head. I know I don’t, because we don’t do that anymore. Still he squeezes my hand.

“You matter too much to martyr yourself, Ellowyn.” His gray eyes search mine. He looks vulnerable and surly. He still looks like mine, but he also looks vulnerable in a way I know I never let myself. “To me, baby. You matter too much to me.”

Before I can decide what to do with that—or lodge my historic objection to being called baby, even though I only wish I hated it when he calls me that—or if I should faint or jump him or surrender to tears after all, or something—

There comes a great tolling.

Far off and close all at once. Inside my body and all over my skin. The whole house shakes. The air seems to follow suit.

Calling it the tolling of a bell feels like an insult.

“Christ,” Zander mutters, and the human invocation feels harsher than if he’d called out to Hecate like witches usually do. “What now?”

The sound rolls out again, worse this time.

Then a booming voice surrounds us, so loud I have to cover my ears, though that does nothing at all.

“Citizens of St. Cyprian. Witches of the world.” The voice is everything and nothing. It emanates from the sky outside. From my own pores. From the sheets I’m lying in. From Zander’s hand in mine and the arm he must have thrown around me when the tolling started. “The ascension ritual has begun, and the ancient trials must take place. Appear before me, or risk my eternal wrath.”

And this time when everything seems to collapse in on itself, Zander is with me.

14

FOR WHAT FEELS like much too long, but is likely only a matter of moments, everything is chaos.

It takes a while for it to settle down enough that Zander and I are us again.

We stare at each other, and neither one of us mentions that we’re now gripping each other with both our hands, fingers laced tight.

Zander swallows, hard, before helping me out of bed. I want to tell him I don’t really need any help, but it’s like when he calls me baby. The part of me that wants to fight to assert myself gets drowned out by the part of me that only and ever wants to bask in him. I decide to go with the basking. He mutters a spell to freshen us both up as we step out of the bedroom, and I let that happen too.

I move gingerly at first, astounded that I can’t feel all that poison anymore. No matter that it’s the second time I’ve gone through this, it was worse this time. And I am somehow fine. Because of the Healers who helped me—but also because of me.

By the time we make it to the staircase, I know I should tell Zander that I’m perfectly me again, and there’s no need for any coddling...but I don’t.

I tell myself that it has nothing to do with him or with me or with the daughter we kind of just met for the first time, but because when we can see the front hall of Wilde House, there’s a crowd of people there.

Not just our people.

I can see Emerson and Rebekah’s parents, apparently no longer in Germany, looking even more chilly and affronted than usual. If the familial resemblance is anything to go by, the rest of the crowd is a whole passel of other Wildes. They’re crowding the entryway, all talking at the same time and sounding entirely too much like Desmond Wilde himself—meaning, haughty and filled with outrage of some sort or another—and that leaves Zander and me stuck on the stairs. I don’t see Rebekah or Emerson. Or anyone else I know.

Behind us, the ghosts reappear, but they don’t look the way they usually do. Elizabeth’s hair is falling out of its tight bun. Zachariah’s shirt is half-untucked.

“What happened to you two?” I’m pretty sure ghosts can’t change their appearances. Much less physically fight each other, which is what their dishevelment kind of looks like.

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