Page 90 of Truly Madly Magically

“He attacked me,” she says again. Her words are measured, her gaze steady. Every inch of her the leader, even as we see Skip and all that nasty, obviously black magic go at that earlier version of her. “When I realized I couldn’t hold him off alone, not when his magic was so dark and wrong, I called my friends for help.”

A murmur snakes through the crowd. I can’t be the only one who thinks it makes her seem even more powerful that she could ask for help. That she did. That she wasn’t hampered by that ego everyone likes to say she has.

I shouldn’t be surprised that the Joywood feel it too.

“A whole coven arrayed around one misguided witch?” Felicia asks, sounding startled.

“Seems a bit like bullying to me,” Maeve agrees, and she should know, as one of the biggest bullies who’s ever lived.

“Not a whole coven,” Emerson says, in that way she has, as if she feels compelled to correct errors when she encounters them because, surely, everyone wants to correct errors. “We were just friends. And a not-so-friendly immortal witch who helped us for his own reasons. My sister was still in exile. Still, we fought. All of us in the light against one in the dark.” She looks over at Carol. “We knew he’d bartered his blood, Carol. But we had no idea what kind of power that would give him. How could we? But look.”

In the image, where Emerson stands holding a sword of light given to her by Jacob, a Healer, Skip pulls together a sword of his own from the swirling, oily mess of vile black that surrounds him. It’s obscene. It’s horrifying. It makes my gorge rise to look at it, and I already know how this ends—

Before I can show everyone what else happened that day, a terrible pain shoots through me. It flares up along one side of my body. My leg gives out. I nearly tip over, but Emerson’s beside me, holding me up. Then Zander’s arm is wrapping around me from the other side, though I don’t see him move.

It doesn’t help. I can’t maintain the spell, and the images fade. I’m upset about that, but I can barely stand up. I thought they couldn’t do this again.

I realize I cry that out to the rest of our coven.

Jacob surges to his feet and crosses to me, and I can tell it’s not exactly the same as before, because I’m so much more aware of what’s happening. This is no blessing. Jacob puts his hands on my back, and I feel his magic wind its way into me, trying to heal me.

“They’re doing something to her,” he says, but in a ringing voice so everyone watching this can hear.

“Again,” Zander growls.

I breathe through the waves of agony, but I can feel Jacob’s magic. It’s cool, almost sweet, and it works. The bright, hot hurt begins to recede into a fading kind of ache. After a moment or two, I can take a full breath.

It isn’t like the poison from before, but that doesn’t make me feel better. Maybe this is the one that will kill me. I slide my hands over my stomach, concentrating all the magic I’ve got into protecting this baby.

“If I recall correctly, the Undine said we cannot harm one another.” Carol smirks while she says this.

She’s lying. I don’t know how, but the way she phrases that makes it clear enough to me. Somehow they got around the Undine.

I think, this is it. I am going to die. Right here on a dais next to a sentient stone, even as my friends—my coven—surround me and the ghosts float above us, all of them chanting and trying to help.

I can’t imagine what the audience thinks, but it’s amazing what clarity your own fast-approaching death can give you. I realize in that moment that I don’t care what the audience thinks. I don’t care about St. Cyprian because of a bunch of judgy witches. I care about the people surrounding me, holding me. I care about my family. I care about Zander and our baby and the future I suddenly want more than I can remember admitting to wanting anything, ever.

I never should have cared what all these random people thought of me. Another wave of pain sweeps through me, and I can’t recall why I ever did.

“Joywood,” intones the Undine as if my death at her stone feet is as meaningless to her as anything else, “it is your turn to explain your take on justice.”

“This is quite the story and performance,” Carol says, her voice smooth and calm, rippling out over everyone on the dais and off.

A spell in and of itself.

“My son made poor choices,” she says, in what seems to me—even through the haze of pain—to be a direct response to Emerson’s show of approachable leadership. She sighs. “Skip was dealt with, as you saw. He can no longer hurt us. He can’t even tell us what drew him to the dark.”

She’s way too good at that, Rebekah says internally. Loudly. Making it somehow sound like it’s Emerson’s fault her creepy son bartered his blood and tried to kill you all with black magic.

I remember this is her first time seeing this.

He became the weasel he always was, witchling, Frost says.

“Rather than dwell on these unfortunate events and let those who would strike out at the heart of our government make up stories to win petty points, I decided to use a memory spell. This choice is within my rights, under witch law and as your leader. I cannot deny what he did, without my knowledge or approval. It shames me to this day. But Skip was punished by their hand, was he not? So, I thought it best we forget. I still do.”

She stands there, looking brave. No one says anything, and yet I know that everyone watching her is tutting a bit internally, thinking we did something unseemly, if not outright rude, by saying true things out loud.

It’s only a curse because no one wants to hear the truth, I think through another wave. Not because there’s anything wrong with the truth itself.

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