Page 92 of Truly Madly Magically

“I didn’t say you were weak,” Zander bites out, but he doesn’t bite my head off.

There’s something about the way he doesn’t that begins to unravel something inside of me. Protections, I think. Armor. We all have to be our adult versions here.

Maybe that’s what a coven really is.

So it’s my turn to step up. Zander and I have a ticking clock leading us straight to parenthood. There’s no time left for maybes.

When I think that, despite the pain inside me and all the many years I’ve beat myself up for all manner of weaknesses large and small, I know the real truth. The one that’s been waiting for me all along.

The one that has never had anything to do with a curse.

“You don’t understand, Zander,” I say. Gently, so gently, when I’ve probably only spoken to him this gently once before, right after his mother died. “It’s something my mom told me.” I smile over at her, fierce and proud Tanith, who has always demonstrated exactly what kind of grown-ass woman I’d like to be. Not without flaws, but made of love and wit and flames, all the way through. “‘A pregnant witch isn’t fragile, she is powerful. Fearsome. Not fearful.’ That means even though they can hurt me—they have—it doesn’t work. Not long-term.”

Jacob hands me the mug and doesn’t have to tell me what to do. I tip back my head and drink the elixir that will heal me, every last acrid drop.

It cools the fire, eases the pain. It snakes through me, fighting back whatever the Joywood sent into the human parts of me, flooding me with relief.

But I have more than relief. I have that truth, at last.

I’ve always thought I was the weak link. Known it. I should feel it even more now. I should be wracked with insecurity that I’m the reason the Joywood could get around the Undine’s protections.

I think they’ve overplayed their hand. Every time I turn around, I’m sick. I’m poisoned. I’m the one attacked. Why me?

I don’t mean that in a self-pitying way. Not any longer.

I look at Elizabeth, my favorite ghost. She’s been right here, urging me toward something all along. She’s told me I’m special. She’s guided me toward almost every choice I’ve made since this whole ascension stuff was triggered.

Almost like she knew where we were headed, because she can see the past and the future.

“They don’t want me hurt, dead, whatever,” I say, while Elizabeth’s violet eyes gleam bright at me. Urging me to take that thought all the way to its conclusion. “Just because they’re the evilest evil to ever evil. They need it.”

Elizabeth clasps her hands before her and beams at me. I sit up in my bed and look around at my friends, my family. My coven.

My man.

“They need it for whatever they’re planning.” I’m not asking. I know. “Immortality, or more. They didn’t want Emerson to remember. They didn’t want Rebekah to come back. If they’d managed those things, we wouldn’t be here, in the middle of an ascension trial. These have been steps they needed to take to get where they wanted to go.”

Frost nods from the wall, where he stands with his arms crossed.

I look at Emerson. Our leader. Our linchpin. But without us, she would have died in that dark confluence. I look at Rebekah, my best friend since we were tiny, and I know she would never have come back here if Emerson had died. Or if she had, if the Joywood had missed Emerson and that flood, she would have fled this place in shame after they unveiled her darkest secrets to the world.

We’re all meant to be right here.

Together.

Each and every one of us belongs right where we are.

“These have all been steps that we’ve kept them from taking. Because we—” for the first time in my life, I count myself in that we, and I mean it with every part of me “—are more powerful than they could ever be.”

And I said it, so it must be true.

Something happens then. A kind of...opening inside of me.

I see a past stretched out, stitched together out of near misses. Sneaky magic slapping at me, and me always more than ready to slap right back. Because I might have had some issues, but I’m always up for a fight to defend myself.

I see all their barbs, all their disgust, specifically designed to make me weak. To make me doubt myself. To make me brood about all the ways I’m less than.

It did, inside, but it never fully took root. Because I’m not alone. I have these people. I have this.

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