Page 14 of Wildfire Witch

Who knew how much Ceridor took from my dry, broken whispers. I died for the first time under the light of another blood moon, burning to death in an unfamiliar bed.The physician survived the resulting blaze and picked up the newborn baby reborn in the ashes. “How peculiar,” he’d murmured, before taking the baby home to his wife, who was glad to raise another child as her own.

The memories continuedin a more broken sequence as I died a little more each time I lost control of my magic. The worst section was when I was presented to a dragon shifter a century later, who wanted Aodhnait’s magic to bring back his mother after her untimely death.

“We all have things we want,” I’d snarked at what would become the first leader of the Fire Brotherhood. At the hands of him and his underlings, I died countless times in their varied attempts to extract Aodhnait from my body.

It took one compassionate woman, who’d tired of participating in the cruelty, to smuggle me out. But by then, it was too late, and Verity was gone. I was Nix from that life onward, a shell, just as Morfran had intended.

But instead of remembering my part in the ruin of Spells Hollow, as he’d wanted, I had my time with the fire bros as a scar on my soul and one mission left intact in my heart: to reach Seattle, the closest human city to the Wind Court and my fae husband.

I felt myself emerging from the darkness of the past. The ghost of my brother was nothing more than a presence now as the red light of the super blood moon before me waned.“Return to Spells Hollow. Use what you remember to break your curse andset us free…”he whispered, just a voice in my mind that faded on the wind.

“Wait,” I whispered in the here and now. “Don’t leave me. Royce!”

NIX

“Royce!”I shouted at his fading presence.

My hand flexed, curling around solid fingers. I returned to my body and time suddenly to see the fading rays of the blood moon lending orange-tinged light to warm Ceridor’s curls. Instead of my brother, he sat beside me, eyes shut and face scrunched with concentration.

I was hot. Burning up, in fact, but the fae pushed cool air into my palm. If I’d had an episode while in the midst of my visions of the past, he’d suppressed it. Thanks to him, I was alive. And because of my brother’s visit…I was as whole as I could be. A complete puzzle once more.

The centuries had not been kind to Ceridor. I matched the fae husband I’d once had to the colder, more closed off version I’d just become reacquainted with. There was no easy charm and carefree grins anymore, his joking softness replaced by frost and nearly dashed hopes. He’d found me, but it’d been what…close to three hundred and fifty years?

But hehadfound me, and still called me wife despite everything. My heart threatened to melt in my chest. I fell a little more in love with him, even though he was a stranger.

No, not a stranger.

Yes…ugh. My head hurt. Who was I, really? How would I go on, knowing who I was, everyone I became, and the restored version I was now?

“Cer,” I whispered, giving his arm a shake. My magic was stable for now.

His grip on my fingers loosened and he turned to look at me. For a split second, I saw the fatigue and weight of age in his shadowed eyes, tarnished from the pure silver they used to be. I’d been so overwhelmed by his continuing fae beauty to understand just how heavy a burden it must’ve been to chase after my many incarnations.

“Ver?” he replied, taking in my straightened spine and the subtle nuances that made me who I was…no, am. I wavered, confused. “Firefly?”

“Yes. I think,” I murmured.

He breathed a little joyous laugh, eyes watering again. I reached for him first, grabbing a fist full of his curls and planting a kiss on his soft lips. This was no tentative test, but a reigniting of passions. Our breath mingled in heated pants. His tongue pushed past my teeth while he pulled me to him, crushing me to his chest.

This was how he kissed me every time he returned from the Wind Court, with the edge of desperation that only came aboutfrom long separation. We had merely been separated for a longer time…to the point he was so different, now.

As my enthusiasm for the kiss waned, he pulled back to nip the sensitive skin under my ear. “You remember me now?” he whispered. I shivered from the hot wash of his breath. If I closed my eyes, it was my husband returning to me in the night. Liquid heat pooled between my thighs while I moaned aloud from another nip.

“Yes,” I said.

He cupped my hip and squeezed with just the right amount of pressure. “You remember our time together?” he asked.

Swallowing, overwhelmed by how easily he jumpstarted my desire, I nodded.

“Let me hear you, love.” He pulled back to see my face, taking away the cool sensation of his magic meeting mine, skin to skin. I felt overheated, face flushing.

“I do remember,” I said, voice husky with the flames and smoke of the rest of my restored memories. “We were handfasted within a year of our meeting. You called it fate, and swore vows in…”

I drifted off, looking at the back of my hand. Free of the symbol that’d appeared during our handfasting, but mottled with a couple minor patches of burn scars. “Where…?” I breathed, so confused I was starting to feel dizzy.

“I swore vows to you in the universal language of the fae, unbreakable by anything but death. And after all this time, due to your curse, you have not truly died.” He layered his hand over mine and his icy skin shimmered up to the elbow with theeffect of a glamor disappearing. A beautiful, but faded, pattern of elemental symbols appeared. I traced the puff of a cloud on his inner wrist and he inhaled sharply.

“That one was my favorite,” I said. By the way his gaze smoldered, he was well aware. “But if you are still bound, where’s my mark?”

---