Page 13 of Summertime Hexy
“I live here,” I mutter. “Not exactly hard to find.”
“Distant doesn’t mean far,” he replies, stepping closer. His robes shift like fog. “It means closed.”
I straighten, slowly, my knees protesting the movement. “If you’re here to reprimand me for not holding Hazel’s hand through spell practice, you’re wasting both our time.”
“No,” he says simply. “I’m here to tell you not to run.”
I freeze.
The words land sharper than they should. They slice something old. Something I’ve stitched closed so many times, it bleeds memory instead of blood.
Thorn doesn’t look away.
“You see her,” he says. “More than anyone else has. And it’s rattling you.”
I glare at him. “I see a girl with raw magic and zero impulse control. I’m rattled because she’s dangerous.”
“She’s dangerous,” Thorn agrees. “But not to you.”
He lets that hang in the air, just long enough for the silence to settle like frost.
“You’re not afraid of her breaking,” he adds. “You’re afraid of what she makes youremember.”
I hate how well he knows me. Always have. He’s been around long enough to witness everything—my mistakes, my shame, my cowardice.
“You think I don’t remember?” I snap. “You think I don’t carry it every damn day?”
Thorn doesn’t flinch. “I think you carry it like armor. And armor is heavy.”
I look away.
He walks a slow circle around me, his presence calm but pressing. “Hazel is not your brother.”
I shut my eyes.
Not this. Nothim.
“I know that,” I bite out.
“Then stop treating her like a curse you’re trying to avoid,” Thorn says, voice low now. “She’s not the ghost. She’s the flame.”
My jaw tightens. I remember fire. I remember the scent of it in our old home, in the cliffside sanctum where I turned my brother too late and held his body too long. I remember the heat of a hand I couldn’t save and the sound of his voice saying my name right before it turned to ash.
I ran then.
From him. From the coven. From everything I couldn’t fix.
And now Hazel—chaotic, loud, glitter-covered Hazel—is waking something in me I locked behind centuries of rules and silence.
“She’s a child,” I say finally. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“She’s not a child. She’s a woman with fear stitched under her skin and a fire she doesn’t understand yet. But shewill.”
“And if she burns?” I whisper.
“Then let her,” Thorn says. “But don’t leave just because it’s bright.”
His words hit somewhere deep. Deeper than I’m ready for.
