Page 21 of A Heart of Winter
“Of course. He moved on to someone just as boring as he is. That figures. Have you figured out how much he sucks in bed yet, though?”
The ball of ice that had lived for the last month in my belly hardened at the reminder of his cruel words during the breakup, and I couldn’t help but looking over at Kai.
Kai, who looked confused.
“Are you out of your mind?” He leaned forward and stamped on Michael’s foot where it was jammed in the doorway. Michael yelped and tried to pull back, but it seemed his foot was actually stuck. Dammit. Kai wasn’t paying attention to that, though. He was focused on the conversation. “He’s fucking perfect in bed. So sweet. So vocal. So . . .”—he broke off and stared at me, both of us breathless for a second, lost in the memories of the day before, before he shook his head and went back to shoving at the door.“He’s perfect and if you don’t agree, you’re wrong. There’s no agreeing to disagree on this. Just right and wrong.”
I bit my lip, wanting nothing more than to just use the ice inside me to freeze Michael solid and leave him there so I could drag Kai back to my room and have him again. Behind Kai, though, movement caught my attention.
Morwenna, with her dagger.
What the hell was she planning to do with it when Michael was mostly trapped on the other side of the door? She muttered something quietly that sounded vaguely like Greek, which made sense, as it was the language we’d learned our magic in. I felt a tendril of something shoot past me, through the door, and Michael’s ranting went silent.
She reached up and grabbed the air in front of her with her free hand, like she’d caught something, and smiled her creepiest smile. She stepped right up to where Kai and I were pressed against the front door, grabbing my hand and shoving it atop Kai’s where he was braced in the wood frame.
Then, without a word, she stabbed her dagger down through both of our hands, pinning them to the wood.
Taking Out the Trash
Kai cried out and so did I, but the loudest scream came from Michael on the other side of the door.
Because she’d also pinned the thing she’d grabbed from him with her dagger, invisible as it was. Magic, I realized. She’d taken ahold of the very essence of his magic.
“You seem to be a decent guy,” Morwenna said quietly, entirely calm, to Kai. Like the two of them were having tea, and she hadn’t just stabbed us both in the hand. “I appreciate that. It’s exactly what I needed to fix this problem. Now you’ve just got to prove that impression right, or I’ll have to kill you someday.”
Kai, somehow, with a madman with a gun on one side and my suddenly stabby best friend on the other, didn’t scream obscenities or anything. The look he gave her was a little confused and more than a little skeptical, but it wasn’t angry or hateful. “You’ll forgive me if I say you’re going to have to dig yourself out of a bit of a hole here before I worry about your opinion,” he answered. Like her dagger pinning his hand to the door frame was a tiny thing.
Her? She grinned back like this was an entirely normal conversation. “Fair enough. I’ll keep that in mind. But right now, I have to fix my best friend.” She turned to the spot where she’dstabbed us, starting to chant in Greek as something started to squirm inside me.
In an instant, it all came together in my mind. Why my magic hadn’t been settling even though my mood had. Why it had been out of control to begin with.
Because it hadn’t truly been about my mood. That had only been the catalyst. Apparently, Michael had learned more about magic than I’d given him credit for.
Unless Morwenna was wrong, which was rarer than a blizzard in San Diego, someone had done a spell to untether me from my magic. And if Michael had untethered me from my own magic, his intention had to be to turn around and tether it to himself, because he intended to steal it. An action that would literally kill me.
I felt it moving as she chanted. My magic, that had started to feel like an ill-fitting suit over the last month, shuddering as it was ripped out of Michael and slid through Kai and back into me.
Then, there was nothing but light and cold.
So very much cold.
But it wasn’t an attack. It was like a hug from an old friend. It wasmycold.
I could hear Morwenna chanting in Greek. Michael shouting that she couldn’t steal his power.
And Kai. I didn’t hear him, but I felt him. His physical presence, but also his mind. Calm, collecting, shockingly soothing. I opened my eyes, only then realizing that I’d shut them, and found myself looking into his warm brown ones, full of concern. Not for being stabbed, but for me.
I gave him the most reassuring nod I could muster, breathing as evenly as I could while the magic within me was pushed one way and then another, like it was being wedged back tight inside me.
How had I failed to realize what was happening? How long, how slowly, had Michael been doing this, that I hadn’t noticed it until my magic had become dangerously unstable?
I could see it all clearly now. Years slowly pulling my magic out of place. The huge breakup scene had been staged, simply the catalyst for the moment where he gave my power that last yank to destabilize it entirely. That was why no amount of getting over the breakup had helped fix the problem—the real problem had nothing to do with my emotions.
The real problem was motherfucking Michael.
The chanting stopped as the magic inside me went completely, blessedly still, and I slumped into Kai. He caught me easily.
The thud outside implied Michael had had the same problem, but obviously, there had been no one there to catch him.
