Page 70 of Bewitched By the Voodoo King
She threw herself back onto the mattress and let out a dramatic sigh. “Don’t get me wrong, I do love it here. I’m happy, but sometimes I wish I had more freedom. I don’t want to leave you, especially after everything that’s happened. I don’t want to leave my best friend even if she is romantically tied to my brother.” She threw me an overly dramatic wink.
She was right, even though everything was such a mess at the moment. Her face sobered up. “No matter what happens, you’re still my best friend.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me that I was married to your brother?”
She puffed out her cheeks before she answered. “Because it wasn’t my story to tell. It wasn’t my thing to screw up. There were so many times I wanted to blurt it out and tell him to get on with it, but I knew it would only make this mess bigger, and I couldn’t do that to either of you. I just hoped you would both find your footing and it would come out organically.” She batted her eyelashes at me. “Or you’d both fall desperately, madly in love and he would just propose and never mention the contract again, because that was all it was… writing on a sheet of paper. Marriage in a coven, before the coven, is so much more than that. You both deserve to be tied together in magic, not just in words.”
Which made sense. Before, when my sisters got married, I was so tied up in my own musings and thoughts on the matterthat I hadn’t actually cared to be in on that magic happening. Hell, I probably wouldn’t have felt it anyway, considering my magic was locked up tight.
Maybe there was still time to make all of this right. Time for us to feel our magic together and really fall in love with one another. But first, we needed to get Babette.
Rune foundme in Adelle’s room still, hours later. I didn’t know how to leave her side just yet. I felt so strange and out of my element with magic now thrumming through my veins. I didn’t know how to act around the other witches or even leave the sanctuary of either Adelle’s room or Rune’s. It was so much easier to hide. That was until Rune came looking for me. For the first time since everything happened, he looked rested. I hoped he took a nap in his own bed. He refused to sleep in it or even in the room with me there. It was odd… We were married. But I wasn’t about to be the one to remind him of that.
He held his hand out to me, and I placed my much smaller one in his. He led me out of her chambers without a second glance. Words weren’t needed. I was just happy that we were getting to some kind of normal. Touching wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable. In fact, I welcomed it. Ineededit.
“Any news on Babette?” I finally broke the silence.
He shook his head. “No, but there’s something I wanted to do. Something I wanted to show you. I should have shown you my magic a long time ago.”
I blinked up at him as we rounded the corner to his room. What did that mean? Was this a sexual reference? When he closed the door behind us, I knew the confusion was written all over my face. He released my hand and marched to the chest shoved against one of the walls in his room. His grimoire and a worn-down piece of white chalk sat on the top of it.
My eyes had drifted to the worn book a few times while I was in here alone, but I never touched it. I knew better than to do that. It was ancient and full of magic that didn’t belong to me. The last thing I wanted to do was get blasted by the ancestors. He picked up the chalk and drew a large circle in the brick hearth in front of the bed. He flipped open the old tome and closed his eyes.
He was showing me how he used his death magic. An incantation flowed from his lips as he drew symbols on the floor around him. The room grew cold as the lights flickered. Shadows rippled across the walls even though nothing moved. My skin prickled as though a thousand invisible eyes had turned toward us.
I sucked in a gasp as I realized this wasn’t something that was usually shown. Yes, on the full moon magic mingled and was freely shared, but this moment… This moment was so much more than that. It was intimate and special. My knees wobbledand gave out from beneath me as I sank to the ground on the outside of his calling circle.
“Ancestors, I plead with you,” his voice roughly bounced around the room. “You have shown me what’sminein the past. You have led me through tough waters, and you have given me strength. It is time for me to protect what is mine. Show me the one that wants to take from me. Show me, Babette.”
The shadows surged around us, and the lights blinked completely out. I wrapped my arms around myself to rid the chill that settled in my bones. Just as quickly as the lights went out, they blinked back on.
Rune straightened from the floor, the summoning circle now gone, and looked at me with tired eyes. All of the rest he’d seemed to have gotten was sucked from him now.
“I don’t like to do that often; it requires a lot of sacrifice, but sometimes, it's the only lead I have.” He pushed his locs back from his face and smudged white chalk lines across his cheeks in the process. I reached forward and rubbed it off with my thumbs. Something softened in his gaze as my eyes searched his. “Maple…”
“Hmmm?”
His gaze dipped down to my lips, and all the cold I’d felt just a few seconds previous disappeared. Warmth zinged straight through me. I would have been lying to say I hadn’t missed him and his touch. It wasn’t far from my mind. Could we get past everything that happened? Could I?
“Can I kiss you, Maple?”
I found myself nodding, despite everything. When his lips touched mine… It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It was like our first kiss but better. My eyes closed as euphoria swam through my veins.
He deepened the kiss, shadows rising like smoke along the edges of the room, restless and alive. His hand slid into my hair,holding me as though the ground itself might split open if he let go. The cold from his magic was gone, replaced with a heat that rushed through me so fast I felt dizzy.
When he pulled back and pressed his forehead against mine, I wanted to complain. I opened my eyes, confused.
“I want you to know that I have wanted to tell the coven you were my wife since the first moment I knew you were mine… Probably even before then.” He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. “I have lived with this proclamation on the tip of my tongue for entirely too long. It wasn’t your magic but your disappearance that made me truly feel your absence in my life. I’ve never been so scared of losing anything before.”
“And now that I do have magic?” It was the elephant in the room.
He shrugged. “It’s an added bonus. But if you didn’t have it, I would have accepted it. All I cared about was you in that swamp, not what you could do for my people or the wolves.”
“And Babette?” I needed to know how we moved forward with her in the mix of all of this.
“The ancestors have special plans for her. She’s in the swamp, I just need to weed her out.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” I didn’t think it would help, but I would offer it all the same.
