And yet, in that never ending darkness where I’ve forgotten how to speak, I hear my voice. I don’t know what I’m saying but I know it’s me. My laughter comes a second later, it fills the space and for a moment I forget the nothing surrounding me.
“Meadow,” I hear Jaak say softly from somewhere in the dark and I understand now what he meant when he said that I saved him. When he had nothing, he had me.
“Jaak,” I say and the world comes rushing back around us like a flood. We’re not in the dark empty place that held him prisoner. We’re here, together. I hold tight to him, one hand wrapped in his hair, my other arm looped around his neck to keep my mouth to his. When he breathes, so do I. Our tongues move together just the way our bodies do. I don’t want to let goof him, not now, and not ever. My heart and body ache from what I’ve seen. He was a prisoner just like me but all of that has changed. We’ll never be controlled or locked away like that, not me, not him, not ever again.
I won’t let it happen.
“I’m ready.” I press my forehead to his and stare into those dark eyes that I’m quickly coming to recognize and smile at him.
He smiles back. “Clear your mind. This will take but a moment.”
I take a deep breath and do as he says and a second later I feel the first brush of power push against me. It presses close to my chest until it forces its way inside of me and then it grows. It’s warm and heavy, the weight of it becoming heavier by the second and it’s hard not to react. I feel like I’m being burned from the inside out, like I’ve swallowed a sun but I don’t make a sound. If I do, Jaak might stop. I don’t want him to stop. Another minute or maybe an hour goes by, I don’t know and the heat in my body snaps, as if something inside of me has been released. The fear and anxiety I’ve drowned in has been cut with one neat slice of a knife and now…and now every part of me is spilling out. All the versions of me, who I wished I was, what I wanted to do, how I thought my life would be with a different family, or never born into the cult and made to be a Blossom.
All of those different versions of me force their way free and the power goes with them. It happens so quickly that I don’t realize what’s happened until I hear a resounding boom that splits the air like an axe. It sounds like it’s right above us and I scream and press myself closer to Jaak while the trees sway and creek and wind whips around us like a tornado.
Jaak holds me while the wind calms around us until it’s nothing but a gentle breeze. I open my eyes and look around. “Is it over?” Everything looks…okay. I mean, the house is still standing so that’s a win, right? I don’t even see a broken window.The only thing that looks like it suffered is a tree in the corner of the yard that’s fallen over.
“It is,” Jaak says. He gently puts me down on my feet and gives my shoulders a squeeze. “You have done what few have ever survived. Well done, Meadow.”
I look up at him in surprise. “Are you telling me that I could have died?”
“Not died. No.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, because for a minute there you had me thinking something crazy would-”
“But those with weaker minds have gotten lost in the journey. Some never find their way out.”
The dark cave of nothing comes to mind and I gulp. I could have been stuck there forever? “Ah, that’s-that’s something I could have gone without knowing to be honest. If I ever am in danger of getting stuck in some memory prison just don’t tell me, okay? If I get stuck, I get stuck and that’s how I go but I’d rather not know. You can do that, right?”
“For you, anything. But if you get stuck I’ll be there with you.”
I smile at him because just like that, getting stuck in a mind prison doesn’t seem so scary anymore.
Chapter
Seventeen
“Idon’t feel any different,” I tell Jaak. We’re walking into town, or what I think is town? I don’t know. We haven’t seen any houses on our way into mage central. Not yet. I do know that I have power, enough to blow up my phone when I tried to charge it using magic. I tried to make a call back to Sweet Tooth to see if everyone was safe but of course, it was dead when I found it at the bottom of my backpack under Charlie’s book. Always the problem solver, I tried to power it up and for a second I thought I had made it work but I sneezed.
That sneeze made me lose control of the power I was charging the phone with andBAM! It exploded in my hands with a spray of silver. Not an ideal start to trying to save the world but they all can’t be winners, right? At least, the walk is nice. It’s quiet out here with Jaak. We’ve even held hands for the majority of it which has me wanting to swoon like an idiot. I almost asked him why he hasn’t shown me what he really looks like but I didn’t. There hasn’t been the right time to bring it up.
“Hey, so I think I saw your horns and you seem to have a snout with a lot of pointy teeth, oh yeah, and claws but Ialready knew about the claws on account of me threatening to cut them off that one time, remember?”
Definitely not a question suited for the current vibe of maybe strolling into a possible battle with your new husband. No, the trek into mageland is not the time or place. I’ll figure it out tonight when we return to the safe house, once I’ve figured out exactly what has changed about me. I thought I was just going to be a witch but now I’m soul-bonded too. I’ve tried to see if I feel different but there’s been nothing that’s changed as far as I can tell.
“You won’t until there’s danger.”
“So it’s situational?”
“In a way. Even if you do not feel the changes, they are there, Meadow. You’ll only feel it when you need them.”
“Can I fly?” I ask.
Jaak laughs. The sound of it makes me feel warm inside. “No, you can’t fly. At least, not yet.”
“So you’re saying there’s a chance?” Okay, maybe being a soul-bonded witch isn’t going to be that scary if I can fly one day.
“If you fly it will be due to your abilities as a witch. I’m sorry to say that I cannot fly.” Jaak sounds down about the fact that he can’t fly. Maybe it’s a sore spot for demons?
