Page 103 of The Wolfing Hour
Chapter
Nineteen
Chapter Nineteen
Istood outside the ring of stones.
Ida had taken Meredith into the house, so it was only Red and me.
Birds chirped above my head. I stared up at the gilded azure expanse of morning sky. The day was heating up, and it’d probably hit a hundred by noon. Not ideal for comfort, but not nearly as bad as it would be in another month or so…
I was stalling.
My top and bra lay in a pile on the ground. It hadn’t been easy to get out of them one-handed, but I’d managed it. My battered jeans were next. I dropped them to my ankles, taking note of the one-inch brown patch stuck to my Achilles tendon.
Thepainspell that had been keeping me on my feet was a Cecil special—a flat, sticky patch of natural burlap that looked like a hex bag that had been run over a few dozen times. It was ingenious, and I’d be asking for crafting lessons from him, if he ever spoke to me again. Chittered. Threw rocks. I’d take anything, at this point.
I took off thehealcharm, dropped it on top of my clothing. If I wanted to do this right, I couldn’t have any other magic protecting me. I had to trust my soil only—no fallbacks. I stepped out of my jeans, drew in a lung-filling breath of heated desert air, andrrrrippedthe hex bag off my ankle.
Pain crashed into my body, and I was thrown into a head-on collision with reality, feelingeverything, all at once. Not only the agony of my injuries, but the emotional pain, too.
My toes curled into the soil, and I gritted my teeth through the pain to remain upright. The soles of my feet tingled as the sun-warmed earth pulsed beneath me. Faint. Muffled.
But there.
The demon writhed. She was terrified of what came next and what it meant for us—for her.
"I know you're scared." Her terror—ourterror—raked its claws across my insides, but the earth beneath me and Red’s steady presence behind me gave me the courage I needed. I could do this—hadto do this. "You think if I get my magic back, I won't need you anymore. That I'll cut you off."
Her fear was warranted. It was tempting to banish her to wherever it was she went when not wearing my skin. It felt like the answer to every problem I had. Then I remembered the kintsugi mirror and Ida’s words:“You didn’t choose to let the demon in. It’s not possible, because just like your witch, she’s you.”
There was really no Demon Betty, any more than there was a Witch Betty. It was my brain’s way of making sense of it all, but it wasn’t reality. There weren’t three of us.
There was only one fragmented me.
“I won’t cut you off,” I said. “I can’t.”
Beneath my feet, the earth began to hum, vibrating with a frequency that made my teeth ache. I could feel the two sides ofme—earth witch and demon, growth and destruction, peace and war—colliding against each other like tectonic plates.
Green tendrils sprouted up between my toes—weak, struggling, but alive.
The demon recoiled, the witch advanced, and the battle inside me intensified. My elemental side—buried, but still a part of me—reached for the familiar energy. My demon side tightened her grip.
"Let go," I whispered. “You have to trust me. This is the only way it works.”
The demon hesitated then reluctantly released me. I felt her confusion, her disbelief.
"Please forgive me," I begged the soil, "and accept what I am—demon, witch—all of it."
I pulled harder on my earth magic, but this time, instead of keeping my demon side separated, I let it flow through both of us. The warmth surging through me after hours of icy cold—gods, it hurt—felt like being turned inside out. But underneath the pain, something new was being created.
The shoots between my toes lengthened into vines, wrapped around my feet and ankles, snaked up my legs. They grew faster now, stronger, vines with flowers that bloomed a dark and vivid green. This was not the witch, nor the demon. Something between. Something more.
"This is us. Together.”
The demon's presence shifted, cautious but curious.
I opened myself completely—not just to the earth or her, but to both at once. The soil exploded with power. Thick vines erupted from the ground, wrapping my body in flower and leaf and stem. The air smelled of soil and sulfur, of growth and rot, of life and death.
