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AMBROSE
Amonth ago, my entire world changed for the worse. It will never be the same again and there’s nothing I can do to change it back. My tears fall as I kneel by my parents’ grave, and I can barely breathe.
Aspen & Ellie Stone
As I stare at the letters carved into the marble stones, a suffocating truth finally hits me. Those aremy parents’names. They’re dead and gone—their bodies given back to the earth as our bloodline’s elemental magic demands. My family—the only people who ever understood and didn’t judge me—are in the ether.
It’s just me now.
My family held an ancient, powerful magic. Everyone but me… The other members of the coven avoid me like the plague, because something is wrong with me. My magic doesn’t work like my parents’ and all the Stone witches before us. I’m defective.
My brain doesn’t work right, either.
But then again, it never really has. I’ve always been different, and the covenknowsthat. The little magic I do have, I can’t control. Sometimes it’s nonexistent, and other times it’s a tsunami that rages, destroying everything in its path. High Priest Smythe thinks I’m a danger to the coven,a troubled boy.
At twenty years old, I’m not a boy anymore. Without my parents here to guide me, I feel like one, though. A lost boy floating through the world, waiting for someone to tether me back to reality.
Is there even a point of coming back? This world has nothing for me. I don’t want to be here anymore.
Who would miss me if I disappeared?
My eyes blur with tears, and the tentative control I have on my unruly magic cracks. It seeps out of me like sand through a sieve, causing big gray clouds to gather in the sky above us. Fluffy flakes of snow fall, sticking to the dead grass. The same kind of flurries Dad used to make when there wasn’t enough snow to go sledding. We’d spend hours sledding down the steep hill behind our cottage every winter when I was growing up, laughing and feeling the wind in our hair as we sailed downhill.
I may have the same natural magical gifts as Dad, but I’ll never be even half the witch he was. Aspen Stone was larger than life, the kind of man everyone respected. A true pillar of our coven who was willing to help those in need. He was so powerful that he served as an elder, despite still being under one hundred years old. I am no match to him, and I don’t think I ever will be.
I hear a car door shut in the distance but don’t turn around to look. A lot of people are buried here.
The farther I plummet into my sadness spiral, the harder it flurries. A swift drop in temperature makes my bones rattle in my suit. The wind lashes at my face, practically turning my tears into ice on my cheek. A warm hand lands on my shoulder, offering reassurance with a firm squeeze. I peer overmy shoulder to find Caulder Scarborough looking down at me with a smile.
His handsome face is calm, his hard, masculine edges smoothed out with sympathy. His thick chocolate hair is mussed from the wind, and flurries rest on his perfectly trimmed beard. The compassion in his usual stoic toffee eyes almost unravels me.
“Let’s get you out of the cold,” he says as he steers me from their graves toward the parking lot. “I’ll take you home, Ambrose.”
I’m surprised Caulder knows my name. He and I do not run in the same circles. No one wanted to spend time with me, despite how powerful my parents were—they definitely don’t want to now. He’s older than I am, with much more credence in himself, his magic, and his place in this coven. His family’s rare fire magic is renowned, making them formidable opponents and protectors. He’s in line to be a coven elder one day—if not aHigh Priest. He shouldn’t be wasting his time on someone like me.
I can’t help but soak up his attention. His charisma is magnetic. The way he walked with this innate confidence in himself. The way he talked with conviction. The way his face drew me in so I’d hang off his every word. He drew me in when I was a kid, and I’ve been hooked ever since. He was my first crush, my only crush.
Everyone either wants to be him or be with him.
I’m no one compared to him.
It takes me a few moments to formulate a response as we carefully walk through the slippery grass.
“Um, I can walk home, it’s okay…” I murmur as I stare at the ground.
He takes in my appearance. My face is wet with tears, probably swollen from crying and beat red. My pale skin makes the redness stand out double. My hands are shaking from notbeing able to control myself, and I don’t have a jacket or the proper boots to walk.
I'm still wearing my pajamas from yesterday…
“You’re in no shape to walk. It’s snowing. I’ll take you home,” he gently insists. His voice is smooth, commanding. I can’t help but agree.
He takes me to a sleek, expensive black sedan parked in the front of the lot. My family comes from money too, but Mom and Dad weren’t as flashy as the Scarboroughs. I never rode in a car with heated leather seats that felt like butter beneath my palms. I melt into the upholstery as he turns out of the cemetery and drives down the main road that takes me to my house.
We sit in silence, because I’m too scared to talk to him. Every now and then he sneaks a glance at me, but I can't make eye contact with him. I’m so embarrassed he’s seeing me like this. A weak mess of a man who can’t stop crying over his dead parents.
A loser. I’m a mentally unstable crybaby.
