“I’m not asking.” My voice rasps, my words scrape my throat like I’ve been screaming, though I’ve barely spoken above a whisper in days. My mother lifts her head from where she’s stirring something herbal and too strong-smelling in a clay pot over the fire, her wild silver curls catching the light. Her eyes find mine, and there’s understanding there. Recognition. Her earthy presence settles over me like a blanket, a quiet anchor in the storm of Sam’s panic.
“You must stay within the warded lines,” she says calmly, but there’s something steely beneath her tone, the voice of someone who once commanded respect in the Blue Mountain Coven before love made her an exile.
“I will,” I say, already moving to the door. The wooden handle is smooth under my palm, worn by countless hands over countless years.
Sam rushes to follow, his footsteps heavy behind me. “You shouldn’t go alone. You don’t have your magic?—”
“I have my legs,” I snap, whirling to face him. “And my spine. And my mind. That’ll do.” My words come out sharper than intended, but I’m tired of being handled like something broken. I’m tired of the way he looks at me like I’m already gone.
His jaw tightens, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. A storm brews behind his eyes, frustration, love and terror all warring for dominance. “It’s not like the woods at HellNight. Kasamere is sentient. What if it moves? What if you can’t find your way back?”
I smile, not out of spite, but something close to it. Something wild and reckless that tastes like freedom on my tongue. “Maybe I won’t come back. Maybe I need to get lost. I don’t think this place will lead me astray. I can feel it calling to me.”
The truth of those words settles in my chest like a weight. This forest, this impossible realm recognizes something in me. Something that goes deeper than the magic I lost. I don’t know how I know this for sure. I have no sight to see, but it feels right.
My mother doesn’t stop me. Just murmurs, “Be careful, my love,” as she lifts her hand, fingers dancing in patterns I remember from childhood. A flicker of energy passes through the open door, invisible but tangible, like walking through warm honey. A veil of protection washes over me, the same spell she used when I was small and would venture into the woods around our hidden home in the Blue Mountains. I recognize the feeling instantly, warmth spreads down my limbs in a comfortable embrace, wrapping around me like armor made of love and earth magic.
I step barefoot into the grass, knowing without a doubt I will be fine.
The moment my skin touches the earth, a soft sigh stirs the trees. It’s like the forest has been waiting for me to take this first step. The sound ripples through the undergrowth, a whisper that might be wind or might be welcome.
Warmth rises from the mossy floor, curling around my ankles in tendrils of ancient magic, drawing me forward with the gentleness of a lover’s touch. I walk slowly at first, testing my strength, every blade of grass cool and soft underfoot, every bloom seeming to turn its face toward me as I pass. Dew-kissed petals blink open in impossible colors, violet like bruised sky, ember like dying stars, glassy white like captured moonbeams. The air itself shimmers with possibility.
This place doesn’t just feel alive, it feels aware. Conscious in a way that makes my skin tingle and my breath catch. For the first time in weeks, so do I. The fog that’s been clouding my thoughts since I woke up in this realm begins to lift, replaced by a clarity so sharp it almost hurts.
The forest stretches before me in all directions, a kaleidoscope of towering trees whose bark shifts color in the dappled light, and glittering streams that seem to sing as they flow. A brook winds beside the path, but the water flows upstream, defying every law of nature I’ve ever known, sparkling with iridescent flecks like crushed stars scattered across liquid glass. The sight should be disturbing, impossible, but instead it fills me with wonder.
Rainbow-scaled fish leap in and out of the current, their movements too graceful, too purposeful to be mere animals. I inch closer, peering down into the water and I hear them laughing. No, not laughing, they’re singing. Harmonizing in voices like wind chimes and silver bells, creating a melody that seems to resonate in my bones.
The air hums with magic, and it hums for me, responding to my presence the way flowers turn toward sunlight for their essence of survival. It recognizes me in a way that the Blue Mountain magic never did, welcomes me like coming home to a place I’ve never been.
It’s beautiful in a way the Blue Mountains never were. Not rigid or structured or bound by ancient laws and bitter tradition. Not cold or gray or carved from duty and disappointment. This place is lush and dreamlike, wild and untamed in all the ways I’ve always wanted to be. It welcomes me the way a body welcomes breath, the way earth welcomes rain after drought.
The path shifts beneath my feet without warning, gently steering me toward a clearing ringed in flowers the size of my open palm. Their petals are translucent, catching light and throwing it back in rainbow fragments that dance across the grass. The grass here is different too, warm and golden, sun-drenched despite the canopy overhead, soft as silk beneath my tired feet.
I sit in the center of it all, close my eyes and tilt my face to the light that filters through impossible leaves. For a moment I breathe. Just exist without having to be anything for anyone.
Peace is a luxury I can’t afford for long.
Micah’s pain creeps in, sharp and sudden, sliding down the Tether between us like a blade. The connection that binds us still hums faintly, a thread strung through my chest that distance can’t sever. Grief bleeds down the line in waves, raw and fresh and overwhelming. For her fallen mate, Professor Bodin. I have no doubt that he protected her from the death I saw in my visions, threw himself between her and the Angel fire meant for her. The sacrifice tears at me even secondhand. Now, she is drowning in loss, and I feel every emotion as if it were my own. Her loss is my own. I grieve as well for what I lost in the Blue Mountains, for my magic, for my identity, for the illusion that I ever had amongst my coven. For what was taken from me by people who were supposed to protect me.
I want to go to her. Cross back into the Mortal Realm and hold her while she breaks apart, be the anchor she was for me. The urge is so strong it makes my chest ache.
I also want, just once, to be selfish. To stay here in this place that doesn’t demand I be anything other than what I am. To find out who I really am beneath all the labels that have been forced on me, weak, dud, ward, weapon. What my magic truly is when it’s not being shaped by other people’s expectations. What it means to be part fae, to carry the blood of two worlds in my veins. I’m fae and had no clue. There are too many questions burning in my throat, too many truths my mother has yet to share. Some days I’m not sure I’m ready to hear them. Other days, like today, I think I’ll die if I don’t.
Sitting here in this forest, surrounded by magic that sings in harmony with my heartbeat, a thought strikes me with crystalline clarity. Maybe I was meant to lose it all. I’ve been changing from the moment I met Micah, my magic, my confidence, my understanding of what I could be. Every trial, every betrayal, every loss has stripped away another layer of who I thought I was. Perhaps I needed to lose everything to become something else. Something more. Something reborn from ashes.
It feels like I’m unraveling and remaking all at once, like a tapestry being pulled apart and rewoven with different threads. Like I’m not just healing from what was done to me, I’m changing on a fundamental level. I don’t understand it or how I will get to where I need to be, but this place feels like it holds the key. Like it’s been waiting for me to find it.
The glade settles around me like a held breath as I open my eyes, finding comfort in the scattered fragments of my thoughts finally beginning to coalesce into something resembling purpose.
Then—snap.
The sound cracks through the peaceful air like a whip, and I turn toward it, heart stuttering against my ribs.
A figure leans against a tree just beyond the ring of impossible flowers, and my breath catches in my throat. He’stall, towering, really. The kind of height that seems designed to intimidate. Dressed in sleek, dark leather that clings to a body built like a weapon, all sharp angles and controlled power. His shoulders are broad enough to block out the sun, arms corded with muscles that speak of years spent training with those twin blades strapped across his back. His skin is warm bronze, smooth and sun-kissed, unmarked except for the intricate tattoos that wind over his visible chest and shoulders in patterns that seem to shift in the dappled light.
Light catches on a series of small silver piercings along his brow and lip, and when he pushes off from the tree and steps forward, the most devastating pair of eyes I’ve ever seen meet mine.
