After we finish the bottle, Sadie comes to sit next to me, leaning against my side and holding my hand. I can feel herpassion for me, and it’s more than wishful thinking—I can sense the changes in her body that tell me she’s getting aroused.
More than ever, I want to ask her what she intends, if she’ll stay with me, but I don’t want to break the magic between us. Thoughts of my pack and my duty to them threaten me, and I push them away, feeling ashamed of myself.
My whole life has been duty. Why can’t I have something that’s just mine?
“Rhys?” Sadie says very quietly.
“Yes?”
“Would you come with me, please? I want to show you something.”
“Oh?”
“Just a short walk into the woods.”
“Okay. Did you still want to go to dinner?”
“Maybe. I just really have to show you something.”
There’s an urgency in her voice that I can’t ignore, and my instincts are triggered.
Maybe I can finally ask her about her feelings for me. What else could this possibly be?
“Okay,” I reply, and we pack up the picnic gear together. I put it back in the car, and Sadie leads me into the woods across from the park.
There is no path, and the plants grow wild, long stalks of grass reaching up to low-hanging branches. I’m forced to walk behind her until we come to a small, circular clearing where a small leather trunk sits against a tree. My instincts go crazy as I feel an intense magnetism in the area.
I’ve never felt magic… but what else can this be?
“I found a ritual in the old books,” Sadie says, kneeling down to open the trunk. “And I want to try it.”
“What?” I almost yell. “You want to do magic?”
“It’s not really magic,” she says. “I’m not a witch… am I?”
Something about her words doesn’t sound right to me, and her dark eyes seem to grow wider and deeper, like a void coming to swallow me. A sudden cool breeze blows through the trees, and the shadows lengthen sharply.
It’s sunset. She timed this.
“Please, Rhys,” she says, an urgent note coming into her voice. “This is to trigger a prophecy—to show us our destiny.”
“But it’s magic,” I repeat, watching her pull a stone bowl, some sprigs of dried herbs, and a vial of oil out of the trunk and place them on the ground.
“I promise, it’s safe,” she says. “But… I need to do this.”
I look down at her, feeling the conflict inside me reach cataclysmic levels. As much as I want to run from this place, I am also bound to Sadie.
I trust her. I don’t know why, but I do. We need to do this.
“Okay,” I say, kneeling across from her. “What do we do?”
“Just watch,” she says. “The important thing is that you’re here with me.”
Sadie puts some oil into the bowl, then crushes some dried herbs into it. She whispers a few words I don’t hear, then strikes a match and lights the oil on fire.
There is a sudden bright blue flash as the oil ignites and explodes. In the moment that follows, my senses stunned, I see words in my mind and hear them ringing in my ears.
“Darkness comes. It binds you both, but light lives beyond it and shows you the way.”
