She winks. “I believe in you. Nothing’ll go wrong.”
At leastoneof us believes in me. But instead of voicing my worry, I push a smile onto my face. “Okay. Ready?”
“I’m ready.”
I open the book to the first page and let my magic loose. It spills from me and tumbles onto the floor, springing up around my mother in a sparkling cocoon. The next thing I know, she’s sucked into Winnie the Pooh.
“Oh!” I peer into the book, but she’s not drawn onto the illustrations yet. I count out a few seconds and let my gaze skim the words. They slowly wobble and wave, some of themdissolving into the paper until Clara’s name surfaces like a buoy popping up from the ocean.
“She’s in,” I screech to the other books, which shiver and stammer in happiness.
At least I hope that’s happiness. Even if it’s not, it doesn’t matter, because I’m happy. This has made my day. My week. My year!
If only Feylin was here to see it.
If only I could share this with the one person who made it possible.
My heart squeezes so hard it feels like it’s going to erupt out of my chest. I gulp down the ache. Right now I’ve got to focus.
“Okay, let’s pull her out.”
Magic unspools from me again, slithering up the lectern and spilling over the book. A second later my mother springs out and lands on her feet.
She tosses her hands into the air. “You did it!”
“I did it!”
We hug, and she’s clearly elated, so I smile faintly, pathetically trying to look happy. With my fake relationship to Feylin over, it feels like I’m missing half of myself, that joy won’t ever fill me again. Love was here, with me, in my heart, but it was sucked away, and I’ll never get it back.
Never.
40
FEYLIN
“Where’s Addison?” Ryals asks.
My heart squeezes so hard it feels like a hand’s crushing it—slowly, painfully, deliberately, making sure that every last drop of blood leaks out before it’s turned into a stump of pulp.
It’s morning. What time, I don’t know. I haven’t even dressed. I’ve been lying in bed staring at the ceiling for what feels like hours, thinking about my last moments with her.
She’s the last person I want to think about, but those final minutes are burned into my brain, branded like a memory that can’t be scrubbed away even if they’re doused with acid.
After we both climaxed, she immediately fell asleep. I stared at her for several painful moments as the joining dissolved. It took all my willpower not to shake her awake and demand to know why she’d done what she had.
But instead I sat back and drank in her beauty one last time before I magicked her and her clothes back to her own house.
Ryals knocks loudly on the doorframe, reminding me of his presence. It’s impossible not to notice his down-turnedlips and brow scrunched in both confusion and anger—two emotions I’m intimately familiar with, thanks to last night.
“She’s gone,” I tell him.
“That’s what Ophelia said, but I didn’t believe her.”
“Well it’s true. She’s gone, and she’s not coming back.”
She’s never coming back. I never want to see her face again. How could I have been so stupid to think that a witch was worth giving my heart to?
Worse, how could I have been fooled to think that it was real? She deliberately humiliated and disrespected me—in front of my subjects—when she gave methat book.I was taken in by love, convinced it was real.
