She chuckled. “Tempting. So tempting.”
Luce stroked another mushroom in the corner of the cave, in a moist crevice where water dripped down.
I leaned my head back. “You ever wonder what else you missed because you weren’t looking?”
I thought back to the scars on my brother’s arms. The need for belonging so strong that it drove him right into the arms of a cult. And my own obsessive need to learn more, to master more Magic, which nearly drove me to the same point. The signs that had been there; I just hadn’t seen them. My mother’s warm, cracked hands wrapping around me, landing a gentle kiss on my forehead. Her hair, now gray, tickling my cheek. The love that was there, even if she didn’t quite know how to show it. I thought of Vern, leaving cups of tea out for me, pulling a blanket over me after I’d fallen asleep in the library. Dr. Perez, telling me there was always a spot in his department for me, even after all these years. He’d been in my corner this whole time, and I hadn’t seen it. Even Luce, the girl who was so much more than some petty rival, who was brilliant and full of wonder and a force all her own. I just wished I’d noticed it all sooner.
Luce smiled. “God, all the time.”
She looked down at the mushroom and cocked her head. “Hold on a second … there are more here.” She stood up, followed some invisible line of fungi weaving around the stones of the cave. “Oh my God,” she breathed, “you see these little red streaks in the gills? These are the fruiting bodies of the fungus I’ve been looking for! This place—”
Her footsteps hurried as she continued tracing the line of mushrooms through the cave; then she was moving too quickly toward the bars.
“Wait Luce, you’ll hit them—!”
She turned back abruptly, flashing me a feral smile. She wiped blood off her lips with the back of her hand.
“If I don’t make it back, give Basile a kick to the balls for me.”
Her laughter traveled out of the cave, and her footsteps receded. I couldn’t see her anymore.
“Luce?” I called after her. “Luce!”
30 Minutes Until Sunset
I sat there for a long time, peering at the bars in front of the cave, trying to find a gap underneath or between them that Luce had slipped out of. But every time I got closer for a better look, I got burned. I stood back, frowning.
After a long time, footsteps sounded in the gloom. I perked up. “Luce? Is that you?”
No answer.
“Luce? Who’s out there?”
Wind whistled through the cave, rushing all around me. Then I felt the water trickling over my feet. And I realized it wasn’t footsteps, but the familiarthump thump thumpof horses. I looked up, and I wasn’t in the cave at all, but on a moonlit beach, my feet in the water. Sparkling stars shone overhead beside a waxing crescent moon.
“Cella?” At first, I could only feel his aura, but then I concentrated on his voice. “Max? Max!”
And then he was there. He closed his eyes and held me, his lips to my forehead. “Max? How are you here? How do we get out of here?”
“We’re in the Magic,” he breathed. “It has control of you.”
“Can you get me out?” I asked, but he wouldn’t look down. He held me even tighter. And it hit me—in all my time of doing Magic, I’d never brought anything out again. He didn’t know how. Neither of us did.
I looked up at him, my voice going quiet. “How long can you stay?”
He kissed my head, and I could feel the tears on his eyelashes brush against my skin. “For as long as I can hold it. You know I’d go into Hell itself to save you, don’t you? I’d give it all up for you, Magic, every single bit of it.”
You ever wonder what else you missed because you weren’t looking?
It was Max, always Max. How we lost each other. How we found each other. Max willing to get lost in the Magic forever to save me. Max throwing away his life to bring me back to mine. Max helping me in a hundred ways, always putting me above himself. That was love. Pure, unrelenting love. I wondered if that was what it meant to be a part of someone, to never truly be apart from them, no matter how far away you went.
“I love you,” I said. “I’ve always loved you. I’m sorry it took me so long to say it.”
He tilted my chin up and kissed me, and for one brutally blissful moment, it didn’t matter where I was.
“Is this our goodbye, then?” I asked. “I guess I finally got what I wanted. Only to find out it’s not what I wanted in the first place.”
“You’ll always be a part of me, Cella. No matter where you go, how far, what … plane, what world. I will find you in all of them and bring you back to me.”
