“Tonight, there was nothing.” He stands, lifting Callie against his chest. “Not a crackle. Not a spark.Nothing.”
I run my fingers along my rings, trying not to look at Callie as his words sink in. “You think the fruit did this to my magic?”
“Callie couldn’t light a single flame.” He shifts her weight in his arms, and her head lolls against his shoulder. “I made her try before she passed out, and nothing happened.”
“What about you? Can you still use yours?”
“Yes.”
“How?” I frown at him.
“I didn’t eat the fruit. I was too focused on you.”
The answer wraps around me like the golden warmth humming through my veins. Because Logan puts me first, always, even when the rest of the world is falling apart.
But if the fruit’s why my magic’s gone, why Callie looks like a corpse, and why everything feels soft and wrong…
Lotus.
The word surfaces from ninth grade English. Men eating flowers and forgetting their homes, their families, and everything else that mattered.
“We’re in the Land of the Lotus Eaters,” I say, even though it sounds insane. “FromThe Odyssey.”
Logan nods once and starts walking.
I follow, because what else am I going to do?
But my eyes keep drifting to Callie, her blonde hair swinging with each of his steps, the pale curve of her neck, and how easy it would be to stop caring again if I had a few bites of that golden fruit.
Stop it. Don’t touch that fruit. This isn’t about Callie. This is the island playing mind tricks on you.
But ever since we started this damn quest it feels like it’s about her—this perfect beautiful girl who knows Logan in ways I never will, who’s shared years with him when I’ve only had weeks, who wears his promise ring like a trophy.
I force myself to not look at her during the rest of the walk back to the ship, breathing as shallowly as possible to block out the fruit’s sweet smell. I dig my nails into my palms, twist the metal of my bracelet into my skin, anything to ground myself so I remember that I should absolutelynotbe reaching for lotus fruit as if it’s a pill that will wash away all my problems.
Eventually the trees thin out, the cove appears, and our ship’s still there, rocking gently in the calm water where the island pulled us in.
Logan wades into the sea without slowing down.
I splash in after him, and the cold hits me like a slap. It’s like someone reached into my skull and ripped out the golden fog, and my magic slams back into my body so hard I stumble, electricity sparking at my fingertips and racing up my arms. The glass sphere in my chest is intact again, humming with power that was muted and sleeping seconds ago, and the sheer relief of feeling it makes my eyes sting.
“The water breaks the effect,” I say, staring at the static crackling between my fingers as I follow Logan back up onto the ship.
He props Callie against the back mast, already checking the sails on the surviving mast. “Stay on the boat,” he tells me. “Don’t set foot on that island again.”
“Evie.” Her name hits me like a bucket of ice water. “Kieran. They’re still?—”
“I know.”
“We have to get them.”
“You can’t.” He turns to face me, his eyes hard. “The lotus might hit you faster the second time, and you’re more susceptible to being pulled in by it now that you know what it feels like. Even the smell could be enough.”
I open my mouth to argue, then close it, because he’s right. I was seconds away from giving in and eating the fruit for the entire walk back to the ship. And now that I can finally think straight, I don’t want to sink back into the golden haze that wrapped around my mind and didn’t want to let me go. I wasn’tmeback there,and that scares me more than anything on this journey ever could.
“Fine.” The word scrapes in my throat. “But if you tell Evie we have to go, she’ll fight you. Kieran, too, given how… loyal he is to her.”
Logan watches me with those storm-gray eyes and waits for me to continue.
