Page 93 of Innocent Until Proven Witch

35

REINA

The storm is alive. I feel it the moment I shut my eyes — not in the rain or the wind or the crashing of waves against the harbor walls, but in something beneath all of it, something feeding those things the way a root system feeds a tree. Gran Cora once hinted that the oldest stormwitches can become one with the sea during extreme times.

The sensation spreads through the bond connecting every current around Moonhaven, threads of power and streams of pressure flowing in patterns that have no business existing inside a natural storm. All of it leads somewhere. The realization settles heavily inside my chest, arriving not as a surprise but as the quiet, inevitable confirmation of something I have been circling for weeks.

The relic. At last, I can feel it.

The floodwaters continue rushing through town behind me, and the distant sounds of rescue efforts and shouting carry on the wind, but my attention has already moved elsewhere. I step away from the harbor, away from the crowds and the panic, following the thread that the storm keeps pulling taut against my awareness, demanding to be pursued. The sensation strengthens immediately, a chill crawling down my spine as the direction resolves into something unmistakable. The eastern shoreline. The old cliffs. The hidden tunnels. Of course — because everything connects there, every thread I have been following for months, the relic and the magical residue and the disappearances and the attacks and the storm itself. The answer has been beneath our feet all along.

I begin walking. Then running. Rain lashes against my face and the wind fights every step as though the storm recognizes where I am going and has decided to object, which only sharpens my resolve considerably.

"Reina!" The voice cuts through the rain behind me, and I stop not because I want to but because I know it immediately. I turn. Finn is already running toward me, water splashing beneath his boots and rain streaming down his face, and his expression alone tells me he already knows something has changed.

He reaches me in moments and grabs my arm with a grip that is firm without being rough. "What are you doing?" His gaze moves past me toward the cliffs, then snaps back to my face with an immediacy that answers his own question before I can.

"I found it," I answer. There are no good words for this and simple ones are better than elaborate ones that still fall short.

Finn's expression shifts instantly. "The relic?" I nod, and for a moment neither of us speaks, the storm filling the silence between us while the sea roars below and lightning flashes overhead. His eyes move toward the cliffs again, then return to me with the kind of look that means he is already doing the math and already doesn't like the sum.

"You know where it is." Not a question. I nod again. The bond hums softly, his emotions brushing against mine in the way I have grown accustomed to — relief, determination, and beneath both of those, something that catches my attention because Finn does not frighten easily.

"What aren't you telling me?" he asks, and the accuracy of it lands too quickly for me to deflect.

I look toward the cliffs instead of at him, which is answer enough on its own. Finn has become exceptionally good at reading my silences, a development I find equal parts comforting and inconvenient. "It's connected," I say finally, because he will not let it go and I have run out of angles from which to approach the truth gently. "The storm, the relic, the energy feeding it — the connection is direct. Destroying it will break the storm."

The relief that crosses his face is brief and beautiful and gone within a heartbeat, because he sees my expression and understands immediately that I have not finished. His voice drops. "What happens to you?"

I don't answer. The silence does it for me.

Finn stares at me as rain pours around us. When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet and absolute. "No."

"You don't even know what I was going to say," I reply, though the bitterness in it is directed more at the situation than at him.

"I know enough," he says, and the frustrating thing is that he does. I fold my arms, which is a defensive gesture and a pointless one, and Finn steps closer with the patient, immovable quality like he has decided this conversation will not end until he has every piece of it.

"The relic has been drawing power through magical channels," I begin, watching his expression harden as the shape of it becomes clear. "It's been doing it for years. It isn't separate from the damage — it became part of it. Part of every storm I've been fighting, every ward I've repaired, every magical thread connected to this coastline." I watch the realization move through him, slow at first and then all at once, and my stomach twists because there is nothing I can do to soften what his face looks like when he understands.

"Tell me you're wrong," he says, and the rawness of it is almost worse than anger would be.

I can't. The silence answers for him.

Finn turns away, runs a hand through his wet hair, and laughs — a sharp, humorless sound that the wind nearly swallows. When he turns back, the anger in his expression has the particular quality of fury that comes from love rather than pride, which makes it considerably harder to meet. "It isn't happening," he groans, his voice rising against the storm.

"People are dying," I reply.

"I know."

"We have to stop it."

"I know!" The word tears out of him, raw and frustrated and honest which hits harder than volume ever could. He stares at me, the storm raging around us and the sea roaring below, and somehow through all of it his attention stays entirely on my face. I hate that. I also love it, which is a realization that arrives at precisely the wrong moment and does precisely the wrong thing to my composure.

Finn takes a slow breath, then another, visibly working to reclaim his steadiness. His voice comes out rough at the edges when he manages it. "There has to be another way." The hope in the statement is devastating because I recognize it — I had the same hope, spent considerable time trying to make it true, and arrived at the same answer every time.

"There isn't," I say quietly, and the words settle between us like something physical, like weight added to the air.

Neither of us speaks for a while. The storm screams and the relic pulses at the edges of my awareness, growing stronger and more unstable with every passing minute, and time is contracting around us with a speed I cannot afford to ignore. Finn looks toward the cliffs, then back at me, and when he does, the fight leaves his shoulders — not because he has accepted anything, but because he has understood something, and the difference between those two things matters enormously.