Page 105 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

When she’d cried her eyes dry and her little sobs dissolved into hiccups, I whispered, “Magnolia, I need you to look at me.” She did. “It wasn’t your fault.” She sniffed, lip wobbling again. I shook my head. “It wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could’ve done for her,” I promised. Because she was tiny. Because this itty-bitty little girl had no say in what happened inside that house and no way to go back in after Autumn. And because it was what Aren would’ve said if he were kneeling here instead of me, I breathed, “And you are so loved, sweetheart. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now because you’re sad, and you miss her, but you’re so loved. And it wasn’t your fault.”

She threw herself against me, a sob flying through her lips as I jammed my eyes closed⁠—

And opened them into the white of The Middle.

Blinking, I stared up at the canopy, faint light creeping between its threads from the horizon. Parched, I turned and found only a cloak and rucksack where Portia had been.

Jackknifing upright, I hesitated when I spotted… the little girl. Little me.

What. The. Fuck?

She sat with her back to me, head canted. Choking on drought and dust, I dragged myself onto my knees and scrambled to the rucksack—to the water canteen inside. Only after quenching my thirst did I crawl to her, following her unseeing gaze across the vast expanse of white to… movement. Blinking sleep from my eyes, I scowled. Portia? She was whaling on something.

Disoriented, I breathed, “What’s she doing?”

“Fighting the past,” the specter said, almost silkily. “She has her own demons, Dr. Green.”

“Demons?” I found my feet, stumbling from beneath the canopy and into the last searing wash of sunlight suspended over the horizon, my pulse ratcheting up. We had minutes before it disappeared, and the creatures of shadow confronted us again.

“Don’t we all have them?” A cry from Portia reached my ears just as the specter slid her tiny hand into mine, threading our fingers together. “We are the same, you and I.”

I fought to swallow my apprehension as I struggled to find my footing, to make sense of her soft words. Everything burned—my skin, bones, lips, eyes, and lungs—not just the scorpion stings.

“Portia!” I called, but she didn’t respond. She kept hacking her sword into the earth like a manic lumberjack. “Portia!” I managed one step. Two⁠—

—the world vanished.

Her palm slid against mine. I looked down at little Magnolia just as the world shifted in a blur of color. She was bigger now, maybe by a few years. The image slammed to a halt—Nat’s bedroom, the aubergine comforter and burgundy rug of my childhood.

A cherrywood sleigh bed sat in the center of the room. Rika, Kenna, and Blythe sat atop it, the latter scooting over wordlessly as little Magnolia scampered up beside her.

Nat was crying—or she had been.

Blythe said something that split Nat’s face with a smile, and the rest of us laughed with her.

I remembered this.

The first man she’d let close after becoming Priestess—the man she loved—had left her for another witch, without the Guardian Bond hanging over their heads.

I later realized he’d cheated on her. Nat only learned the truth when the other witch confessed.

“Guard your hearts, sweet girls,” she said through a watery smile, squeezing Rika’s fingers in hers as her free hand traced each of our cheeks. “Share your light freely, but be wary of the man who demands your heart, for rarely is his intent pure.”

Little Magnolia nodded, lifting her chin in defiance at the prospect. “Boys suck,” she decided.

Nat sniffled through her laughter before agreeing, “Some do. Good men are rare.”

“He’s an asshole,” Kenna declared, unbothered. Nat gasped, playfully swatting her thigh in disapproval as the rest of us fell apart in laughter.

The desert rushed back into focus around me where I knelt against bone and grime. I blinked, gasping down a rattling breath as that little hand solidified in mine again. Everything looked violently vivid—the sand shifting in a breeze that seemed to move through all things at once, every piece innately connected.

I was… those stings… were we both hallucinating? My gaze snapped to Portia, who was walloping the ground wholeheartedly, then to the sun kissing the horizon. A phantom fist clenched around my stomach—we’d slept an entire day, and it would be moments before actual demons surrounded us.

“Portia!”

The Hazelharbor library flickered to life, dark and smelling of parchment and peppermint. “Nat,” a reedy voice hissed.

Cautiously, like an interloper in my own memory vault, I tiptoed around the corner and spotted preteen Magnolia standing behind an armchair. Nat sat on its edge, her head in her hands.