Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
The absolute terror of believing I’d killed her.
“It’s not pointless,” Hilda insists. “Our girl loves you, and we need to make sure you’re okay. That you’re healing from everything that happened.”
“Your girl doesn’t love me, not like that. Not like she once did.”
“Oh, pishposh.” Astrid flaps her hand around her head. “That’s ridiculous. The girl is crazy about you. She’s just stubborn.”
You don’t know what happened.
“We will always love each other, but that doesn’t mean we can be together. And regarding everything at Beltane, well…I’m dealing with it.”
“How?” Hilda demands. “How are you dealing with it, exactly?”
I’m avoiding it. I don’t think about it, and I move on. Because we’re not even close to being out of the woods yet, and I have too damn much to do.
“In my own way.”
“Stubborn man,” Astrid mutters and blows out a frustrated breath.
“I’m not really someone who wants to sit down and chat about my feelings. Even with you two.”
A door slams somewhere in the house.
“Okay, you three.”
“Well, you should.” Hilda’s smile is sweet and motherly. It’s no wonder Breena is so sweet; she’s just like her mother. “Because it usually helps a person to move on and heal from the thing that hurt them.”
“Yeah, well, the thing that hurt me is still out there and is going to keep trying to hurt the people I care about. And on top of that, we have a curse to lift, and I just don’t have time to wallow in self-pity.”
“What are you talking about?” Astrid’s voice is hard and all business now. “We all defeated that monster.”
“We won a battle,” I reply, dragging my hand down my face. “But it’s not gone.”
“When were you going to tell us?” Hilda asks.
“I’m calling a coven meeting for tomorrow night. Not only is it not dead, but it’s also back. And I want everyone to be on high alert.”
I glance over at Agatha. She has the saddest look on her face.
“What do you know?” I ask her.
She only shakes her head and leaves the room.
“About before—” Hilda begins, but I shake my head, stopping her from completing whatever she was about to say.
“There’s no need to discuss it. Thank you for worrying about me, and for loving me. I love you both, too. But I’m fine. And this soup was amazing.”
I wipe my mouth and stand from the table. I always feel so big in their small kitchen, but also very much at home.
Both women kiss me on the cheek before sending me on my way.
Rather than shifting into anything, I decide to walk in my human body for a while. It feels much different than the raven, wolf, or even the cat. And I like it.
I can smell the change of seasons in the air as I walk down the cracked and uneven sidewalk in Salem. The trees are just beginning to change, and there’s a crispness to the air that wasn’t there just a few days ago.
It makes me worry.
Time is passing so fast, and we’re not ready for the battle I know is coming.
For several of the upcoming battles, now that I think about it.
The aunts—as Lorelei and her cousins refer to them—want me to talk about what happened during Beltane, but to tell them about it, to really delve into what happened and share that with them, would give them nightmares for the rest of their lives.
It’s bad enough that I’ll have to deal with it for the rest of mine. I don’t intend to share that burden with anyone I care about.
Some days, I’m able to convince myself it was just a nightmare. That sitting in that abandoned house for days, caught in a web of light, pain, fear, and despair, didn’t happen at all.
That I didn’t stand over the love of my life, tie her down, and torture her. Murder her.
I would have lost her forever if not for the ward on the back of her neck.
But it did happen. Every agonizing moment of it happened, and at times, like now, each second of it replays in my head as if it can press the button on a machine and roll the film through my mind’s eye.
Because reliving it, each and every time, is another moment of torture.
Wanting to see for myself that Lorelei is healthy and whole, I walk toward her cottage. As I stride down her driveway, I see her standing at the edge of the shoreline, staring out at the bay.
That’s not unusual for her. She is a sea witch, after all.
But the way her hair blows back from her face when there is no wind to speak of makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I pick up my pace, eager to get to her.
“Lora.”
I say her name a couple of times, but she doesn’t acknowledge me.