It was fine. Fine, fine, fine.
Of course, even ifitwas, I wasn’t.
“Oh, dear goddess,” I muttered again to myself, trying to remember the breathing exercises to calm my heart back down. They weren’t working. “Oh shit.”
I paced back and forth over the slices of floor not covered by my own wardrobe and mismatched rugs. I needed to calm down.
Who was to say that the stupid hexing charm I had made up even worked? I pieced together, like, five different spells and added flair of my own. I’d probably counteracted an herb somewhere in there and made the entire thing null and void.
Right?
Quickly, I dropped back down onto the floor, not giving myself time to think about what I was doing. I scooped up the remnants of candle ash and mess.
I couldn’t have done this. I couldn’t have just done what I thought I just had.
Frenzied, I turned toward the sharp patter of the rain, getting stronger as it pelted the sliding door. I swung the door open with a creak, ignoring the fact that my neighbors above were likely to yell at me about being too loud once again. I left it open as I hastily walked into a jog through the cold, wet grass.
I didn’t know what I planned to do until I made it all the way down the long yard no one could ever build more on, for fear of possible flooding in the early fall due to the river I suddenly stood on the very edge of.
I could throw myself in, end it once and for all.
Whatever happened tonight was going to take yet another thing from my life I’d laid with good intention, ruined now.
I threw the bottle.
I almost expected it to land with a thud. Instead, it shattered. Tiny pieces of the bottle cascaded into the waves and were carried down among the water. There was no going back, no peeling away the wax and undoing the incantation of intention filled with hope and anger and frustration, if not for the person I’d captured inside my own wrath, then for myself.
And then there was only silence under the sound of thunder.
I shook my head before another wave of uncertainty took hold as it swept away broken bits of glass.
I wasn’t a saint, but neither was he. When he had decided to do what he did, he should’ve expected such an outcome. He should’ve been looking for it weeks, months, almost a year ago after he unceremoniously fled out the door like some sort of self-righteous sinner in a world of witchcraft.
Even if this wasn’t a bridge from my own goddess’s cast justice, this could be mine. It didn’t matter if I was much more unsure, swaying on my bare feet as I stared out into the darkness.
For the first time since I’d first felt called by the goddess of magic and the underworld, that darkness looked back.
So be it.
Twisting on my foot, I tried not to run from the darkness. I kept my steps even on my way back to the apartment building. The cracked and discolored bricks, lit by the wavering lamp glow, were covered in a thick green moss.
I was bringing forth strength, I reminded myself with each step.
I was casting onto the board to see who and what was listening.
I was setting rights to wrongs.
And if there was one person in the world who had done me wrong, it was Dominic Rovnik.
1
“Ow.” I gritted my teeth as I pressed the poppy tea towel to my hand.
Celeste immediately wrapped the cloth around my palm when the orange, which was supposed to be the one being cut apart, rolled onto the floor, and everything turned red.
“Hold tight. I really don’t understand how you managed to do that to yourself with a peeler of all things.” The second eldest of the coven, Celeste, still managed to be the most motherly out of any of them. She tsked as she checked to see if the cut was still bleeding.
“What happened?”
