“A lot of people would argue that hot dog carts are superior to taco trucks. Clearly, people are prone to wrongheadedness.”
Liam blinked rapidly, surprised by his own words.
“Spoken like a true Californian,” I teased. “I guess we know where Liam Colebrook was from. Sounds like some part of him is still with you.”
“I’ve never had a taco,” he said.
“So I gathered. We’ll have to make you a bucket list when we get back. Sound good?”
“I think I might like that.” Liam’s eyes brightened with an almost child-like excitement, the humanness of his vessel peeking through his otherworldly form.
But it faded quickly, and he turned to look out over the vast sea of brambles still churning before us. “There are many things in your world, Gray, that man has labeled an abomination. Yet the mere naming of a thing does not make it so.”
“Sticks and stones,” I mumbled.
“That is what you call those things, yes. But a stone is not a stone because of you, or even because of the first human who named it such. A stone is a stone because it simply is, no matter what name it was given, in what language or epoch or realm.”
“It’s… just an old saying,” I explained. “A thing they tell you in school when you’re getting picked on—that you can be hurt with sticks and stones, but not when someone calls you a name.”
He stared at me a long moment, his eerie blue eyes seeing right through me. I wondered what he was thinking about. What he saw when he looked at me like that.
“Was it difficult for you, being a witch?” he finally asked. “Knowing you were different?”
“No, actually. I never thought about it like that. Sure, there were times I wished I could’ve told my friends at school about the real me, but I understood it wasn’t safe. Anyway, I had Calla for that. I never felt alone in it until after she…”
“And now?”
“It’s different now.” I plucked out a handful of grass, absently dropping it onto my legs—something I used to do as a kid. “Before, it felt like something special, full of potential.”
“But not anymore?”
“Not entirely, no. I still feel that potential, that good magic. But there’s something else there, too. Festering like a sickness.” Shame burned my cheeks. I knew these were exactly the kind of negative thoughts Liam had warned me about, but I couldn’t help how I felt. Dropping my voice to a whisper, I said, “It’s dark.”
I held out my palm, picturing the blue-green magic I’d conjured last night, the blend of my innate magic with that of the earth. My skin heated, then glowed, pulsing faintly before igniting in a beautiful flame that hovered just above my hand.
Gingerly I brought my other hand close, and the flame slid from one to the other. I pulled my hands apart, then pushed them together, the magic changing shape, dancing at my touch.
“Dark,” he repeated, and the flame in my hand surged briefly.
Liam held up a hand, then closed his fist, the effect like dimming the lights. The moon vanished first, allowing the stars to momentarily brighten, then they faded as well.
My magic flame flickered out last, and I closed my eyes, catching the faint echo of its glow inside my eyelids.
When the spots faded and I opened my eyes, I was bathed in a blackness so complete, I couldn’t even see my hands in front of my face.
The effect was dizzying, no sense of up or down. It felt as if someone had dropped me into the void.
In that dark, empty moment, words came to me unbidden, a thought that began not in my head but in my heart, taking root as the truth so often did—painfully at first, and then blooming into something so starkly beautiful it could no longer be denied.
“We are, all of us, bound for darkness.”
A thrill shot up my spine as I spoke the words out loud, and I shivered, feeling something deep inside me unfurl like a spring bud.
“Do not fear the dark,” Liam said softly, his strange shadow-voice oddly comforting in the pitch black. “Fear a world in which there is only light whose radiance remains unknown, for one cannot truly exist in the absence of the other.”
He was right, as always. I’d been struggling to accept this part of myself since it first began manifesting in the alley when I’d brought Bean back. Maybe even before that.
The struggle itself was holding me back. Creating another layer of resistance between me and the pure source of my magic.
