Now she wanted me to believe that she was actually sorry?
Burn her…
“Fiona?” I said, and she nodded, a faint hope flickering in her eyes.
“Your blood is the reason my best friend is dead. So as far as I’m concerned, you can take your apology to hell.” Magic flamed to life in my hand, encasing the stake in a blue glow. In a blur so fast I barely saw it happen, I slammed it straight through Fiona’s thigh, reveling in the sound of her agony.
Her leg trembled, then stopped, the poison from the hawthorn wood quickly working into her bloodstream.
I had no idea what effect, if any, my magic would have on her. Butdamn, that had felt good. Better than good. Fucking amazing.
“You have no idea what it’s like!” she shouted, her body twisting as she began to lose control of her muscles. “It’s so easy for you, isn’t it? To have friends. To have people who care about you no matter what.”
“It’snevereasy as long as people like you are out there, destroying lives for no other reason than your own life didn’t turn out how you wanted it.”
“It’s not fair,” she said, her voice growing faint.
“Nope. But you got into bed with the devil anyway.”
“Yeah? And how long wereyouin his bed before you led him straight to your mother’s house?”
Her words should’ve cut me deep, but they didn’t. They couldn’t. Those particular grooves in my heart were well-worn, sliced open and scarred over so many times by my own incessant guilt that I could no longer feel them.
“I was a dumb kidwho didn’t know any better,” I said. “I was in love with him.”
She leveled me with a final glare, her movements slowing as the paralysis spread up her torso and along her arms. Through gritted teeth, she choked out three final words, and they lodged deep in my heart, far beneath the magic and the scars and every last regret, where a tiny seed of empathy bloomed in the darkness.
“So. Was. I.”
Twenty-Five
GRAY
When I was a little kid, I loved to spin.
Even during the harshest upstate New York winters, I’d stuff myself into my snowsuit and tromp out onto the frozen Arctic tundra of our yard, looking for a prime spot. Once I found it, I’d extend my arms out, tip my head back, and twirl, round and round and round so fast not even the snowflakes could catch me. When I couldn’t take another second of it, I’d drop onto my back, stare up at the sky, and hold on for the ride.
It was the only time I felt completely out of control, no sense of my body or my mind or whether some great mystical hand would reach down from the clouds and pluck me right off the earth.
Back then, the feeling was addicting.
I was no longer spinning, but lying in the grass behind the house and staring up at the sky now, I felt the same loss of control, as if I’d been twirling around for days and suddenly decided to hand over the reins of my life to some great unknown force whose intentions were still a mystery.
But unlike the games of my happy childhood, this one wasn’t fun. It wasn’t a rush. My entire life seemed to be unraveling in the wind, and no matter how hard I tried to hold those threads together, they kept on slipping through my fingers.
“In the mood for some company?”
I’d come out here to be alone, but the sound of Emilio’s gentle voice was like a hug I didn’t even realize I’d needed, and I smiled.
“That depends,” I said, peering up into his warm brown eyes. “Did you bring brownies?”
“You know,querida, they say it’s the thought that counts. And I’m definitelythinkingabout brownies. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough.” I sat up and patted the grass.
Settling in next to me, he leaned back on his hands and said, “Can I ask what you’re thinking?”
“I’m thinking that sometimes the world feels too big.” I blew out a breath, forcing some of the tension out with it. “Or maybe I’m just too small.”
