“Aaron—“
“Listen to me.” I turn and look him dead in the eye. “I know it’s hell, living split between two worlds. I do. But what you’ve got is a gift, Seth. You can’t see it yet.”
“I just want to be a wolf.”
I rub a hand down my face and look up, like Mother Fate might lean down and take this off me. She doesn’t.
“When you go,” he says, quieter now, “I’m on my own out here. You know that? Half of Wintermoon only puts up with me for your sake. Once you’re gone for good, I’m right back to scratching for a place to stand.”
“What are you talking about?” I frown at him. “People love you, Seth.”
“You’ve been so deep in your own world you never once looked up and saw how much your people needed you.” The words come apart on Seth. “And you’re leaving me too.”
“I am not leaving you.” It comes out sharp. “This is the one right thing I’ve got left in me, Seth. Don’t stand there and make it ugly.”
“Please.” His eyes fill, and he doesn’t fight it. “Please, Aaron. I’ll never bring it up again. Not once. I swear it.”
I hold the line through the argument and the guilt. The barepleaseis what gets me—my little brother begging for the one thing I keep telling him not to want.
There’s no help coming for either of us. So I turn back to him.
“Some lessons a man has to learn for himself,” I tell him. “Looks like this is one of yours.”
I step in close. He flinches and gives ground.
“You remember the spell I cast that stopped time?”
“Yeah.” He swallows. “What about it?”
“That power came from somewhere. My magic pulls from the witches and warlocks around me, learns from them, grows.” He just frowns at me. “That spell came out ofyou,Seth. The power to bend time and space is sitting right there in your blood. You’ve never once touched it. You won’t even pick your own magic up.”
“You’re just saying that.” He shakes his head, fast. “You’re trying to talk me out of it. I don’t want it, Aaron.”
“Okay, brother.” I take hold of his arm. “Okay. But you’re going to stand here and listen to my lecture while I do it. Understand?”
He nods. My magic reaches into him. He smiles, feeling his own gift come loose and pour into me, like I’m lifting a weight off his back he’s carried his whole life.
“This is only for a time,” I tell him. “I’m not keeping it. I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t. Mother Fate put this in you for something. One day you’ll reach for it again, and it’ll come home to you.”
“I just want to be a wolf,” he says. The fight’s gone out of him.
A portal tears open beside us in a spray of blue and gold sparks, and my mother comes through it at a dead run with Jacob a step behind her.
“What the fuck are you doing—stop!” She lunges. Jacob’s arm hooks across her middle and hauls her back. She fights him, twisting, clawing at his hold. “Getoffme, do you understand what he’s doing? Aaron.Aaron, stop. Stop it!”
Seth’s eyes go past me to her, and he sags. “I’m sorry, Ma.”
The magic runs steady between us, and Seth’s knees buckle. I go down with him without breaking contact. I take every drop, drawing his power out in a long bright thread, until all that’s left in him is the wolf he always wanted to be.
“Now you’ve got Ma furious with me,” Seth manages, grinning. “Hope you’re happy.” He throws his head back and yells.
My mother rips free of Jacob. Her hands come up, the first syllables of a stopping spell already on her lips. Jacob catches her arm again and turns her to face him.
“You put a spell on either one of them,” he says, quiet, “and you put it on me. They are both my sons, Angie. Both of them.”
“Goddamn you, Jacob.” She shoves at him with both hands. He doesn’t budge, and her voice gives out. “Goddamn you.”
The last of it leaves Seth and settles into me, warm and strange, humming with a power I have no right to. I let go of his arm. He pitches forward and barely catches himself on his hands.
