Page 95 of Hallowed Bones

Okay, maybe it’s still only a few seconds or minutes, but it feels like much longer as I stand there, in silence, waiting.

Then I hear it.

Breathing.

Not mine or Cameron’s but something else’s. The soft whoosh of a back-and-forth that sounds as if air is being pushed past me one way and then pulled another.

My brow furrows, but I refuse to open my eyes as I listen harder.

And I hear the forest’s response.

It isn’t just the wind in the trees or the hush of leaves brushing against each other like secrets being spoken just out of hearing range—it’s something deeper. Primordial. Alive.

I’m barefoot in the moss, toes sinking into the soft green earth like I belong to it. Like maybe I always have. The air is thick with pine and the sharp tang of magic just under the surface, sweet and electric on my tongue.

The world narrows. My lungs stretch open. There’s birdsong tucked in the canopy above me, water whispering over stone somewhere nearby, the rustle of unseen things scurrying in the underbrush. And beneath all of it—something humming.

A pulsing tempo that’s slow and even. Over and over again, it repeats itself. It’s in my chest. No—beneath my skin. A pull, like thread stitched into bone, finally waking up and tugging toward the surface. I inhale, slow and deep, and the power unfurls.

Not in a blaze. Not in a violent burst. It’s temperate. Gentle. A bloom.

My fingers tingle.

“What do you feel?” Cameron’s question is so softly spoken, and yet it startles me to hear. I’d forgotten that he was there.

I keep my eyes closed as I think of his question. What do I feel?

The tingle of awareness wraps itself around my limbs, moving up my legs to my torso and down my arms. It’s not confining so much as it is caressing. Like there are phantom fingers moving through my hair, fanning the strands out, stroking my shoulders, kneading my back. Soft kisses against my cheeks.

My eyes burn behind my closed lids. I picture a woman in front of me, smiling down at me. Her body a ghostly form, nearly transparent. Her face, though, is crystal clear. The tighter my chest winds, the emotions pouring out as each second passes, forcing the constriction to ease, the more it hurts. She leans down and wraps her arms around me, holding me against her.

“Home.” I croak the word out. I open my eyes and realize that I’m crying, tears streaking down my face. Cameron is no longer behind me, but he’s in front of me, standing several feet away, watching me with an expression that is sympathetic and aching. “I feel like I’m home.”

More tears fall, cascading down my face and over my chin as they drip onto my collarbone. Cupping my hands over my face, I stare down and wonder why they won’t stop.

Then I look past my hands, past the tears, and see what I’ve done.

All around me, in a circle where there was nothing but solid green, little flowers have blossomed. Colors of all shades—yellow, red, white, pink—have sprouted and risen from the ground that, before, was barren save for the moss.

“W-what…” I stutter out the word, unable to finish my question as I lift my gaze back to Cameron’s.

He takes a step toward me, pauses, and shakes his head. Cameron’s gaze drags down my body, carefully, as if he’s looking for something. “Magic,” he says, “is raw vulnerability. Magic is the place between nature and your soul. It is a connection to something greater than yourself.”

I suck in breath after breath, feeling my lungs collapsing, as if not enough oxygen is being provided. I pant as if I just ran a dozen miles even though I haven’t stepped a single inch. My heart thunders.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. So I stand there and I feel the power coursing through me, filling me up from the bottoms of my feet to the tips of my fingers. More flowers bloom. The green of the moss lightens a shade, as if someone has turned up the vibrancy of Mother Nature herself.

Cameron steps closer, and distantly, I realize that just one more foot and we’ll be touching. He hasn’t even laid a hand on me, and I’m already burning. Not just from him—from this. From the forest. From the magic thrumming through my veins like a promise I didn’t know someone had given me.

“It didn’t hurt.” The discovery is a whisper on the wind, stolen and carried away.

“Power isn’t always pain.” He reaches out—slow, deliberate—and brushes a lock of hair from my cheek. His touch evokes something inside of me. A heat and desire that was there before but buried. I want him to touch me again. “Power can be beautiful,” he tells me. “Especially when it comes of its own volition.”

The longer we stand there, in the center of the clearing as I let the earth’s power flow through my flesh and bone, the more I feel a weight dropping from around my body. A heaviness I hadn’t known was there. My shoulders sink, and I stretch onto my toes, looking up.

The sky, once so bright, swirls with clouds. I frown.

“Cameron?”