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She slipped and I caught her around the waist. “We can go skating some other time.”
“Smartass.” She lifted her palms and used her lightning to break apart the ice before her warm summer rain washed it away.
We continued testing our new powers, mixing them with our old ones, seeing what they could do together. The two of us had a much farther reach than we’d had before. It took more of our personal energy stores, and we had to be physically connected the entire time to move beyond our previous circle, but we stretched our clouds a mile in each direction. If we wanted to push it farther, I had no doubt we’d be able to cover the entire island.
Exhausted, we lay in the grass and tried to recoup some of our energy. The curse had abandoned the cave for now. All the magic we’d been setting off probably drove it away, though there was no telling where it had slithered off to. Maybe some of the older caves worn into the side of the tall cliffs where Finn and Audrey’s grandma lived. I had a feeling it needed someplace dark and desolate to regenerate from whatever injuries we’d been able to inflict upon it.
“I could sleep for the next week.” Audrey rested her chin on my chest and drew little circles. “What did the curse show you?”
“It used my worst fears against me.”
If I hadn’t been so damn insecure in my relationship with Audrey, I never would’ve come that close to losing everything. But I could waste another decade beating myself up for my mistakes, or I could move on. I’d already taken the living-in-the-past route and it hadn’t done me a whole hell of a lot of good. I’d much rather live for now.
“It showed me a really mean version of you,” she said.
I half sat up and gave her a cocky grin. “Was I still hot, though?”
She shoved me. “You are such an arrogant ass.”
“You love me anyway.” When she gave me a small smile, I lay back and tucked my arm underneath my head. The wet earth soaked into my shirt, but with temperatures approaching ninety, it felt nice. “What did you do to fight it? I couldn’t see anything beyond my own illusion.”
She gave me a rundown of everything the curse had tried on her. I wished I could’ve seen her ice the fake me. That was a trick I’d have to try now that I had her powers. In turn, I told her everything that happened with Not-Seth and Not-Audrey, up through the point where I placed my hand over the emerald and willingly began to trade in my memories.
“They forgot love.” The sadness in Audrey’s voice reached into me as well. “They didn’t fight. They gave up on each other and themselves.”
That’s what our ancestors had sacrificed to trap the curse the first time. Not just their magic, but the love they had for each other and the memories that bound them together. That’s why most of them left. Because they’d given away every reason they had to stay.
I shuddered to think what would’ve happened if I’d given the cave my magic. Loving Audrey hadn’t always been easy, but none of the best things in life ever were. I wouldn’t trade a moment of the past nine years. Every step we’d taken had led us right here.
The one good thing to come out of my downward spiral was that it proved Audrey’s theory. We weren’t supposed to bind the curse. It wanted us to give up our magic, forget each other, and abandon our island like the original twelve had done. It had much more to fear from us than we had from it. Because it knew we had the power to destroy it.
The ground rumbled beneath us. Audrey and I looked at each other and leapt to our feet. We joined hands, pushing our free palms outward as a golden green light swirled around us.
