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Once we made it to the top of the last rise, I broke into a run. A tree stripped of its leaves fell in my path. As I climbed over the chewed-away trunk, fat, glossy beetles poured out of the rotted wood and scuttled over my hands. I yelped and flung them off of me.
“Don’t move. There are more.” Wes leapt to the other side, shaking the bugs off his arms. Gripping me around the waist, he lifted me over the worst of it. He swept a hand down my back to get rid of the last few stragglers.
A tight band of pain wrapped around my lungs, as straight ahead, black smoke overran the home that had been in my family since the island was first formed. It shot down the chimney, poured out of the windows, and rattled the foundation. My safe place. Where I grew up, where I still came when I needed to find my balance.
These were my roots, the only ones I had left. This attack was personal. The curse had targeted me specifically. Either in an attempt to make my magic falter or just out of pure spite for not being able to touch my mind anymore.
A plume of black, darker than the pits of hell, rose above us. It solidified before slamming into the ground like a fist. We both stumbled as the earth shook hard enough to make our teeth rattle. Far below, the ocean churned as high waves whipped and lashed the air. The scent of sulfur drifted out of the fissures in the street.
The cliff cracked. The sound vibrated through me as if each of my individual bones were breaking. I sprung forward, ready to run for the house, but Wes caught me around the waist.
“Let me go,” I screamed and scratched at his arms, trying to push my way out of his embrace. Tears rolled down my face, and I swiped at them as I continued to fight Wes.
“I’m not letting you get yourself killed over a goddamn house.” He clenched his jaw as he raised his palm out and blasted the curse with a sheet of ice. “Use your powers, but don’t you dare take one step closer to that cliff, or I’ll tie you to the nearest tree.”
I couldn’t think straight. My energy pushed against my palm, begging for an outlet. My vision blurred as I threw everything I had left against the solid wall of black that continued to pummel the ground. The curse hit the cliff again with a force that made my ears pop. We pushed our magic against it, but we were too late. The worst damage had been done before we arrived. With a final crack, strong enough to knock us off our feet, the cliffside broke off and my family home tumbled into the sea.
“No.” I went limp in Wes’s arms.
Images flooded my mind. My grandma giving me smiles filled with so much love while she tended to her flowers. The nights I’d stand at the edge of the world and shout all the things I kept locked inside into the wind. Ella and my grandma bringing me hot cocoa and a warm blanket and sitting in silence with me in the garden while I cried over losing Wes. Not Seth, my boyfriend of five years, but his brother. Every memory my grandma had taught me to love and every moment that had shaped me was gone.
Because I hadn’t been strong enough or fast enough to stop it.
He cradled me against his chest as sobs wracked my body. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
I rubbed my runny nose. “This is all my fault.”
“You did everything you could.” Wes stroked a hand through my hair as my tears continued to fall. “The curse meant to hurt you. Don’t take this on.”
“What’s the point of having magic if I can’t even use it to save the things that matter?” I sucked in a shaky breath. “The only pictures she had left of my dad were in her house.”
He cupped my face, tilting it up to meet his gaze. “Pictures aren’t the things that matter. The most important part of your father she has is you.”
More tears spilled down my cheeks. “She lost everything.”
“She’ll rebuild. We’ll recover what we can, but your grandma knows stuff can be replaced. As long as you’re okay, that’s all that will matter to her, baby. I promise.”
I sniffed as Wes helped me to my feet.
The curse reverted to smoke. It twisted into the air. As it expanded, covering the sky, pockets of the deepest black opened over the forest. And began to rain down fire.
“Ready to finish this?” he asked.
I lifted my chin and nodded. The curse had already taken my foundation, and I’d be damned if it took one more thing from me today. I gripped Wes’s hand as we pushed our golden green light into the sky. In previous battles, we had just enough power to fight off old memories and pull ourselves out of illusions. But now that we were wholly connected—body, mind, and spirit—there was no limit to what we could produce together.
Real smoke rose from the trees. It climbed higher into the air in great rolling waves. The curse had been drying out the forest for weeks, preparing for the moment when its fire would be strong enough to burn the island to ash. It tried everything in its power to keep Wes and me from combining our magic, knowing we had it in us to stop this.
It failed.
Our clouds hovered over the curse, spreading across miles of open sky, nullifying its fire with our rain. It dove for us, and we shot out a net of lightning that covered us in a cage of light, brighter than the sun. The smoke couldn’t find a way through it.
“Give it more,” I said. “We need more rain.”
I thrust my energy into Wes, feeling his flow into me. The muscles in my arm quivered, but I pushed on. My whole hand glowed golden green as my palm pulsed with power. The curse continued to rain down fire wherever it could find breaks in our magic, but we were slowing it down. Wes shoved a burst of energy into me, and I brought down a flash of rain so strong, if anyone was on the trails, they’d be swept down to the street.
The smoke began to recede.
I gritted my teeth as sweat rolled down my back. “I can’t hold it for much longer. This is so much more than we’ve ever done before.”
