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Her eyes fill with tears, and she squeezes my hands. “I’m so mad at you,” she says, the words coming out on top of a sob. “What am I going to do without you?”
The words put me back together, stitch me up, prove to me that love is the strongest magic of all. Not high or low, not old or new. Love.
She pulls me close, holding me so tight I ache. “You’re about to create absolute chaos,” she says.
“I know.”
She looks at me for one more breath, then walks back outside just as my mother finds her way to the platform, repeating her words from earlier. Presenting me once more.
I close my eyes and replay the memory from the bottle over and over again. There is only one person who could have put that bottle there, one person who saw the life that’s meant for me long before I saw it myself. That life has been waiting in the shadows all these years, patient, and as I step from the house and make my way to the platform, I’m finally ready to claim it.
forty
I’m standing on the platform again, my heart slamming against my ribs. I take a deep breath and look between the basins, between the two paths laid out before me. The perfume no longer sits in the copper bowl, and the moonflower from earlier is gone. I wonder if my mother saw it and removed it or if Wolfe did, waiting and watching from a distance.
I slowly pick up the knife, its golden blade reflecting the light of the sun. It feels heavy in my hand. Sacred.
The ocean waves roll onto the shore, and my coven is silent around me. Landon is gone, and Ivy looks up at me with expectant, anxious eyes. I’m not sure if my parents have noticed Landon’s absence, but they stand with their heads high, looks of pride on their faces.
I touch the vial around my neck with my free hand, letting the feel of it calm my racing heart. Then I begin.
I place the blade against my right palm and slowly slide themetal down my hand. It leaves a perfect cut that fills with blood, running down my skin like a river.
Then I speak the words that will determine the rest of my life.
“Blade of gold,
witch’s blood,
pour from me as though a flood.
Copper basin,
crystal bowl,
determine who will hold my soul.
Just one choice,
seal my fate,
this covenant will never break.
Year to year
forever remain,
until I meet my dying day.”
I reach my hand out in front of me as my blood starts to drip. My parents watch me, a sea of affection in their eyes, and my hand wavers to the left, toward the copper basin. I love them so much. All I’ve ever wanted was to make them proud.
I always thought that would be enough, and I’m heartbroken that it isn’t.
I close my eyes and force my hand over the crystal bowl, my blood dropping into the water and spreading out for my entire coven to see.
Gasps fill the air, and my mother cries out. She collapses intomy father, sobbing, as loud voices and angry shouts rise up all around me. I’m frozen where I stand, shocked by the choice I made.
Irrevocable.
