Page 12 of A Heart of Winter (Fairy Tale Retellings #4)

Magic Moment

B y the time we finished lunch and headed back outside, the flurries had become a regular snowfall, and more was accumulating on top of what the blizzard had dropped two nights earlier.

Kai frowned, pulling out his phone and looking at it for a second.

“Weird. It wasn’t supposed to snow more today.

Just the storm last night. This is why I don’t want to stay in Minnesota.

But I guess at least we get some more couch time.

” He shot me that roguish grin that was swift becoming my favorite thing, but even that couldn’t thaw the ball of ice growing in my stomach.

This was why he was leaving Minnesota. Snow.

Snow that was my fault, because I couldn’t control my own damned powers.

I tried to smile back, but it was weak. Immediately, he went from flirty to worried. “Everything okay?”

“We should . . . we should get your things,” I said, trying to distract from the weather. “You’ll want your clothes if you’re going to—” to stay at the cabin with me. While I continued to trap us inside for who knew how long.

“Okay,” he agreed easily, seeming to brush off his concern.

I should have known better, though. He was a lawyer, and a good one. He knew people, and he knew how to get us to talk. He let silence reign as we walked to his truck, that he’d driven us into town in that morning. As we put the bag in the back and climbed in. Halfway to his house.

Just as I was about to take up chewing on my fingernails, sitting there in the passenger seat of the silent car, he oh so casually asked, “Want to tell me what’s bothering you?”

This was it.

I had two choices: the truth or a lie. There were a thousand lies, but eventually, if I wanted to have a relationship with him, I would have to tell him the truth. Eventually, he would know that I had spent the first part of our relationship lying.

It was up to me whether I had to explain a few days of lying, or longer. The longer I kept lying, the less forgivable it was.

“I don’t,” I admitted, glaring at my right index fingernail. There was a tiny sliver of a hangnail. Automatically, I reached up to bite it off, and barely stopped myself.

Dammit.

Finally, I took a deep breath and turned to him, just as he pulled into the driveway of his parents’ house and turned off the engine.

He seemed to sense that I was going to talk, as he didn’t reach for the door handle, but turned to me, serious, concerned expression in place, his brows knit and soft lips slightly pursed.

I’d had this conversation before, of course, not least with Michael when he’d been new to the world of magic.

Michael had been easy to convince, because he’d wanted to believe.

He’d wanted what magic had to offer him.

People I’d told before had been in previous centuries, times when the average person believed in magic to begin with, so they didn’t assume I was in need of mental help when I started talking.

Kai was different. He was strong, and already had what he wanted in life. He was a sensible man who believed in modern science and not whimsical flights of fancy. He’d once in conversation mentioned one of his father’s old fashioned superstitions with a tone of long-suffering amusement.

Because magic was silly.

Still, it had to come out. I wasn’t going to lie to him forever.

“The storms are my fault. Well, maybe not the blizzard. I don’t—I don’t know how it all works, exactly.

I usually have better control than this.

” He looked confused, and I could hardly blame him.

I wasn’t making any sense, by the definition of a rational, sane modern man.

So I took a deep breath, concentrated, and held out my hand, calling the moisture out of the air to coalesce in my palm.

This was usually the easiest prospect in the world, even in the middle of summer—it was easier in the summer, in fact, since the air held more moisture then, so calling it up was fast and simple.

This time there was a strange tug deep inside me when I reached for the power, as if the magic itself was unmoored, and calling it to work had been more taxing than usual.

As though it had unseated my very core, and for a moment, I was left dizzy and reeling.

“Holy shit,” Kai muttered, and when I could focus again, it wasn’t hard to see why.

I had a ball of ice in my hand, yes. But it wasn’t just the size of a snowball or an especially impressive ice cube.

It was twice the size of a softball, outright weighing my hand down with the size of it.

He looked up at me, eyes round with shock.

“You. You did that. You said you’re—the snow? You made it snow?”

“When I was younger, once I accidentally caused a blizzard because”—I looked away, coughing into my free hand and trying to hide my blush—“a boy rejected me. I was—I was unhappy. I thought I had it under control after puberty, but it’s been acting up again lately.”

He stared into nothing, eyes focused in the distance. “The sudden storms in New York last month. And now it’s snowing here. You— Of course , you came here because snow in Minnesota isn’t ever newsworthy, but September blizzards in central Manhattan are unheard of.”

He believed me. Hadn’t even questioned it, once he understood what I was saying. Yes, I’d summoned a ball of ice out of nowhere, but even Michael had taken more convincing than one maneuver that could have been particularly clever sleight of hand.

Not that I was good at that, but I could be.

I swallowed and nodded. “I’m causing it. Because I can’t control myself. I would if I could, but I don’t know how to make it stop.”

Slumping against the passenger seat, I sighed, dejected at the ridiculousness of the situation. I was three hundred years old, an experienced and skilled witch, and I couldn’t control my own damned powers.

Kai, though . . . he smiled at me. “That’s incredible.

I’m not going to lie, it’s going to take me a while to process this.

I”—he looked down at the ball of ice, reached out and poked it with a finger—“I didn’t really believe in magic.

Still wouldn’t if I hadn’t watched you do that. What else can you do?”

What else?

I stared at him. He wanted to know more about magic, not demand to know why I wasn’t doing a better job at stopping the snow? Not why I hadn’t been open about it right away? Well, it had only been a few days, I supposed. It was faster than I’d ever told anyone before. And then there was?—

“Gerda knows she’s a witch, doesn’t she?”

He paused a moment, biting his lip, before shaking his head.

“Not exactly. There have just always been . . . odd things. Stuff she wanted that just seemed to happen. It could have been luck, but I took statistics in college. I know how likely luck that good is.” He ducked his head, giving me a boyish smile.

“Then you tell me maybe you can help her, and then you tell me you’re magical.

I mean, I never would have assumed all that, but the pieces fit together, don’t they? ”

“There’s a bed still in there, right?” I asked, still staring at him, motioning toward his childhood house. “Because I have a sudden burning need to have sex with you.”

He laughed, but he was rushing out of the truck as he called behind him, “There definitely is. Condoms, too.”

Hell yes.

I dropped my ice ball on the ground and rushed after him.