Page 50 of A Spell for Midwinter’s Heart
As Rowan pressed her way into the crowd, her mother appeared in the window overhead.
Liliana gave a big thumbs-up, and the demonstrators burst into an ecstatic celebration.
All throughout the festival grounds, firepits erupted into flames simultaneously.
Music pounded, and the massive lanterns floated overhead, bobbing with the rhythm.
Stephan led in a pack of volunteers, their arms laden with cases of beer, cider, and wine—his “life of the party” persona out in full effect.
“Happy freaking New Year!” he shouted, raising his arms to a chorus of cheers.
It was officially a party: a party to ring in the New Year and, with any luck, a new era for Elk Ridge.
The Goshen Group representatives fled the building in a scramble, trying to force a path through a crowd that would not acknowledge them or bend to their will.
Hayleigh was at their tail, staggering along in defeat.
She looked around with an expression of pure disbelief, and it slowly melted into something else—fear.
Fear only of consequences? Or was there any chance it was fear she’d been wrong?
Rowan almost felt sorry for her—this woman who had been trotted along at the head of these men like a genteel mascot—but remembering the harm she’d been trying to do, saved her compassion.
It didn’t take Rowan long to reach the trail home.
In the muffled dark of the snowy wood, she was left to bask in the feeling of leading the crowd.
Their chanting had raised power, and that power had been enough to forge a path to a different future.
Better or worse, they’d never know—but it would be their own.
She had just reached the copse of skinny, limbless trees when a voice called her name.
“Rowan!”
Heart in her throat, she turned. Gavin closed the distance between them: suit askance, hair mussed, eyes wide and open.
For a moment, they only looked at one another.
“We did it,” he said finally.
“We did…” She glanced away briefly. “You were brilliant back there. You told him what he needed to hear.”
“It was a start.” His eyes dropped to the ground. “Rowan, look, I—”
“Please, let me go first. There are some things I finally feel strong enough to say, but who knows when I might lose my nerve.”
“Go ahead,” he said, looking back up again to meet her eyes with his own.
“I’m flying out tonight.” He opened his mouth in protest, but she pushed on. No more interruptions, no more delays—these words needed to be spoken and heard.
“I want to explain some things to you. About me. About my magic.” She swallowed, trying to find the right words to explain the unexplainable.
“Magic can’t be understood like weights and measures, but we know some things.
Like the rule of three—all the energy we put out comes back to us threefold.
And the Rede—do no harm. The rest…It’s messy and complicated, and every day we’re just trying to do the best we can with the information we have.
Just like everyone. But I couldn’t handle that.
I couldn’t handle that I might do the wrong thing, that I might become someone who abused that power, and so I cut myself off, and that is when I really messed things up.
“I’m not doing that anymore. I’ll need to constantly check myself, and lean on my coven when it’s murky, but I’m not going to let the fear of doing the wrong thing keep me from doing something.
I’ll probably mess up, but when I do, I’ll own it, and try to fix things, if I can.
” She searched his face, her throat tightening.
“You don’t owe me anything, not after what I took from you, but if there’s anything I can do to make this right… ”
To her surprise, he let out a small laugh.
Her eyebrows knitted in confusion. “What?”
One end of his lips turned up in a familiar half smile. “You didn’t read my letter, did you?”
Her hand went to her pocket. “Not yet. I wasn’t sure if I could handle what was inside.”
“Take a look,” he urged.
She tore open the envelope, sliding a heavy sheet of creamy paper from inside. A familiar mixture of anxiety and excitement brimmed beneath her skin as she ran a finger over the lettering—so soft.
December 31
Rowan—
I’m not certain what I’m doing here. When I sat down, it was to write a letter to my mother, because it’s something I always do on the New Year.
I sit down and write out all the things I wish she knew about my life.
It was something my grandparents recommended.
A way to help me process, and figure out how to go on without her.
Because even though she can’t respond, I let myself think about how she would have responded, and even if it’s not the same, it’s something.
But I’ve been sitting here, unable to get started, because all I want to write about is you, and what we’ve been doing here in Elk Ridge, and it’s impossible to do that without hearing her voice. Reminding me what I should have said the other night, but I didn’t.
What happened that night eight years ago, the way I reacted, had nothing to do with your magic.
I wasn’t afraid of it then, and I’m not afraid of it now.
Because you are the magic, and I see how hard you push yourself every day to do the right thing.
Even when it’s hard, even when it’s heartbreaking.
You don’t always get it right, of course you don’t. No one does. But you try anyway, and that’s all anyone can do.
Whatever happens today: Trust your magic, trust yourself, not because I trust you, though I do, but because you deserve it.
Yours,
Gavin
Rowan pressed the paper to her chest and shifted her gaze up to his face—his annoyingly handsome, utterly adoring face.
He had always seen her.
“Does that answer your question?” he asked.
“It’s pretty clear,” she said, laughing and dabbing her eyes. “Must be the pen you chose.”
“Hmm, I seem to remember someone else chose that one for me.”
“Well, it was the only fountain pen I had access to.”
“Take the win, Midwinter.” They both laughed, and he hooked his fingers around hers.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to stand up to my father—really.
You were right about so many things. How I am with him.
How I’ve let that affect my other relationships.
Alina, that was my fiancée, she didn’t see it, or if she did, she didn’t say it.
Only you did.” His dark eyes searched her face. “Are you really leaving?”
She lowered her head and nodded.
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do, because I’ve got responsibilities I can’t magic away.
But I’m coming back as soon as all that’s settled.
I can work remotely for SunlightCorps. It’ll help to have someone here on the ground anyway, assuming the collaboration goes through…
Zaide’s got a spare room, the coven needs an eighth, and Winter Fest needs all the help it can get.
I want to be a part of it all, and I want—” She breathed in deeply.
Even if everything he’d done and said up to this point should have made the next words easy, they were still hard. “Us. If that’s something you want too.”
He didn’t answer with words.
There are as many kinds of kisses as there are moments in life.
Kisses of hello and of good-bye. Kisses for beginnings and for ends.
Kisses that mean nothing, and kisses that mean everything.
Some are questions. Some are threats. Some are promises.
They challenge us, charge us, and comfort us.
The kiss Rowan and Gavin shared was one of new beginnings, of hope renewed and uncertain futures embraced.
When it ended, they lingered close, chest to chest: so close that from a distance, they could almost be mistaken for one person.
“So, this rule of three…” he said in a low voice. “Does that mean if you were to cast a love spell on me, you’d end up somehow even more smitten?”
She laughed, biting her lip, and squeezed his waist. “Dooming myself to your complete and total adoration.”
He tucked a curl behind her ear. “Mmm. That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Trust me: It’s ugly.”
“Well, any love spell you cast on me would fail anyway.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
He pressed his forehead to hers. “Because I’m already hopelessly yours, Midwinter.”
She inhaled deeply at the flush of energy that ran through her body, vibrating with the thrum of the earth.
“I love you too, McCreery.”
And then they were kissing again, and she could not imagine stopping anytime soon.
As if sensing her thoughts, he asked, “Do you really need to go back tonight ?”
“Mmm. The future can wait a day…or two. Lorena made it clear she would take no more emergency New Year’s work calls. Plus, I think we’ve both earned a holiday from our holiday.”
“I agree.”
They walked, hand in hand, back toward the party in Elk Ridge. A far-off movement in the trees caught Rowan’s attention: a retreating figure in deep green velvet, taking long slow steps with the aid of a holly-wrapped staff.
Though he did not bother her again, she was confident that if he did, she could tell the Holly King she had done all she needed to do to prepare for the New Year.
Finally.