Page 74

WINNOW

G ertie and I join Gideon and the rest of the boys when my skin prickles with discomfort.

The distinct sensation of being watched.

Without having to see her, I already know Seraphine is here, and my stomach gives a sickening swoop.

Beau is mid-sentence when I twist toward the tree line and narrow my gaze.

“Uh… you okay?”

Immersed in conversation with Harlan and Levi, Gideon’s sentence cuts short, and his arm slides over my shoulders. “What’s the matter, angel?”

Several moments pass, and I’m beginning to wonder if it’s just paranoia when I hear the sound of tires on gravel. Everyone turns to face the driveway, and sure enough, Seraphine’s sleek black car pulls up. I look up to find fury burning in Gideon’s eyes.

Beau looks disgusted. “Is that who I fuckin’ think it is?”

Levi’s murmur is barely audible, lip faintly curled. “This bitch…”

Gertie looks between me and Harlan. “Who’s this?”

Harlan’s expression is harder than I’ve ever seen it. “What’s the date, boy?”

Gideon shakes his head. “I don’t fuckin’ know.”

Harlan spits. “Well, I take it your restraining order’s officially expired.”

Gertie rears back. “Restraining order? What the fuck is going on?”

Gideon turns to face me and Gertie. “Gertie, take Winnow inside, please.”

Gideon places his palm on my back to urge me toward the house, and I promptly sidestep him and begin to march toward Seraphine’s car as it comes to a stop. Gideon steps in front of me to cut me off.

“Angel, just go back inside and let me handle this.”

I scowl up at him. “You ‘handling it’ clearly hasn’t worked.”

When I move to step around him, Seraphine steps out of her car.

She’s wearing a wig.

A good one at that, because you can’t even tell.

Gods be damned .

I really had hoped cutting all her hair off would be a deterrent.

Even from fifty feet away, I can see just how perfectly her dress clings to every angular curve and perky tit. When her eyes briefly land on me I can tell there’s a war in her mind as to whether or not the little visit I paid her was really all a mushroom-induced hallucination.

Harlan, Levi, and Beau are a wall to our right and Gertie stands to my Left. If it weren’t for our audience, I’d glamour myself back into a terrifying form, but that could cause more problems than it’s worth and I’m not looking to traumatize innocent by-standers.

Harlan calls out to her.

“Miss Prince. Do I need to arrest you for breaking your restraining order?”

Seraphine flashes him a grin of unnaturally white teeth.

“No, sir. Expired yesterday.”

The look on Gideon’s face is somehow bored, repulsed, and angry all at once.

“If you aren’t driving off my property in the next ten seconds, I’m going to have Harlan arrest you for trespassing.”

Seraphine’s eyes widen and the smile on her face turns saccharine at him having spoken to her.

“Why would you do such a thing? You can’t honestly say you don’t miss me. We had something special and I won’t allow you to throw it away. I came here to apologize again. Just give me ten minutes of your time, Gideon. Please. ”

My eyes are burning holes in Seraphine, but she seems reluctant to meet my gaze.

Gideon shakes his head, not even speaking to her, but to Harlan.

“At what point am I within my rights to shoot someone trespassing on my property?”

Serpahine’s head tips back with laughter.

“Jesus, I forgot how fucking dramatic you are.”

Harlan scowls, voice dropping low enough so that only we can hear him.

“I’m afraid you can’t unless she threatens you with bodily harm, but I can certainly arrest her.”

Sacred fuck, this is getting so very far out of hand.

I might detest this woman, but a certain epiphany settles over me, as if I’m realizing it for the very first time. I’m a fucking goddess. A goddess of healing and fertility, and I have the power to put an end to this madness. My words come out in an abrupt rush.

“I’ll speak with you.”

Fear and uncertainty flicker in Seraphine’s eyes as I step forward, only to be yanked backward by Gideon who looks at me like I’ve just grown another head.

“The fuck you will.”

I give him a bored look, tugging him aside so that only he can hear me.

“She can’t hurt me, remember?”

Gideon’s expression remains hard as stone. “Doesn’t matter what she can and can’t do to you. I don’t want you near her under any circumstances.”

My brow tenses. “Gideon Kincaid, it’s not your decision to make.”

“If your safety’s involved, it sure as shit is.”

“If she so much as lifts a finger in my direction, I’ll tear her throat out.”

“You’ll have to forgive me if I’d rather avoid putting you in that kind of situation in the first place. Is there a reason why you don’t want Harlan to arrest her?”

My eyes shift between the rest of our group. Sheriff Harlan watching Seraphine, Beau whispering to Gertie, presumably about what exactly this bizarre situation is, and Levi watching me with an openly curious, narrowed gaze.

When my eyes return to Gideon’s I heave a sigh.

“Let’s say we let Harlan arrest her. Then what?

I’m not entirely sure how your justice system works here, but in mine, in order to actually keep her in there it would mean you, yourself would actually have to go through the painstaking process of attending a trial, with her, only for her to be imprisoned for a fleeting period of time and then what? We go through this all over again?”

Gideon’s gaze holds mine, lips pressing into a firm line of frustration at my logic.

“Winnow baby, I love your intentions, but the woman is mentally unwell–

I press a finger to his lips, cutting him off.

“Exactly, and have you forgotten already that I am a goddess of healing?”

Gideon frowns. “No.”

“So, let me heal her.”

The scowl on Gideon’s face is adorable. “That damn woman doesn’t need a healer. What she needs is a fucking exorcist.”

I can’t help but giggle. “I’ll be fine. Let me work my magic.”

Gideon’s hand grabs my arm as I attempt to make my way toward her. “I’m coming with you.”

Glaring at the offending hand, I peel him off finger by finger. “No. You’re not. Now don’t make me reconsider my answer to your earlier proposal.”

Gideon’s scowl is enough to wilt flowers, but I’m already turning away.

The shadow of fear in Seraphine’s eyes gives me an undeniable tickle of delight.

When I’m standing in front of her, the cognitive dissonance she’s experiencing seems to have rendered her silent. “You broke your promise to me.”

Her eyes widen and for a second I worry that she’s going to scream.

“Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

When she hesitates to follow me, I turn back toward her. “Unless you prefer I fulfill my end of our bargain? The one where I bring this reincarnation of yours to an abrupt end?”

Seraphine blanches but manages to move forward and join me as I begin to walk toward one of Gideon’s pastures. Daring a glance back at Gideon, I find him glowering and tailing us at a distance. I am both annoyed and warmed by the action. Ferion.

Seraphine is the first to speak, her voice almost a whisper. “So, it was really you? The other night?”

My eyes reluctantly shift to meet hers. “Indeed.”

Seraphine’s mouth gapes like a fish as though unable to articulate what she really means to ask, so I do it for her. “Yes, I’m a daemon. Well, half.”

Seraphine pinches the skin of her arm, but is otherwise in shocked silence for several moments as we continue to walk, so I give her the time to process it.

“What’s the other half?”

I tilt my face toward hers, smiling and revealing my fangs.

“I’m a goddess.”

I am met with more stunned silence, her bronze skin fading to a shade of ash.

“You’ve been through a lot, I gather?”

Seraphine eventually nods. Tears are already gathering in her eyes.

“So when I pray, is it you that hears me?”

Surprised laughter bursts from me and I have to clap a hand over my mouth to stop it.

Seraphine’s brows are pinched and I see something like an ember of hope flickering in her eyes.

“Not quite…”

When I see that little ember dim within her, a wave of realization hits me and I cannot believe I hadn’t consciously known it sooner.

She wants to be saved.

It’s why she won’t let go of Gideon and it’s why, now, she’s looking at me like I’m Akash herself, her savior.

It’s a relatable desire.

How many times have I wished I could have been saved?

More times than I can count.

“There are other things I can do though…”

Sure enough, that ember of hope in her gaze flares back to life.

“My power resides within the domain of healing and fertility.”

The hope I see igniting within her fuels my own. In healing her, I am also healing myself and all the parts of me that once needed saving, even if that’s not the reason I’m doing it.

This woman has done horrible things to the man I love, and no amount of suffering will excuse it, but it also doesn’t mean that inflicting more suffering upon her would be the answer.

Though I am well aware that there are plenty of people roaming the realms whose death would be justice.

This woman, however, isn’t one of them. Like Lorne, the fae male who had both protected me and brutalized me, I only see a wounded soul when I look at Seraphine.

Akash has blessed me with a power, a gift, to heal. Not to harm. And if ever I have been given an opportunity to heal someone in need, it’s now, with this broken woman who has experienced much of the same torment as me.

“Would you like me to show you, Seraphine?”

Tears slip down her cheeks as she nods.

“You’ll need to lie down in the grass.”

She doesn’t hesitate and I kneel beside her, sitting back on my heels.

Her dress has ridden up and my eyes catch on the gun holstered high on her thigh.

Her breath hitches when she realizes I see it.

A flare of anger burns in my chest as more tears stream down her cheeks and she pleads in a tremulous whisper.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t want to. I just want him to love me again.”

Even though I’m not even remotely surprised, I have to stifle my anger to focus.

“I understand.”

She doesn’t stop me when I unholster the gun and for a moment, I see the uncertainty in her eyes: she doesn’t know whether or not I plan to shoot her with it.

Even so, she doesn’t move.

Setting the weapon behind me I place one hand on her chest, and the other on her head, which reminds me of the wig.

“I’m going to remove this now.”

She nods in assent before lifting her head, so I can pull the wig off to reveal her shaved scalp.

Placing my hand atop her crown, I close my eyes and settle into the energy of my heart and connect to hers.

Familiar pinpricks alight in my hand as my magic begins to pour into her.

Tendrils of my power twine with the neurovasculature of her body, threading its way around the vagus nerve to calm her heart and deepen her breath.

Beneath my touch, her heartbeat slows and her diaphragm expands.

As my magic spreads throughout her body, where so much of her trauma is stored–buried but all too alive in the muscle, fascia, and limbic brain. Somatic memories rise and her body begins to release them in small twitches and other voluntary movements as tears stream down her cheeks.

A choked sob escapes her as my magic presses onward, restoring balance to all the various glands in her brain and body responsible for regulating stress hormones, all of which are poised to respond to a threat that is no longer there–and hasn’t been for many years–but remain suspended in a constant state of panic regardless.

As each muscle of her body relaxes and I feel the tension finally drain from her body, my magic shifts to stimulate hormones responsible for feelings of love and euphoria to help heal and soothe her mind, body, and spirit.

I feel the gentle, phantom sensations in my own body as hers resets and finally releases fear and hypervigilance.

Onward, my power strives to stimulate her pre-frontal cortex, awakening the seat of her reasoning and self-awareness now that it is no longer suppressed by her amygdala–essentially her mind and body's alarm system–that’s kept her living on the precipice of fight or flight.

My magic hasn’t, nor could it, change what happened, take away her trauma, or its painful memories.

Nor would I wish it to. As with anyone who has survived any form of trauma, it’s a part of what gives us the capacity and inspiration to help and heal others in our own ways–no matter how small.

One seemingly insignificant act could change the course of someone’s life forever, and everyone that they encounter going forward, and so on.

The trauma that haunts you is the very thing that enables you to be the person for others that you wished you had yourself in the darkest moments of your life.

Whatever this woman has been through, it’s more than she deserved, and despite all the strife she has caused, my heart aches for her.

As I finish my work, my magic withdraws from her body, and she rolls onto her side, curling her body toward me as I continue to kneel beside her. My hands stroke along her back as she weeps, and my own tears return.

Gideon told me what the men who kidnapped her had done to her, and it’s not dissimilar to what I’d experienced in the Paltorian prison when Lorne wasn’t around to ward predatory males off. Whatever our many differences, we have more in common than any enemy should.

“Shhhhhh. You’re safe. You have nothing to fear. You deserve to be loved.”