Page 34 of Extraordinary Quests for Amateur Witches

Cleaning up the ship after the fight with the mercenaries was a deeply unpleasant experience.

Two of them were still alive but knocked out, so Ariel brought the ship low enough to drop them off in the woods.

It was the most kindness the pilot could offer them, considering they’d arrived fully intent on using Briar, Delilah, Santiago, and Ariel as bargaining chips to make Kieran give up the Hilt and Stave.

And considering what the crew had learned from Sebastian about Elias’s plans, the mercenaries absolutely wouldn’t have hesitated to kill any of them to get what they wanted.

Still, human life was human life. It didn’t feel good to know that people had died, even if had been in self-defense.

It only made Kieran hate Elias more, knowing he’d paid all these people enough to kill or be killed.

Kieran just felt lucky that, aside from a black eye for Ariel and a few cuts and bruises on everyone else, the crew had escaped unharmed.

As for the mercenaries who were dead, Sebastian volunteered to deal with them.

While Kieran was grateful, the thought made his stomach churn.

He’d never considered himself someone who could take another person’s life.

So far, he hadn’t. And he truly didn’t know if he’d be able to, even in the worst of circumstances.

Kieran had waited down in the study, staring out the window, while Sebastian finished his work.

In front of him on the coffee table were the Hilt and Stave, looking strange and otherworldly in such a pedestrian setting.

Seaweed had elected to leave the room as soon as Kieran pulled out the Hilt.

He didn’t blame her, considering what it had done to her.

Plus, she deserved a nice nap on his bed for her heroism.

“Good to see you at least got the Stave out of all that.”

Kieran glanced up to find Delilah entering the study, taking a seat on the couch. Her pink dress had been singed on the edges, and her curls were mussed and out of place, but she looked fine otherwise.

“Is Briar okay?” Kieran asked.

Delilah nodded. “She offered to help Sebastian up on the top deck. It sounded like she wanted to talk to him about something, so I decided to give them a little privacy.”

Kieran’s back straightened a bit at that. He was, at his core, quite a nosy person, even if he did his best to hide it most of the time. “Do you know what she wanted to talk to him about?”

Delilah shook her head. “No. But if I had to guess, it might be an apology.”

“For what?”

“Assuming he couldn’t control his curse,” Delilah admitted. “I…think we were a bit too quick to judge him.”

“You just wanted to keep everyone safe,” Kieran offered. He pulled his knees up to his chest, hugging them. “I don’t blame you.”

Delilah nodded. “You all are my family. Sometimes I get a little too protective, I guess. Especially of you, after everything you went through with your curse.”

Kieran chewed his lip, nodding. He thought back to the woods, where he’d seen all the different versions of himself. How he’d looked at what was supposed to have been his future, wherein he was nothing but a withered corpse. Another casualty of Pelumbra greed.

“I think…that’ll always be a part of me,” Kieran said.

He looked up and met Delilah’s gaze. “Life’s kind of like a book, isn’t it?

You need all the chapters that came before to understand where the story’s going.

Acting like they didn’t happen won’t help.

It’s just a matter of honoring how they shaped your story so you can move forward. ”

“I like that.” Delilah cracked a smile. “Since when are you so philosophical?”

“Since all of Verbena’s tasks to get this stupid scepter required me to do nonstop magical soul-searching.” Kieran pressed his fingers to his temples and sighed, staring down at the Stave and Hilt. “At least it’s cheaper than therapy.”

That made Delilah snort with laughter, and the levity was a welcome sensation after the day he’d had. He was tired on a cellular level, as if both his mind and his body had been dunked underwater and wrung out until there was nothing left.

And even if he wished it didn’t, it made him think of Ash. It would be so nice to climb into bed with him just so he could be held by someone for a time so he wasn’t shouldering the weight of everything alone.

He missed having that closeness. The last time he and Ash had had a quiet evening like that had been back in the fall, before Ash had stopped coming to the coffee shop and had started ignoring his calls.

It had been an unseasonably cold day, and Kieran had spent the night at Ash’s apartment.

Kieran had cooked dinner for him and listened while Ash went on and on about a project he had at the library.

It had been charmingly domestic, Kieran thought.

As if they were playing house and acting like grown-ups.

It was a peek into what the future could be.

But then it had turned into Ash asking Kieran about his career plans. Kieran had shot back something along the lines of I’m seventeen, how am I supposed to know what I want to do for the rest of my life? Ash’s face had hardened in that way it always did when Kieran said things like that.

You’ll have to grow up eventually, Ash had said. You can’t just wait around for someone to tell you what to do. You’re not a child anymore.

But he also wasn’t an adult, he’d argued. Wasn’t that the whole point of being a teenager? To try to figure yourself out? Besides, he’d spent his entire childhood trying to act like an adult to appease his mother. Didn’t he deserve to mess around for a while and figure it out later?

Ash’s answer had been clear: Not if you want to be taken seriously.

Maybe that had been the beginning of the end, Kieran realized.

Even if Ash had asked for a break only recently, he’d pulled away long before.

The void he’d left had made Kieran all the lonelier, wishing constantly that he could have what they’d had back.

And seeing Delilah and Briar so close hadn’t helped.

It was a constant reminder that his own relationship was failing.

Maybe that’s why he’d gotten so bad about comparing the two in the first place.

“You okay?” Delilah asked. “You look a little lost in thought.”

“Oh! Yes, sorry. Just…thinking about Ash again.”

Delilah’s expression softened. “Do you miss him?”

His first thought was of course, but that gave him pause.

Did he miss Ash, or did he miss the companionship?

Both ideas felt true. He missed discussing the books he read with Ash, and the bike rides they took along the Gell River in the summer, and the evenings spent lazily kissing in bed until they fell asleep.

But if Kieran was being entirely honest with himself, one idea outweighed the other.

“I do,” Kieran said finally. “But…I’m not sure I miss him in the way I’m supposed to.”

“Miss who?” a new voice asked: Briar.

Kieran and Delilah glanced up to find Briar and Sebastian stepping through the doorway.

Sebastian was trying to smooth his hair down while Briar plopped down next to Delilah on the couch, leaning into the girl’s arms as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Delilah embraced her and kissed her cheek.

Sebastian took a seat beside Kieran, exhaling a heavy sigh.

“N-no one,” Kieran said, suddenly feeling tongue-tied at Briar’s question.

Every nerve in his body had become hyperaware that Sebastian was sitting next to him, as if just his aura was enough to make Kieran sweat.

Kieran’s cheeks flared with warmth. Why was it so embarrassing to mention Ash around Sebastian?

Maybe it was because Kieran knew how attracted he was to Sebastian, and that in and of itself felt like a betrayal of Ash.

But being attracted to other people when you were in a relationship was totally normal, right?

It didn’t mean he was going to act on it.

Sebastian was just a friend, after all. No reason to complicate things.

Desperate to change the subject before anyone could press, Kieran said, “So, um—everything…set upstairs?”

Briar nodded. “Yep. Got the deck scrubbed and everything. Not the most pleasant way I’ve spent an afternoon, but hey”—she gestured to the Hilt and Stave on the table—“it looks like it was worth it.”

“I’m impressed that you found it so quickly,” Sebastian said, eyes flicking to Kieran. “Those woods looked huge. I would have thought it would take days to find anything in there.”

Kieran shook his head. “I, um. I had some help.”

Everyone’s eyebrows shot up at once, and it occurred to Kieran that he had no idea how to explain what had happened in the woods. Still, they deserved to know as much as he did, considering that he’d vanished for half a day while the ship was nearly seized by Elias’s goons.

“There was a…spirit of some kind,” he explained.

“Not like Seaweed—something else. But it looked like me as a kid. I don’t know whether it was a manifestation of the forest in the form of kid-me or the forest was able to take something that already existed in me and give it a physical form.

Or, really, if it was something else entirely—who’s to say?

Whatever it was, it helped me find the Stave. ”

“Wow,” said Delilah. “That’s…”

“Magic is fucking wild sometimes,” Briar said.

Kieran snorted a laugh. “Took the words right out of my mouth.”

“I can imagine that was a lot to deal with,” Delilah guessed. When Kieran widened his eyes and started nodding vigorously, Delilah asked, “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” Kieran admitted. “I’m just…exhausted. Still need time to process, I think.”

“You can say that again.” Delilah glanced around the room. “This whole day was a lot for all of us. I, for one, think we deserve a chance to relax.”

“Did you have something in mind?” Briar asked.