Page 45 of Head Witch in Charge (The Sherwood Witches #2)
Erik…
Capturing a magical stag is the equivalent of reciting your ABCs backward while balancing a ball on one finger and hopping on one foot, after having one too many shots of tequila.
“I can’t believe you talked me into this plan,” LeLe says as she scans the forest floor for candlewick plants. “There’s no way this will work.”
Is she right? Probably.
However, if she has any better ideas about how to capture a black stag the size of a moose with a rack of silver horns etched with runes and ancient symbols no modern witch could translate, then she would have said so.
The woman is not shy about telling people what to do—especially me—and she’s usually right, which is a total turn-on.
This time, though, she just wrinkles her nose and then starts walking through the forest with me looking for the pale yellow flowers blooming up the tall, straight stem of the candlewick plant.
I thread my fingers through hers as we make our way around great oaks with faces carved into the trunks. “Are you telling me that the Sherwood heir doesn’t know her histories from the old tales?”
“Of the candlewick plant?” She scoffs and rolls her eyes at me even as she tightens her fingers around my hand. “Those are myths.”
Once again, she’s not wrong, but sometimes you gotta plow forward with only the possibility of getting your way.
It’s the don’t-fight-turn-right mentality—even when you need to go left, if traffic is jammed up, instead of waiting for a few eons for a break, you turn right and then make your way back left.
There’s always a way. There’s always a loophole.
There’s always a right turn that takes you left. You just have to find it.
“Myths?” I lift the back of her hand and kiss it. “That’s what some people would like you to believe. If Sigrid knew you didn’t believe, she’d be appalled and give you a twenty-book reading list to fix the errors in your education, wife.”
That part’s one hundred percent true—never mind that Sigrid gives everyone a reading list perfectly tailored to their likes and what she deems their absolutely appalling reading history omissions.
LeLe pulls us to a stop next to a tree that has a seriously realistic face of a woman with her eyes wide with shock embedded in the trunk and cocks her head to one side.
“What are you talking about? I’ve read all of the candlewick spells.
They help with inflammation, and that’s not going to help here. ”
“Every old myth in Witchingdom started out with at least a nugget of truth. How many times did you hear stories of The Liber Umbrarum? Conventional wisdom said the book didn’t exist, and yet here we are.
One of Sigrid’s favorite stories from the old tales is about the Candlewick Stag.
” LeLe gives me a blank look. “So there are these two lovers who are forbidden by their families from being together.” We start walking again, making our way around the trees and large clumps of flowers, both of us scanning the area for candlewick plants. “They go to a pixie for help.”
“Not the greatest move,” LeLe says.
I nod in agreement. “The pixie promises she can help them for a price. They immediately agree. Then the pixie kills off both of their families in one poof of magic, turns to the lovers, and says problem solved.”
LeLe gasps in surprise.
“Yeah, always lock down the details when working with the pixies or anyone under their protection,” I continue, holding back a massive fern so she won’t get whacked in the legs by it.
“So the lovers are less than happy, to put it mildly. They beg and plead to save their families. The pixie agrees to reverse the spell while letting them stay together, but it comes at a cost. The lovers say the cost doesn’t matter.
” LeLe mutters a curse about shortsighted fools under her breath.
“The pixie does her part and poof, their family members come back to life.”
LeLe stops in a patch next to a massive gnarled-up tree while she absentmindedly rubs the handfast tattoo on her wrist that’s glowing like neon, and that’s the instant when realization slams into me like a train filled with dynamite.
We can’t stay like this forever. It’s not because of the pixies, although they are our current biggest problem.
It’s because it’s only a matter of time before she finds out what I’ve done and—even worse—what I was planning on doing.
I say “was” because there’s no way I can do it now.
Not even to save my brother and sister, wherever they are right now.
LeLe deserves more than to be my wife.
She deserves someone better than me to love her.
She deserves everything she’ll never get if we’re married.
I don’t have to look at the divorce spell, I fucking stared at it so hard the first time she sent it that the words I need to say to complete it are seared into my brain.
She’s already done her part. She gathered the ingredients, wove the spell, chanted her part of the hex and, therefore, signed it in magic, so to speak.
I just have to do my part and say the lines she highlighted and sent via flying monkeys months ago.
Undoing a spell takes far less magical energy than casting one, meaning that even with the pixie limitations on witchery, what I’m about to do won’t be a problem.
It’s the worst best thing I’ll ever do in my life.
I’m not supposed to be this guy. I’m a Svensen. I’m a bad guy. I don’t do good things.
And yet…
LeLe changed all that.
Looking down at the underbrush because I can’t look at her when I do what I have to do next, I whisper my part of the divorce spell under my breath so quietly it’s barely audible even to me.
My chest compresses like a troll is using me for a seat cushion and sucking in any oxygen isn’t an option. Everything hurts so fucking bad. I glance over at my wrist and it looks exactly like a wrist is supposed to. My head pops up before I can stop myself or prepare for the worst.
The handfast mark is gone.
“But now the lovers are dead?” she asks, no longer rubbing her unmarked wrist and looking at me as if the whole world hasn’t just ended.
Fucking hope. I, of all people, really should know better.
It takes me a second to remember how to speak, but being raised as a Svensen who learned from a young age to never ever show when you’ve just been gutted like a fish does have its benefits.
“Well, they aren’t witches anymore.” It takes more effort than I’ll ever admit out loud, but I manage to put on that lazy grin, the one I used in Vegas, and focus on something just past her.
“He’s a stag and she’s a candlewick plant.
And, because pixie magic has its own kind of twisted logic, they’re together for the rest of eternity because where you find one” — I point at the velvety yellow blooms basking in a beam of sunshine that breaks through the forest’s canopy and then turn my hand so I’m pointing a few degrees farther north at a jet-black stag watching us from a safe distance—“you find the other.”
My not-wife lets out a soft gasp before her whole body freezes as if she’s afraid of scaring the stag off.
The stag barely glances our way. His attention is completely focused on the candlewick plant as he makes his way into the sunshine illuminating the plant.
He stops next to the tall stems covered with the pale yellow flowers and brushes his muzzle against them.
“What do we do?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
I point to the forest floor between us and the stag, which is littered with dots of pale yellow. “We gather the candlewick petals that have already fallen and take them back to the throne room. He’ll follow us there.”
Concern has her gnaw on her bottom lip as she picks up the blooms. “The pixies won’t hurt him, will they?”
“Even for that bloodthirsty lot, that would be beyond the bounds,” I say, sounding a lot more confident than I’m feeling.
“No loopholes a Svensen can exploit?”
“Not in the pixie forest.” Standing, I jerk my chin toward what looks like an ordinary spiderweb strung between two low-hanging branches. What gives it away as pixie magic is that there’s still dew sparkling on it even after the sun’s been out for hours. “They weave tight spells here.”
The sound of tinkling laughter carries on the breeze even though there hasn’t even been a hint of wind before that, and the web detaches from the tree and lands on top of us, covering us in magic.
For a few seconds there’s nothing but darkness, and then I’m blinking away the brightness of the pixie queen’s throne room.
Once again LeLe and I are standing alone in the center as the pixies flutter around behind their queen. The stag stands by a basket of candlewick petals, a soft blue glow around him. Next to him is the whiteboard. Our odds have improved from certain to die to most likely to die.
I’ll take it.
“You’re not as dumb as you look, witches,” the queen says as she opens her hand, revealing the crystal dust in her palm. “It won’t be so easy with Snookums.”
I have just enough time to grip LeLe’s hand before the queen covers us in dust and we’re everywhere and nowhere all over again.