Page 3 of Hexual Healing
I was weightless.Not floating.Not falling.Just…unstuck.
Untethered.
The pressure against my skin vanished.The cursed heat from Illanya’s breath evaporated.My lungs suddenly remembered how to breathe in one stuttering gasp.
I blinked.
Gray.Everything around me was a dusky charcoal color, like twilight smeared across wet parchment.Floating, muted golden motes of magic drifted through the space like fireflies too exhausted to glow.
I was in the InBetween.
The magical cul-de-sac between where you were and where you were going.It was usually skipped over in a blink when teleportation spells fired correctly.But I’d burned the rune half-finished.The sigil wasn’t completed with the standard grounding glyph.
I was well and truly stuck.
“Gary?”I whispered.
No answer.The glovebox was gone.
Duh!
No car.No Gary.No up or down.Just me and a half-formed curse nestled in my chest like a second heartbeat.
I felt like I was made of splinters and static.The curse hadn’t finished rooting itself yet.It was waiting.Lurking.
I drew a sigil in the air with two fingers, the rune trailing blue sparks behind them that faded out unnaturally fast.
Nothing.
Tried again.
Still nothing.
I was definitely tapped for now, at least.My magic hadn’t rebalanced yet after the last spell.I was barely holding it together with hope and caffeine.My nose itched from the leftover stench of sulfur clinging to me like a stinky cloud.
“You’ll never find love unless the one meant for you dies.”
I closed my eyes.For a second, I let the grief hit me.Not because of what it meant, but because of who cast it.Illanya didn’t make idle threats.She made promises she delivered in fire and blood and, apparently, custom curses whispered into the cosmic void.
She’d always been a little cray-cray, possessive, toxic, but this?
This wasn’t about the guy.
She hadn’t cursed me because of the hex I’d given him.There was no way it even would have worked on her.It was a standard, basic-bitch-level breakup spell.Dragons were resistant to magic like that.It never even stood a chance.
This was deeper.More personal.
A memory slipped in, the look on her face the last time I saw her.Her expression when I walked away.The way she didn’t scream.The way she didn’t beg.Just said,“This isn’t the end of us.”
Well, shit.
I floated in silence, breath shallow, heart pounding.
And then the world jerked back into motion.
* * *
The InBetween hadn’t just spit me out so much as it…sneezed.