Page 144 of How to Flirt with a Witch

Natalie opens her closet and grabs a cylindrical container from the side. It rattles as if it’s full of marbles as she straps it across her back like a quiver.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Thesomething usefulFiona told me to get. Bullets, sort of. Perfect spheres, pure copper. Optimized to be easier for a witch to manipulate than any other element. They’re illegal except in desperate circumstances.”

I nod and turn around, ready to race back out there. “Let’s go.”

“Wait.” Natalie seizes my forearm, pulling me back to her. “Katie, I should’ve told you everything. I don’t want to keep anything from you anymore, even if it gets us in trouble. I’m sorry I kept you in the dark—”

“I forgive you.” Her words wash over me, soothing all the hard feelings. The sincerity in her eyes, the desperation in her tight grasp, it all tells me how much she wanted to protect me. Besides, she isn’t the only one who has to apologize. Phoning Freddie wasn’t the first time I went around her to get what I wanted, but I’ll make sure it’s the last. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have gone behind your back and talked to Freddie. That was reckless and disrespectful, and nothing like that will ever happen again.”

“But I get why you did it.” She slides her hand down my arm to entwine our fingers. “I should’ve told you more about what sort of magic we’re dealing with. Fuck the oath. You deserve to know.”

I press my lips together, attempting a smile. “Thanks.”

She lifts a shoulder. “We’ve all explored the issue at one time or another, and you had just as much a right to.”

I furrow my brow. “What issue?”

“Whether magic should be locked away.”

I search her face, trying to read her thoughts in the fine lines around her eyes. “I thought you’d all made up your minds on the matter.”

She shifts on her feet, a hint of discomfort tightening her expression. “What are we supposed to do with a power that’s so spectacular and so dangerous all at once? Is it possible to make sure magic is only used for good?”

I don’t have an answer. Maybe nobody does, and that’s why wars have been waged over it—why a battle is being fought as we speak.

But the fact she’s telling me this, confiding something so serious and secretive, means more than anything else she’s said.

I step in and take her face in my hands, standing on my toes to bring our lips together.

For a moment, she freezes, and then her hands are on me, her palms dragging up my waist, her arms pulling me close.

She kisses me with soft, insistent lips, her hair tickling my cheeks and sending fire through me. One hand glides around the back of my head and tangles in my hair, the other tugging me closer until every inch of me is pressed against her.

As she opens my lips, deepening the kiss, a ripple of pleasure runs down my core and momentarily drowns out everything else. I surrender, arching into her. Her warmth seeps through my shirt, her hips pressing into mine, and her scent transports me away from all this fear and pain. I’m lost in her taste, in the way she wraps around me as if to protect me from the danger outside.

Then her arms loosen, and we step apart, reality crashing back.

“I checked on you over these last couple of weeks.” Her tone is urgent, desperate. She stoops her head to hold my gaze. “I need you to know that. I want you to know I didn’t just let you wander out in the world with the Madsens on the loose—”

I kiss her again to stop her rambling. “I know,” I whisper into her lips.

There’s more I want to say, words that encapsulate how I feel about her and how much it would destroy me to lose her. But now’s not the time, and we can’t waste another moment.

I take her hand and tug her out the door, back toward the lounge. As our pounding footsteps echo off the walls, mirroring my racing heartbeat, the gauntlet warms against my skin.

Suffocating panic bubbles up, and I swallow it down, forcing all the what-ifs from my mind. The unknown outcome of the fight we’re diving into… The threat that the Madsens might win…

And the possibility that I might have just kissed Natalie Zacharias for the last time.

Chapter 35

The Right to Magic

We emerge in thelounge to rejoin the fight in numb shock. It’s like someone took a wrecking ball to the place. Natalie pushes aside heaps of rubble littering the ground where booths and the bar once stood. We stumble through, smoke and dust burning my eyes and throat. Ahead, the fireplace and stone chimney lie in ruins, a smoldering pile that sends plumes of dark smoke curling toward the ceiling.

Resounding cracks and shouts assault my ears. In the haze, more Alchemists have arrived to help, their green robes billowing in cross-winds as magic flies to and fro. My heart lifts a little as our defenses form a wall between us and the Madsens, stopping them from reaching the corridors.