Page 38 of Just a Little Wicked (Wicked Sisters #2)
Winter
Heads up—Atlantes figured out who you are.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch
It was only a matter of time.
“ O h my God— what ?” Winter stared at the black smoke gently tickling her palms and felt the pleased hum of her power in her veins. It was . . . happy that she was working with it.
Alina smiled. “Your powers are what you want them to be. They are a raw source within you that can be fashioned and shaped into what you desire. Yes, you’ve been given the innate talent to see visions, and someone who hasn’t been given that talent will never be able to do what you do, but you’re more than random visions being forced on you.
Your well is overflowing, Winter. Guide it.
Make it take shape. Funnel it to where you desire.
Right now, you’re going to mold it into a shield to keep your timeline safe. ”
“You might want to hurry,” Atlantes ground out, interrupting Alina.
Beads of sweat were slipping down his temples and his jaw was so tight it trembled.
Now that Winter was tuning into the feeling of her own power, she could also feel his magic.
It was incredible; she could practically see his magic pulsing from him in endless green sparks, pushing back the world around them, encasing them in a tinted bubble that would keep everyone outside safe.
“This is wild,” Winter whispered.
Alina smiled even as she edged toward Atlantes, as if the magic spilling from him would help ease some of the uncomfortable physical effects of being in close proximity to Winter’s unleashed Wickedness.
“Your power is a part of you, Winter. It’s a living, breathing piece of your soul, entwined in the very fabric of your being.
You could no more disentangle it from the fabric of your soul than you could the threads woven in a rug.
Now I want you to take the physical manifestation of your power and create a shield around your timeline.
Maybe your shield will be a cloak or a bubble—it can be whatever you want it to be.
Imagine it, and it will spring into existence. ”
Winter retreated into her brain, and for the first time in her life she felt at harmony with what she was.
She gently directed her power to her timeline, which she’d imagined as heavy oak doors leading to the past, present, and future.
Her power, a thick, black fog, encased the doorway to her future, sealing the cracks and creating an impenetrable smoke screen that hid it from prying eyes.
“Atlantes, can you try to call forth a vision of Winter’s future?” Alina asked.
He grunted, and his expression tightened even further. How was he not only shielding against her immense power, but also actively using magic? It seemed impossible that he could be so powerful.
Winter sensed Erikson behind her, leaning forward with his elbows on thighs and his hands clasped loosely between his knees as he watched them in fascination.
While Winter waited for Atlantes to divine her future, to pronounce her shield worthy or not, she imagined her sister Missy’s timeline, and she hid that with smoke as well.
She continued through her family tree, creating shields for Holly, her aunts, Connor, and Erikson.
When Atlantes shook his head, Winter said, “Try Erikson.”
“I will,” he ground out, “but you should know that seeing into the future is far from my specialty. Your shield may not stand against a more equipped Wicked seer.” His fists clenched as he glared at Erikson, and a few moments later shook his head again.
“Are you shielding my future, Win?” Erikson asked, his eyebrow lifted.
She nodded, overcome with the rightness singing through her blood.
Emboldened by her success, she shielded her current and past doors, then continued to the same for those she loved.
Could she hold so many shields in place at once when her power receded back into the dormant depths of her mind and she was just normal Winter again?
Your power is a part of you, Winter . Alina’s words rang in her mind, and Winter realized that thinking of herself as “Normal Winter” and “Wicked Winter” had been dividing her sense of self for a long time without her even realizing it.
“I can’t hold out much longer,” Atlantes warned. He was visibly trembling. “Can you reel in your power, Wicked?”
She would have been insulted at the question if he hadn’t already had to nullify her power that very morning when she’d lost her handle on it.
But now that she was working with it rather than trying to trap and suppress it, it felt malleable.
Natural. Recalling it back into the space within her breast felt as simple as the act of breathing.
Once it was secured inside her, she checked the shields in her mind to make sure they were still in place.
She hadn’t felt Atlantes probing at them, which meant she likely wouldn’t know when the Shadow Council discovered she’d created them.
And she had no doubt they would discover it, and they wouldn’t like it.
Atlantes sagged against the wall as the magic and the power in the room collapsed, breathing as if he’d just run a sprint. Alina’s coloring was off as well, and Winter had to keep swallowing repeatedly so that the sudden shift in the atmosphere didn’t send her lunch all over the floor.
She sank into the chair beside Erikson, and he reached over to clasp her hand.
She didn’t pull away. She’d begun to realize that whenever there was a point of contact between them, she lost the feeling that she was going to fly apart into a thousand pieces.
She could focus on the roughness of his hands and the grounding sense of peace that radiated from his touch.
She squeezed his hand, and he flashed her a smile that held a hint of awe.
It took all three of them several minutes of quiet to regroup, to re-tighten their coils of magic and power. “Thank you,” Winter finally said, clearing her throat. “You should know the Shadow Council can’t see your future, Atlantes. They were surprised by that.”
Atlantes arched a brow. “And you believed them?”
She hesitated. She tended to take things at face value, assuming most people were being honest. She realized in that moment how stupid she was for thinking anything was as it seemed with the Shadow Council. “You think they can see your timeline?”
“No,” he said smugly, “but I’d eat my own couch if I believed they’d never tried before and were ‘surprised’ by anything.
Not to brag,” Atlantes said, and she barely refrained from rolling her eyes because the man had an ego the size of Everest, “but my shields are impenetrable. Shielding might not be my particular talent, but I am a Pillar Witch.”
Winter idly wondered what his particular talent was. What Stacy’s talent was.
She turned her attention to Alina. “You said some Witch seers can manipulate visions that other seers have. What did you mean by that?”
“It’s extremely taboo, but some very skilled, very powerful Witch seers can ‘plant’ visions in the minds of other seers.
It’s nasty magic and hard to detect. From what I’ve read, the only way a Witch can tell if her vision is true or false is by the feel of it.
Planted visions leave a bitter taste on the Witch’s tongue, or simply feel wrong . ”
Winter leapt to her feet, her hand tugging free from Erikson’s and her entire body shaking. Atlantes’ eyes glowed brighter and he straightened from the wall. “What?”
“The vision of the Shadow Council murdering my family,” she choked out. “It lasted longer than any vision I’ve ever had, and it felt sickly and unnatural. I thought the reason was because my family was being murdered, but now . . .”
“Now you think the Shadow Council might have planted it,” Alina finished for her. She darted a look of concern at Atlantes. “What could that mean?”
“It means they don’t actually intend to kill my family,” Winter answered for him. “They were using it as the stick to force me join.” She turned to Erikson, and saw in his eyes that his brain was making connections at warp speed. “It means . . .”
“ . . . that we have no idea what their real end game is,” he finished for her.
Erikson had been quiet ever since they left Atlantes, allowing her the space to mull over everything she’d learned that afternoon.
“What do you think?” she finally asked after they’d packed their bags and checked out of the motel.
Although it was only seven o’clock at night, it was pitch dark except for the flickering streetlamps and the glow of the motel sign flashing “vacancy” over the parking lot.
The truck idled beneath them, the lights casting shadows across Erikson’s face.
“I think they’re afraid of you.”
Of all the things she’d thought he might say, that had not been on the list. “The Shadow Council?”
“Yes. They’re afraid of you and your sisters.
They don’t know the extent of your powers, but they know they’re extraordinary.
They know you’re your mother’s daughter, and that you and your sisters have every reason to seek vengeance against them for what they’ve done.
My best guess? They’re trying to leash the three of you before that can happen.
Getting you to join is the first step in accomplishing that.
That way, your sisters can’t be forewarned of their actions. ”
“But I’ve only ever had the one vision of them, and it was the one they planted. They probably have a strong shielder on the council.” She tugged her lip between her teeth and then sighed. “I don’t know, Erikson. I just want to go home.”