Page 51 of Just a Little Wicked (Wicked Sisters #2)

Kayson

Something is off in the Network. It almost feels . . . wicked. Have you noticed?

Jordan

Bro, I’m a little busy with my girl. Can this wait?

“ I don’t know of any Witch alive that can timewalk, but there have been a few recorded instances of Witches being able to do it in the past,” Stacy continued.

No teacher had ever had students as attentive as the Celestes were as they hung on her every word.

“It’s supposed to be really tricky, because if the Witch—or in this case Wicked—isn’t anchored in the present when she splits her soul, she can get stuck in another time. ”

Chills raced down Winter’s arms, and she and Erikson’s eyes clashed.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked quietly, rubbing his thumb down her jaw.

“I—I could feel your presence while I was there.”

Missy, who was still kneeling beside them, clapped her hands over her mouth. “He’s your anchor! That’s why you have a soulmate, Winter, so you can timewalk. Could this be why you two have been repeating lives?”

Winter was too flabbergasted to answer. By the birches, Missy had asked her why she had a soulmate when no one else they knew of did.

It was the same question that had been nagging at Winter ever since she’d realized what she and Erikson really were.

Why her ? She was the least romantic person on the planet.

Now she realized she didn’t need to be a moon-eyed romance lover to have a soulmate.

She had a soulmate because she needed one.

Erikson guarded the other half of her soul so that she could walk through time and always return.

He was her anchor, her other half firmly planted in the present.

Stacy gasped. “Elizabeth heard voices continue when she went back upstairs. Was that . . . could that have been the other Wicked talking to you ?”

Winter nodded. “It was me.”

Connor was beside himself. “This is, hands-down, the coolest thing ever.” He kissed Holly’s temple. “After your storms, of course.”

She laughed. “Of course. Winter, did the Wicked say anything else to you while you were there?”

“She said the dissent against the Shadow Council had already begun. She said they’d been waiting for me for centuries, and that I wouldn’t find what I was seeking until I stopped running from what I fear most.”

“Who’s been waiting for you for centuries?” Aunt Rose asked from her perch next to Aunt Daisy.

“The Shadow Council, I suppose. They’ve been waiting for a seer strong enough to have pastsight.

Perhaps even one who can timewalk.” Winter pinched the bridge of her nose.

“The problem is, I don’t know what the rest of it means.

What am I supposedly looking for? The Goddess-given thing the Witches hid?

And what do I fear most? I have a ton of fears. I don’t know if I can pick just one.”

Winter chewed on her bottom lip while Erikson rubbed circles into the small of her back with his thumbs.

Her aunts and sisters continued talking, but she tuned out their voices as she mulled over what the Wicked could have meant.

You will not find what you seek until you stop running from what you fear most.

What was she afraid of? She was terrified of losing her family. She was afraid of hurting innocent people with her power. She was scared of the Shadow Council. She also had an unreasonable fear of clowns, but the Wicked probably hadn’t meant that.

So what had she meant?

Winter’s power flared to life in her breast and whispered beneath her skin. It hummed as it brushed against her nerves, but she immediately shoved it back down.

“You’re not running any longer, so maybe you’ve already done what the Wicked told you to do,” Missy suggested as she stood.

Winter was going to reply, but her thought process was cut off by her power resurging, more insistent this time. The effort of keeping it suppressed made sweat break out along her hairline.

She thought she heard Erikson murmuring her name, asking her if she was all right, but she didn’t answer.

As she pushed back against her power, it became oddly more insistent.

Almost as if it were trying to communicate with her.

Suddenly she felt like she was on the cusp of understanding something fundamental.

What was Winter’s deepest, most panic-inducing fear? What was the one thing she’d been afraid of her entire life?

Herself.

She was afraid of her Wickedness and a power that she couldn’t always control. It was frightening and dark, and even more so lately as it grew in strength and tugged harder on its reins. Deep down, at the core of her psyche, she was what she feared most.

She had spent a lifetime suppressing her Wickedness.

She had refused to bow to it, refused to accept it as a part of herself, so she had forced back her visions until they’d bled through the chinks in her armor, and then she’d sealed up the cracks and pushed them down again.

The visions had grown steadily stronger since Aunt Rose’s potion had stopped working, but it wasn’t until Erikson had arrived with the other half of her soul that she’d begun to truly lose control.

It was as if it had been easier to keep herself fragmented from her Wickedness when her soul was already cleaved.

She wrapped her hands around Erikson’s wrists and squeezed hard, her name sounding somewhere at the edge of her consciousness.

She didn’t need to be told that her eyes had gone black, or that she was leaking power, but she couldn’t answer him—not yet.

She was on the precipice; she could feel herself teetering on the edge of understanding.

She had to keep her walls up and her armor on. If she allowed her Wickedness free to become a part of her, to finish melding with her soul, then wouldn’t she become Wicked?

Power skimmed over her knuckles, and she was aware that a black mist was crawling up Erikson’s arms, but he didn’t remove his hands from her waist.

“Not letting you go, Wicked,” he murmured roughly, his voice slicing through the whirlwind in her brain. The words were like a direct hit to a steel pin centered over her resistance, and it shattered.

He wasn’t afraid of her. He’d found her in every lifetime, and no matter how many ways she pushed him from her, he always sought her out again.

She blinked and noted the determined faces of her family and Stacy—but no fear.

None of them were afraid of her. She saw love in the way they’d banded together to save her from the Shadow Council.

She saw dedication. Winter would do anything for them.

Anything . And she knew they’d do the same for her.

If Winter embraced her true self, as the Wicked had said she needed to, would she fall into evil? Would she become as rotten as the Shadow Council?

There was only one way to find out.

With one last, desperate thought that at least Stacy was here if she was completely wrong about this, Winter closed her eyes and leapt.

Her power flared as she dove inside herself, swimming toward the inky center that smoldered behind her ribcage, toward the place where she kept her curse suppressed and separate from herself.

She hesitated for a moment when she reached it, and then slowly, deliberately, dissolved the cracked and trembling walls that she’d rebuilt and fortified and patched a thousand times over.

And she let it free.

Wickedness flooded her veins, thick and wet, bitter and wild.

The curse brushed tentatively against her soul—a request—so Winter did the one thing she’d never done before: she surrendered.

Darkness immediately wound around her soul and melded with it until the rift she’d trembled to hold open her entire life, sealed up.

Winter was shaking as she hesitantly felt for her Wickedness, but she no longer had to reach for it; it was already there, as present as her heartbeat.

She should have been frightened by the finality of what she’d done, but she wasn’t, because along with accepting her Wickedness had come an unexpected benefit.

Winter breathed in deeply and opened her eyes.

She was the same Winter, but she felt lighter, more capable.

Instead of being weighted down by her Wickedness, sickened by it and fractured by it—she felt empowered.

She recalled the mist from Erikson’s arms easily, as simply as if she were inhaling breath.

By doing the one thing she’d always fought against, she’d gained the one thing she’d always fought for: control.

By accepting her Wickedness as a part of her, she’d gained full mastery over it.

She knew this like she knew the sound of her own voice, the lines of her own hands.

She knew it like she knew the rhythm of her own heartbeat.

Winter turned her palm over. Mist appeared in a ball the moment she thought of conjuring it, springing into existence without effort or fear. The moment she wished it extinguished, it was gone.

Her entire life she’d felt like she was bursting at the seams, barely keeping her curse contained inside, and now that it was melded into the fabric of her soul, she no longer felt fractured and failing.

Her power would obey her just as her body obeyed her.

Just as her eyes focused when she wished, or her legs moved with unconscious command, her curse was now another limb connected to her desires and neural pathways.

You will not find what you seek until you stop running from what you fear most.

Winter had sought control, and what she had feared most was losing it. They were two sides of the same coin, and by finally accepting her greatest fear, she’d gained the one thing she’d always wanted. The irony of it was annoyingly Wicked.

Winter lifted her gaze to Erikson.

“You okay?” he asked quietly, cupping her chin and searching her gaze. “Something just happened. A shiver went through the room. And I felt something change inside.” He pressed his free palm to his chest.