Page 24

DEREK

T he Grove smells like old storms and crushed herbs.

Damp moss clings to the soles of my boots, and the air crackles with something older than any of us. Something ancient and half-wild, watching from the trees like a god with no name.

We’ve cleared a space at the heart of the ley line convergence.

Hazel said the earth needed to “breathe,” so we carved back the overgrowth and spread salt in a circle wide enough to hold four souls and a secret.

Candles flicker along the edges—some enchanted, some just stubbornly ordinary.

They throw gold and red light that dances up the trunks of the trees, casting everything in shadow and fire.

Hazel kneels in the center, hunched over her chalkwork, the hem of her shirt riding up just enough to show a thin line of skin above her waistband. Her fingers are smudged with charcoal, her knuckles scraped. She’s murmuring to herself as she redraws a glyph for the third time.

It’s beautiful. It’s chaos. It’s her.

“You’re going to wear a hole in the veil if you keep obsessing,” I say, arms crossed, trying not to pace. “We need to trust it’s ready.”

She doesn’t look up. “I don’t trust anything when it involves ritual magic and unstable ley anchors.”

“Comforting.”

She sits back on her heels and finally meets my eyes. “You want to do it wrong and risk another tear?”

“No,” I admit. “I want you to stop punishing yourself for doing it right the first time.”

She scowls, but it doesn’t land.

We’re both too tired to pretend we’re not scared.

Footsteps crunch softly behind us—Thorn, with a weathered satchel slung across his chest, followed by Milo balancing a ceramic bowl in both hands like it contains the fate of the universe.

Because, in a way, it does.

Thorn opens the satchel and pulls out ritual components with a kind of reverence that only someone old and half-made of myth can manage: a jagged silver dagger wrapped in red silk, a vial of moon oil, a length of black thread wound with copper, and four polished stones—each one pulsing faintly with residual magic.

“The Grove will remember this,” Thorn says, kneeling beside Hazel. “What we seal tonight must be born of more than power. It needs something real.”

“Love,” Milo says quietly. “It needs love.”

Hazel’s hand curls into a fist.

I step closer to her. “We have that.”

She swallows hard. “Yeah,” she says. “We do.”

We arrange the stones at the cardinal points, each tied to one of us. Milo’s hands shake as he presses his stone into the dirt. Thorn moves like wind and ritual memory. I grip my own so tightly my palm aches.

Hazel presses hers in last.

Then she reaches for the thread, fingers trembling.

“We bind this Grove,” she says softly, repeating the rite. “In blood. In love. In truth.”

Her voice catches.

I kneel beside her. “We don’t have to rush.”

She shakes her head. “No. I need to do this before I fall apart.”

Thorn draws a deep breath. “The circle is complete.”

The wind stirs around us, slow and deliberate, curling through the trees and lifting the candle flames. The salt glows faintly blue. The ley lines beneath us shiver, humming low, like they’re waiting.

Milo starts the chant, his voice soft, steady, younger than it should be for this kind of magic.

Then Thorn joins.

Then me.

Hazel doesn’t speak right away.

Her eyes flick to mine.

And in that second, I see everything.

The fear.

The love.

The need to believe she’s enough.

She lifts her hand, blade glinting.

And we begin.

The moment Hazel’s blade slices across her palm, the Grove responds.

It exhales.

Not metaphorically. Not magically.

Literally.

A wind pushes outward from the center of the circle like breath from the earth’s lungs. The candles gutter, the trees sway, and the symbols etched into the soil flare a hot, silver white. Magic shifts—raw and hungry, drawn to the blood staining Hazel’s hand as she presses it to the center glyph.

“I offer the truth,” she whispers.

Her voice shakes.

“I am afraid. Every day. I pretend I’m not because pretending is easier than being left behind. I’ve been running for so long, I forgot what it felt like to stay. But I’m here. And I choose this. I choose to stay. ”

The Grove rumbles.

My heart stutters.

Her blood pulses brighter against the glyph.

Then the blade is passed.

To me.

It’s heavy in my hand—cool hilt, warm edge. It hums with something ancient. Something that remembers rituals before language had bones.

I press the tip to my palm.

Drag it down.

Pain sharpens my focus.

I let the blood fall.

“I offer vulnerability,” I say, low.

The wind stills.

The silence leans in.

“I have seen love rot. I have buried it in earth and watched it decay in my hands. I’ve let myself believe I was better alone, because alone meant no one else had to bleed.”

Hazel’s head lifts.

Her eyes meet mine.

“But she made me want again. Made me feel. And I’d rather be broken beside her than whole without her.”

The ground shudders.

The glyph under my blood lights up like wildfire licking through frost.

Thorn’s voice joins in, low and grounding, his hands splayed against the dirt as he intones the stabilizing chant. Milo’s voice wraps around his like ivy—fierce, young, hopeful.

Hazel grips my free hand with her own, our blood mixing in the circle’s heart.

The Grove begins to glow .

And then I feel it.

The third offering waiting in my throat.

Love.

It hammers in my ribs, thick and aching.

And I know what I have to say.

I squeeze her hand. Step forward.

And speak the words I’ve never said to anyone in two centuries of half-living.

“Hazel Blackmoore.”

She gasps quietly.

“I love you.”

The moment I say it—mean it—the entire circle explodes with light.

Not blinding. Not violent.

Warm.

Golden.

Like sunrise wrapped in memory.

Like every part of the Grove knows we mean it.

The ritual hums louder now—reaching a fever pitch as the symbols rotate, lift from the ground, spinning midair in radiant arcs.

The trees groan. The earth trembles. The spell wants to be finished.

But it’s not done yet.

We’re not done.

Not until the Grove decides.