Page 127 of The Unbound Witch

“If I could take this moment and live in it forever, I would,” he said, quietly. “I’ve never known anything to be so unbreakable and so fragile at the same time. I think I will need you every second of every minute for the rest of forever and then five minutes more.”

A blush danced across my face as he looked at me with such awe. I wondered what he truly saw.

“Every second of every minute for the rest of forever is already yours. You can have all the minutes beyond that. In every space of time, in every world, my love, I am yours. Forever.”

Words laced with fear danced between us like a song as we held each other close. Though this night had ended with a renewed sense of purpose, a reminder of the future we were fighting for … It also brought its own version of goodbye.

53

RAVEN

“He’ll do something he’ll regret if you don’t keep yourself out of the thick of danger,” Torryn warned me as we sat before a crackling fire watching Bastian pace along the northern coast of the Fire Coven, kicking at the charred ground while waiting for Atlas and Kirsi to recover the Storm Coven Grimoire.

The shifter had always been there to offer his wise counsel without prejudice, but in this, he left his warning somewhere between his careful lines of observation.

I took his hand and laid my head against his arm, soaking in the warmth. “I won’t stay back when our family is in danger. I can’t do it, Tor. You wouldn’t ask it of him, don’t ask it of me.”

He chuckled. “Leave it to Bash to find someone that challenges his level of stubbornness. Just do me a favor and don’t be reckless. If you can take someone out, do it. Put it in your mind now that you cannot hesitate. Hesitation is a breeding ground for—”

“Disaster. You sound like him, you know.”

“I trained him. I watched him grow from a foolish little prick into a fearsome leader. But a lot of his lessons have been learned the hard way and, though that’s never stopped him, it has molded him into something harder than he ever should have been. It serves him well, but you, Little Witch, have no time to learn those lessons.”

I picked a piece of dry bark from the ground, snapping it in my fingers before tossing it into the fire. “I wasn’t trained like you were as shifters, but my grandmother was a force to be reckoned with. And so was my mother, if she needed to be. I am a product of my raising and I’m not afraid of them.”

He smirked, nudging Nym with his broad shoulder. “Please tell your friend there’s nothing wrong with a healthy dose of fear.”

Nym had been a million miles away, lost in her own thoughts as she stroked her familiar’s spine. She smiled, though she couldn’t meet my eyes. “Fear only means you will suffer twice, shifter. Once at the onslaught of weakness, and again when faced with the thing you fear. It is far better to acknowledge your fear and then conquer it.”

“Wise,” Bastian said, walking over to kiss me on the head before gesturing to Tor. “Might as well get some hand-to-hand in to kill time.”

Tor pushed himself off the log, far less stiff than he’d been the day before. They moved away, stretching before they took opposing stances. Though I watched them intently, curious whether it would be useful in a battle against witches, I couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the precise movements.

Bastian was light on his feet, faster than anything I’d ever seen. Far more graceful than he’d been on that mountain with me. But Torryn was something else. Like a mass of muscle and mind, predicting movements long before they were initiated, challenging Bastian in a way I never could.

“Do you think she’ll forgive me?” Nym broke the silence with a question I wasn’t prepared to answer.

I grabbed another piece of bark from the ground and picked at it with my fingers, turning them black. “Kirsi protects her heart with an iron cage. It’s hard to get in, but once you do, she loves with everything she has. Equally, if she’s scorned, she isn’t going to easily get over it.”

Sighing, she slid her feet forward, leaving a path in the black earth. “I know. We’re the same in so many ways. I need her. But … I don’t understand it. How did you get the deja to fulfill your wish?”

“If you’re thinking about trying to capture another one, forget it. They’re gone now.”

“No. I just … She came to you and not to me and I don’t understand why.”

I whipped around so fast my hair flew across my face. “What did you just say?”

“I wished for her too. Not to come back, but … to forgive me.”

I leapt from the log I sat on, mind reeling. “You wished for Kirsi to come here? To forgive you for killing her? Nym, does she know?”

She smoothed her feet over the marks in the ground, erasing them, her eyes on the small flames in the flickering fire. “She won’t talk to me. Wouldn’t give me a chance yesterday.”

“Tell me exactly what you said. How you said it. What the deja said back.”

“Ophelia attacked me in the Fire Coven because I waited for her to trap the little thing, and then I stole it before she could wish. When I got away, the deja said the stolen wish was unique. That’s all. I knew I wasn’t going to win the Trials when you’d already beat me in points and ran into the forest, so instead of wishing for proof that I’d caught it, I fell to my knees and begged for Kirsi’s forgiveness.”

“Exactly what did you say?”