Jessica Andersen - Spellfire

“It’s okay,” he said too quickly. “I always understood, always knew you were trying to help, even if it was hard to hear sometimes. You don’t have to apologize for being ambitious.”

“It wasn’t ambition. It was fear.”

He snorted. “You? Afraid? Bull.” But his eyes narrowed. “Since when?”

“Since always.” She didn’t want to remember. But maybe that had been part of the problem. “How much of my childhood did you see when you were inside my head?” She had been afraid to ask before.

“Not much in the way of details. More flashes.” He paused. “I saw a deep, dark place, heard her shouting, felt . . . I don’t know. Numb, I guess.”

“Close enough.” Numb, helpless, angry . . . forcing her shoulders square, she met his eyes. Don’t pity me. “My parents abandoned me when I was a few months old, left me in a booth of a strip club around the corner from the tea shop, with a blanket and a twenty, like that was going to cover anything.” The anger had scabbed over through the years, as had any hope that they were going to show back up and claim her. “Nobody there wanted the cops involved, and the owner figured it’d be easiest to just make me disappear. He sent his bouncer to take care of it, but the guy sold me to the Witch instead.”

“Jesus, Myr.” And, yeah, there was the pity. Or maybe it was sympathy.

She shrugged, telling herself that it didn’t matter anymore. “She never let me forget that I owed her my life. More, she told me I couldn’t expect better than what she gave me—a bed, some food, and more than enough work to earn it. And it wasn’t like anything I saw made me think any different.” The more upstanding locals had stayed the hell away from the back alleys of bars and black magic, and the Witch’s friends—including the grabby-handed strip club owner—had given her the creeps. Add in the clueless tourists who came to the shop and looked away when they saw her bruises, and the drunken man-boys who offered her strings of beads in exchange for a look at her tits, and she’d believed the Witch when she’d said she was better off in the shop than out on the streets. More, she hadn’t dared argue. Not often, anyway.

“You were ready to get out,” Rabbit reminded her. “You stole the ceremonial knife Nate and Alexis were trying to buy, and told me I could have it if I took you with me.”

“That was just a moment of temporary bravery. One of my few.” More, the Witch vanished right after that—dead, Myr had later learned—leaving the tea shop locked tight, and Myr out on the streets. And being on her own had turned out to be just as bad as her foster mother had threatened—she had been dirty, cold, hungry and scared by the time she saw Rabbit again, recognized him. Latched on to him.

“Still, you took a stand.”

“And look where it got me. Out on the streets for a few weeks, and then, when I hooked back up with you, snatched by Iago.” She didn’t remember much about the imprisonment, only that she had been cold and afraid, and had learned firsthand that all the things the Witch had threatened were nothing compared to how bad reality could get. “It . . . I don’t know. Broke something inside me, I think, to realize that the Witch was right about me not being able to handle the world outside.”

His eyes blazed. “She wasn’t. Not even close.”

“I went from being under her thumb to being at Skywatch with you, surrounded by these huge, glittery people who could do magic—real magic—and were scrambling to save the world.” She shook her head, facing the hard truths that had finally become clear to her last night, when she’d stayed awake, staring into the darkness and making herself accept that she’d played a part in what had happened with Rabbit. “The point is that my nagging you wasn’t about the power, not the way you thought. It was about me needing to feel safe. Even though I learned how to fight, how to be a warrior, it wasn’t enough. I was still scared. And the closer the end-time got, the more scared I got . . . and the more I tried to make you be strong enough to protect both of us.”

“I wanted to,” he said, voice rough with emotion. “I still do.”

She was suddenly very aware of her heart—how it beat in her chest, feeling heavy and tender. But she couldn’t let it run the show anymore. “You can’t. You’ve got to be the crossover, and gods only know what that’s going to involve.”

A shadow came over him, though the sun-dappled air hadn’t changed. “Like the dark magic.”

“Don’t.” She would have reached out to him, but he was too far away, with the fire between them. Instead, she said, “It’s part of your powers, and you’re handling it. You should be proud of that, proud of everything you’ve accomplished . . . and I’m sorry for making you feel like you should’ve been doing more.”

“You didn’t—”

“I did. Not at the beginning, granted.” The first couple of years had been the best of her life. She had been in love, surrounded by magic, and she’d been his champion when the others had treated him like the destructive kid he’d been rather than the man he was becoming. Once the Nightkeepers had accepted him as a warrior, though, she hadn’t let up. Hadn’t been able to. “But when things started getting serious—with the countdown, the xombi outbreaks, all of it—I . . . I don’t know. I freaked. I stopped feeling safe, and instead of admitting it, even to myself, I started hounding you about being stronger, better, finding a way to use both halves of your magic.” And when he’d refused, she’d pushed harder.

He stared down into the fire, and his voice was hollow when he said, “I could’ve called you on it. Should have. Instead, I . . . I don’t know. Shut down, I guess.”

“I don’t blame you.”

But he shook his head. “I was the one who listened to Phee. You don’t need to be sorry for any of it.”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Then forget it. We’re still not close to being even after the crap I put you through.”

“Let’s call it even anyway.”

“Shit,” Rabbit said finally. There was more sorrow than anger in the word, though. “What the hell happened to us, Myr? We were perfect together.” His eyes were stark and sad . . . but he didn’t look all that surprised, letting her know that he’d figured out some of it on his own. He hadn’t known how afraid she’d been, but he’d known Phee wouldn’t have been able to get to him if their relationship had been in a better place.

Tears stung the backs of her eyes. “I think maybe we just outgrew it. Took it all for granted. Something.”

He sighed heavily and looked back into the fire. “Yeah.”

Breathing out of synch, they stared into the flames for a long moment in a silence that was both easier than she would’ve expected and harder than she could’ve imagined. They couldn’t go back—she thought they probably wouldn’t even if they could. But how were they supposed to go forward from here? She didn’t want to avoid him, but she wasn’t sure she dared spend too much time near him. Their relationship might’ve crashed and burned, but the chemistry remained. Even now, she was acutely aware of his smallest movements, and the way the black marks on his forearm looked even blacker now with the red hellmark among them.

The sight should’ve scared her, should’ve reminded her how bad the darkness could get. Instead, it sent new warmth skimming through her veins as she remembered how he’d gotten it in the first place: he’d let Iago bind him to the dark magic in exchange for her life.

It had been the first time anyone had really rescued her. And it had been the beginning of her first crush. Her first love.

Don’t go there, she told herself as her heart thudded too fast. “What are you doing out here, anyway?” she asked, needing to break the silence. “Were you looking for me?”