Bring Me Your Midnight(36)

The words are intimate. Special. But he says them as if they’re the vilest words he’s ever spoken.

“Why are you angry?”

“Because your way of life goes against everything I stand for,” he says, shoving a hand through his hair. “Your alliances make us smaller. Your compromises make us weak.” He looks out over the water, shaking his head. “I hate you. And I want you anyway.”

His words spark a flame in my core that spreads through the rest of me, devastating everything in its path. I can’t see past it.

I don’t want to see past it.

“I can’t see you again.” I’m shocked when the words leave my mouth, when I finally make myself say what I should have said at the very start. I’m shocked by how desperate I am to turn the words into a lie, to turn them into something that results in more nights with him.

Wolfe looks at me for a single breath. “Well, then, let’s make tonight count.”

He takes my hand and pulls me back to the beach, to the unstable ground where anything can happen. And even as my heart races and my mind tell me to leave, I let him.

He doesn’t let go until we are far down the shoreline, ocean to my right and towering evergreens to my left. We are protected here. Safe. Invisible as the rest of the Witchery sleeps.

Wolfe pulls a single moonflower from his pocket and wraps it around my wrist by the stem. “For tradition’s sake,” he says.

“Where are you finding these?” I ask, looking down at the flower.

“We have them at my house, though the one I saw with you was the first I’ve seen beyond our gates. It’s been said that the very first witch was born on this island in a field of moonflowers, hundreds of them, and that instead of reaching for her mother, the first thing she touched was a blossom. You don’t practice magic only during the day because it’s more palatable to the mainland; you practice magic during the day because magic is most powerful by the light of the moon. Practicing during the day automatically weakens it.”

“I’ve never heard that,” I say. My fingers tremble as they run over the white petals, not understanding how Wolfe’s history of the flower is so different from my own. Not understanding why there is no pain, why my life is spared every time I encounter one. This damned flower has pulled on the thread of my life, and if everything unravels, I will know it started that night in the field when a flower fatal to witches proved to be anything but.

“Why doesn’t it hurt?” I finally ask, the words so quiet. So vulnerable. I hold my breath as I wait for his reply.

“Because it isn’t poisonous to witches.” Wolfe’s tone is impassive, but he watches me as if my response matters somehow.

“Why does my entire coven believe otherwise?”

Wolfe’s jaw tenses, and he looks out over the water as if considering his words. “You should ask your mother about it,” he says, and it sounds like a challenge.

“But my mother believes it’s poisonous.”

Wolfe exhales, a long, heavy sound that makes me nervous. “Just ask her.”

“Maybe I will,” I say, my fingers brushing the petals on my wrist, my stomach twisting at the thought of mentioning the flower to my mother. But something in Wolfe’s tone makes me think it’s important, and so I tuck the thought away for later.

“Good. Let’s move on. Every living thing has its own heartbeat, its own energy that it pours into the world.” Wolfe motions to a fern growing at the base of a tree, its leaves rustling in the wind. “As a witch, that energy is accessible to us, just waiting to form a connection.”

He touches his fingers to the plant and closes his eyes. He takes several deep breaths, then moves away from the fern and touches the bare dirt beside it.

“Where once there was one, another.” He whispers the words reverently, and a new fern grows from the dirt, full and vibrant and real.

“How did you do that?” I ask, watching in amazement. I move toward the plant, afraid it will vanish if I get much closer. I reach out and gently brush the leaves.

It stays where it is.

Wolfe touches the first plant again, then takes my hand and covers his own with it.

“Close your eyes and focus,” he says. “What do you feel?”

The fire in my belly rages at his touch, but I know that’s not what he’s referring to. I force myself to focus on everything else, everything other than his fingers under mine.

I’ve worked around plants my whole life, and after several seconds of concentration, I know exactly what he’s asking me. A pulsing stream of cool, clean magic waits in his hand. I feel it as clearly as the heat in my gut and the wind in my hair.

“There,” he says. “That’s it.”

Gently, I pull the magic from him. I don’t know why I think to do it, how I even know it’s possible, but it feels natural to me.

“Where once there was one, another.” I take the fern’s heartbeat and plant it in the earth.

Another fern grows before us.

I plant more and more of them, watching them sprout from the dirt one after the other. I want to plant hundreds, thousands of them, my own secret meadow I can go to whenever I want.

Another, another, another.

I laugh, utterly delighted by the feel of the plant’s energy wrapped up in my own.