How could I ever have considered cutting myself away from her?
After what felt like an eternity, she finally relaxed enough to hug me back. Still tentative and wary, but with a quavering sigh that sounded like coming home after a long and draining day.
I could barely contain the relief that galloped through me as I held her. There was still a chance to fix this, then. A slim chance, even a vanishing one, but still too precious to let slip through my fingers.
I was not fucking this up again.
“I love you so much, Linden Sharee Thorn,” I whispered into her hair, feeling wildly lucky, fortunate beyond belief, that my best friend was so generous. “Forever. I can’t even imagine myself without you. I’m never, ever going to disappear on you again, I promise. And Lins, for what it’s worth . . . I’m so sorry that I suck.”
“You do,” she said, so vehemently that both of us cracked up, laughing against each other. “But seeing as we’ll always have the water tower . . . I guess I’ll accept a do-over.”
15
The Candle
I went to bed early that night; I was meeting Talia and Linden for Gauntlet lore research at Tomes first thing. But I lay wide awake for hours, unable to stop mulling over my afternoon with Lin. Though she and I hadn’t exactly reconciled, the tension between us had broken like oppressive heat extinguished by a long-overdue downpour—leaving behind a relief so heady it felt a little like new love.
I had my best friend back, and this time I wasn’t ever letting go.
When I did finally manage to drift off, I wasn’t sure what drove me from sleep. But as I came swimming up to the surface, my breath short and heart hammering, I reached out reflexively toward the candle on my nightstand and sent out a little tongue of magic to light it. The flame caught easily, without hesitation.
As the last of the sleep cleared and my heart settled down, I reached for the candle, unable to believe it. But the flame flickered lively between my hands, showing no signs of winking out. Happiness stole over me as I considered it, warm and sweet as melted butterscotch.
I had done this. I had made this little spell, entirely on my own.
Unlike the huge enchantment of the mantle, with its otherworldly feel—a magic that felt so indisputably other—this small spell was mine. And, as I tested my control over the flame, stretching it up and down like a fiery thread of taffy before winding it around my finger, I found that my control was consistent again. Maybe even fractionally stronger than it had been before I left. Even when I let the flame die out, I could feel the magic still surging inside me, glittery and buoyant, effervescently alive.
As though it had never left me at all.
I held the candle for a long while after that, cupped between my hands, so deeply happy I couldn’t go back to sleep.
Happier, if I was willing to be honest with myself, than I’d been in years.
16
Big City, Little Orphan Witch
If not particularly helpful to the cause, the Arbiters’ records of the Gauntlets turned out to be of unexpectedly top-notch entertainment value.
“I’m pleased to report that Arbiter Savannah Harlow was a deadass comedian,” Talia said, still chortling as she flipped closed one of the slim tomes, sleeved in crackled caramel leather, that I’d dug up early that morning in the Gauntlet-designated section of the Harlow archive. “Get your affairs in order, Harlow. Savannah’s out to kill.”
I held out my hands as she lobbed the volume at me from where she lay sprawled on the ancient corduroy couch, worn down to its nap, tucked into one of the attic’s corners.
“I want to see, too!” Linden exclaimed, abandoning the records she’d been reading and trotting up behind me to peer over my shoulder. “Wow, is that a—a stick figure with gigantic balls?”
“It’s perfection, is what it is,” I said gleefully, cracking up as I leafed through pages of flowing copperplate script—in sharp contrast to margins doodled with strutting stick figures, all featuring comical expressions and equally funny distinguishing marks, illustrating the one Gauntlet in which the Blackmoores had lost to the Thorns.
“She calls Evrain Blackmoore ‘the prancing ballsack’ every time she refers to him, but then strikes it through—very neatly, of course, so you can still read it just fine—and ultra-courteously replaces it with his actual name.” Talia grinned, her eyes sparkling with admiration for my irreverent ancestress. “You know, for propriety’s sake. She must have despised him.”
“Doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to picture what he must’ve been like. She, on the other hand . . .” I said, feeling genuine fondness for my grandmother several greats removed. “Clearly a legend.”