My mother tilts her head to the side as she listens. “Yes, that’s all true. If you have something helpful to propose, I’m open to hearing it, but I don’t need you to recount the things I already know.”
I pause before continuing. She’ll hate what I’m about to say, but I don’t see any other way out. “You can’t keep rushing your magic into the sea. Give it to us instead.”
She takes a sharp breath, then exhales slowly. “Explain to me exactly what you mean.”
“Rush your magic to us. We’re strong enough to hold it. There aren’t enough of us to undo the damage the rushes have caused with our magic alone, but with your excess magic as well, we’d be able to. We could fix the currents and heal the island. And the mainlanders would never know that your magic is what nearly killed their ruling family.”
“This was your idea?” Her tone is sharp and pointed, and my chest hurts as I recognize what’s in her voice: betrayal. She feels betrayed. By me.
“Yes.”
“Absolutely not.” She says it with finality, strong words that land heavy in the space separating us. My father is staring off into the distance the way he does when he’s deep in thought. His hand is still firmly around his pestle, but he hasn’t started working again.
He’s considering what I said.
“Ingrid,” Galen says from beside me, “this would work. It’s a smart idea, one I wish I had come up with on my own.”
“It’s a smart idea for you,” my mother says. “It would make your coven significantly stronger. You could use that power for anything. It’s off the table.”
They stare each other down, and I realize how tenuous their relationship is. The new coven protects the old coven by keeping their existence a secret. If the mainland knew about us, they would do everything in their power to eradicate the use of high magic. And my mother is right—if the new coven rushed their excess magic to us, the power dynamics would shift dramatically.
We’d be strong enough to put up a fight, far stronger than we are today. If we weren’t careful with all that magic, we could accidentally get the attention of the mainland, and that would completely destroy the relationship the new coven has spent generations working to build.
“What if we spelled it?” I say, and my mother and Galen both turn to look at me. “What if we bound the excess magic to the full moon, ensuring we could only use it once a month? We would meet you at your rushes, and you would know exactly when and how the magic was being used because you could watch us do it.”
“That would give them an awful lot of power over us,” Galen says.
“Not really,” I counter. “You’d still be stronger than you are now. You could make the currents worse if you were dissatisfied with how you were being treated. The magic would be bound to the moon, but you could still use it for whatever you wanted. It would just make it difficult for you to hide anything from the new coven.”
Galen isn’t looking at me, though. He’s looking at my mother. They watch each other, neither of them saying a word.
“The mainland protects the new coven. The new coven protects us. And we protect the earth.” As soon as I say it, I’m sure this is how it’s supposed to be. I’m completely overcome, realizing that the path I gave up, the life I turned my back on, was all in service of something bigger than me. Bigger than Landon and bigger than the new coven and bigger than high magic.
My mother is considering my words—I know she is—and it’s more progress than Galen ever could have made on his own.
This is my role, and I feel my roots take hold in this soil and drink of its nourishment until I punch through the earth and bloom.
Wolfe takes my hand in his. “She’s right, Dad,” he says, his voice sure. Steady.
“I know she is,” Galen says. “What do you say, Ingrid?”
My mother doesn’t respond. She leans back in her chair and looks past us, thinking things over. “I say it’s worth trying,” she finally says. “We’ll have to set clear boundaries before we begin, and given that my coven thinks yours no longer exists, we will have to get on the same page before presenting this idea, making it clear that you are as much a surprise to me as you are to them. And there is the matter of ensuring this stays hidden from the mainland. We can go over the details once we’ve both had time to consider the arrangement and speak with our councils. And we will of course stop rushing our magic to you at once if you do anything that is even slightly questionable. But it’s worth trying.”