Page 63 of Big Little Spells
And it isn’t protection I want.
“Let me touch you,” I say.
There is the slight flicker of surprise in his eyes, not quite a jerk, but an involuntary movement in his body. I can’t tell if it’s some kind of flinch or what.
“There is no need,” he says in the cold voice that might have scared me once. Might have put my back up, once.
“You believe in things that are meant to be,” I whisper.
His eyes flare, but his voice grows colder. “Are you not concerned that you are a Chaos Diviner? Perhaps you ought to run and tell your little group of freedom fighters that your power might just destroy them if you don’t wield it correctly.”
I probably will be concerned with that at some point, but this is tonight. And tonight is Beltane. I really want to know who is meant, as it happens.
I step toward him. “I’m concerned that you’re afraid to let me touch you.”
“I do not fear much of anything, witchling. And neither of us has time for such childish games.”
I laugh at that. At him. “You have all the time in the world,” I counter.
This time, he does not remind me my time is limited. He looks at me, and there is something in that expression that makes me realize...
There is a man in there. Under the finery, the power, the years and years of watching the world go by and no doubt organizing it to suit him, he’s still a person. Not a figure.
Not a fantasy.
A man.
“It won’t do us any good,” he grits out, and it might be the most honest thing he’s said to me. Ever.
I could pretend I don’t know what he means, but I’ve never been any good at pretending. I smile, and it’s not daisies. “Nicholas, someone should have told you. I’m not the good sister.”
But he straightens those wide shoulders and gathers himself like the warrior he once was. The warrior I saw in a vision tonight, wielding a weapon I’ve only seen in museums. “That will be enough for tonight, Rebekah.”
An order. A dismissal.
Too bad for him I’m a woman who walks through fires and burns herself strong. “Maybe I’ll decide when it’s been enough, for a change.”
“No.”
He tries to send me away, but it’s happened too many times and I know it’s coming.
And this time, I do just what he invited me to try back at the bar two weeks ago.
I stop him.
18
LIGHT SPARKS OFF THE place where my magic stops him, his hand extended and frozen in midair. There is a full moment of shock on his face, and it’s reflected in the air. Even the fires all around us still.
I want to believe this is Nicholas Frost, immortal witch, being impressed.
If it is, it doesn’t last. That impatient anger I saw for the first time at the bar reasserts itself across his features, and he doesn’t bother to hide it. While he invited me to fight him off two weeks ago, I imagine he thought it’d be on his terms. When the stakes didn’t matter to him.
They seem to matter to him now. He tries to send me away once more. I feel the yank of it, that deep inner tug, but I plant my feet—literally and figuratively. I use all that clarified power inside of me to block his spell.
Then I fling it back at him.
I nearly shout with victory when his boot scrapes against the floor of the widow’s walk. Just the tiniest millimeter, like the force of my magic set him back only that much, even with all his magic blocking it. But he’s already sending another burst of that intense energy of his directly at me, clearly intended to take me far away from here.