Page 20 of Bad Witch

The movie started, flicking up on the wall from the projector and everyone cheered. The title came up on the screen.

The Princess Bride.

We’d seen it before, but it was a favorite. I settled in to watch, and minutes in I was fucking mesmerized, not by the movie but by the little witch at my side. She was glued to the screen as it played. Temp laughed and cheered and called out with everyone else, fully immersed. Then every now and then she’d pop a candy in her mouth and her delight would skyrocket. I wanted to lift her off her seat and put her on my lap so badly my palms itched. I wanted to feel her laughter as the vibrations moved through her sweet little body. I wanted the soft warmth of her pressed against me so there was nothing between us.

I wanted so many things right then, and I had no idea how to go about getting any of them.

What the fuck did I do next? Tempest was my mate. Did I just come out and tell her? Did I wait for her to clue in? Relic’s female had been seriously jumpy, and he’d had to work his way in over time. Willow had wanted nothing to do with War, and Jagger had convinced himself that there was no way Sutton was his and almost fucked it up completely. And Lothar and Rox, well, that was another whole messed-up situation. I didn’t want to fuck this up with Tempest.

As hard as it was for me to go slow, I had to figure out the right way to go about this. I didn’t want to scare her off, and the way she was, so sweet and, yeah, easily pushed around, I didn’t want to accidentally bully her into it either.

My little female had a whole lot of secrets, that I knew. But after the way Mags had reacted, and the way she’d warned me not to say anything about whatever had gone down at that house I’d tracked her to, the way she’d just vanished, I’d forced myself to hold back. Add on the things Willow had said, and I had a whole lot of alarms going off. Something was up with Tempest, something she was trying to keep hidden. If I came at her with everything I was feeling right then, she’d run. I had to coax her into sharing with me, I had to make sure she knew she could trust me. Could count on me.

I needed her to want this, to want me as much as I did her.

I just had to figure out how the hell to do that.

Tempest slid another piece of pie past her full lips as she turned the page on one of the books Willow had left for me, a little frown forming between her brows. “This is so interesting,” she said, then licked pie from her fork. “Don’t you think?”

“Hmm?” I was having trouble focusing on anything but her mouth right then. The gloss had worn off, and her lips were a soft pink. She had the prettiest mouth I’d ever seen.

“This part here,” she said, turning the book to me and sliding her finger across the page. “It sounds like there was some kind of natural disaster.” She tilted her head. “Rivers washed away crops, rocks fell from the sky, and the sun was darkened by unrelenting shadow for a full rotation of the sun,” she read. “I’ve heard of this. They called it the darkest night. No one knew if the sun would ever return.”

“When was this?” I said.

“I don’t know exactly, but from what I was taught, it was roughly eight hundred years ago.” She paused, an odd look on her face.

“What is it?”

She licked her lips. “Something’s tugging on my magic. Did Willow say anything more about this book? Or if she’d found anything else?”

“No.”

Temp closed her eyes and lifted her hand, hovering above its pages. When she opened her eyes, black swirls like smoke danced around her fingers before settling in the shape of three jagged peaks resting on the ancient parchment.”

I’d never seen her do any magic other than the healing kind. It was fascinating to watch her like this. “What is that?”

“Someone’s trying to show us something,” she said huskily.

“Who?”

She lightly traced the peaks. “I have no idea.”

“Do you know what it is?” I said.

She tilted her head, studying the smoky image. “Cliff peaks in Oldwood Forest. I’m sure of it.”

“You’ve seen them?”

“I have.”

What the fuck was she doing in the forest?

Before I could tell her to never go into that forest alone, she motioned down at the book again. The top of each peak had settled around a single word on the page. One. Of. Three.

“One of three?” I looked back up at her.

“Yes,” she murmured, her eyes lighting up. “I wasn’t sure, but now…these peaks, they represent three priestesses, witches,” she said. “Their lives were devoted to worshipping the great goddess Tera, or the mother as she’s often referred to.”