Page 187 of The Reaping Rose

I feel a brush of her fingers against my ear when she tucked my hair back.

I’m flooded with memories of her. Of things long forgotten, as if my mind is a series of rooms and these doors had been closed.

When did I close them?

Magic whips around us. Mine tries to find its way through hers, but the more they tangle, the more her shadows knock against this wall in my chest. Something rattles beyond it, pulling me in a hundred different directions.

A breeze catches in Hazel’s hair. It’s never done that before. The wind has never moved her. Black strands dance around her shoulders. She smells like plums and raspberries. Impossibly sweet, with a tinge of bitterness. I want to sink my teeth in. She smells so good that my mouth waters.

From the corner of my eye, Fae fall on the sand; no matter how hard Lochlan pushes back with his magic, it begins to falter. He’s an air wielder, which I assume is why he can defend against Hazel’s magic better than most, but it’s starting to crack. All around us, bodies fall.

My magic wraps around her arms of darkness. I link us together, pulling the threads of her in one by one as I stare into her eyes.

She’s an all-consuming night.

“It wasn’t the yellow flowers I liked,” she whispers, her magic slowly pooling as I weave a shell around us. “It was the vines that tied them to the trees. Inside the bark, the trees were already rotting. But those vines wrapped their death in beauty.”

Another tear slips down her cheek. This one as cold as her skin. As cold as her smile—as her eyes.

My magic finally seals around us, but it does not quiet her rage; it locks me in her cage of nightmares. The shadows scream, and I wonder if this is what they do in her mind. Whispering and cackling at each other. They crawl my skin, and I’m itching for something to relieve the unending pressure.

Visions flood my head.

And still, that single hand of darkness knocks against my chest.

“Remember. See it.”

But I don’t see anything through Hazel’s pitch-black grief except her, the opposite of light. The darkness in the sky. Sadness spills down her cheeks and into my hands, but there is no pulling back.

Remember.

Remember.

Her magic finds its way through every pore, pausing at a memory that won’t quite unlock. No matter how loud her shadows whisper in my ears, or how deep the claws of her shadows scratch, there is something they cannot reach.

“You need to stop, Hazel.” I brush my thumb over her cheek. “It’s done. You need to stop. Please.”

Grief swells in her gaze. It rages against my magic. Her lip wobbles as she takes a breath, and her shadows start to wrap back inward. They tunnel into her fingers, her body, her heart. With every inhale, she pulls them together. With every exhale, she calms them. But it does not loosen the weight in her eyes.

“There you go.” I keep my hands locked on her face, brushing my thumbs under her lashes and not letting her take her eyes off me. I’m carefully positioned between her and her brother’s body. “Breathe.”

She does.

Hazel takes a deep breath that twines through the wind like a key. It snags those scratching fingers of magic and pulls them back. A moment of relief releases everything.

The final lock unwinds as the beach quiets, and that door in my mind opens. A door that has been closed so long I forgot it existed.

With the fading whisper of Hazel’s magic in my head, I hear what falls from the depths of her heart. A truth she had hidden. A secret in the wind. The answer to everything raging inside me.

Chapter 64

Elorie

Callum’s cheeks pale. His fingers fall from Hazel’s face. But she doesn’t flinch. Her magic doesn’t lash out as his drifts away. Something even more terrifying takes the place of the rage.

Defeat.

Utter loss that sends a shock wave of pain through the realm. Her grief is something we’ve all felt, but to see it embodied in the pale drain of her cheeks offers a different perspective. What swarmed us in physical form was Hazel’s magic, but it was not her. It was the pain tearing her in two.