Chapter 14 #2
Pure, absolute, all-consuming pain that started somewhere in her chest and radiated outward through every nerve ending in her body.
It felt like she imagined being struck by lightning and set on fire simultaneously would feel.
Like every cell in her body was being torn apart and reassembled in the wrong order.
Ramona heard herself scream. Distantly, like it was happening to someone else.
She was on the ground. When had she fallen? The snow was cold against her cheek, soaking through her jacket. The sky above her was full of stars—sharp, impossibly bright, wheeling overhead like the world had been tilted on its axis.
“Ramona. Ramona. Ramona!”
Zara’s voice. Hands on her face, her shoulders, turning her over. Zara’s face above her, pale in the moonstone’s glow, her eyes wide with something Ramona had never seen in them before.
Fear. Real, raw, undisguised fear.
“I’m—” Ramona tried to speak. Her chest felt like it had been cracked open. “I’m okay.”
“You are not okay.” Zara’s hands were shaking. Actually shaking. “You were struck — something hit you, I don’t know what, the magic—” She was touching Ramona’s face, her arms, checking for injuries with frantic precision. “Can you move? Does anything feel broken?”
Ramona tried to sit up. Pain lanced through her chest, sharp, electric, residual. She gasped, and Zara’s arm was behind her immediately, supporting her weight.
“Slowly,” Zara said. “Slowly.”
Ramona sat up. The clearing looked wrong.
The salt circle was shattered — scattered in an irregular pattern, like something had exploded outward from the center.
The hawthorn branches had been flung to the edges of the clearing.
The silver bowl was overturned, the moonstone dust scattered across the snow in a glittering trail, scattering in the slight breeze that had returned to the clearing. The candle was out.
The tether hummed between them. Still there. Still intact.
The ritual had failed.
Ramona stared at the destroyed ritual space. At the scattered salt and the extinguished candle and the moonstone dust dissolving into the snow. Two weeks of research. Days of careful preparation. Everything they’d built together, destroyed in seconds.
Something dark and hot and enormous swelled up inside her chest.
“No,” she said.
“Ramona—”
“No.” The word came out louder than she intended. Sharper. “No, no, no—”
She was on her feet before she knew she was moving, swaying, her chest still screaming with residual pain. The clearing spun around her. She pressed her hands against her face, feeling the burn of tears she refused to let fall.
“It didn’t work,” she said. Her voice was shaking. “It didn’t fucking work.”
“We can try again—”
“This is all my fault,” Ramona said, her fingernails digging into her palms. She wanted to scream, to pound her fists on the ground, to fall apart.
“No, it isn’t—”
Ramona spun to face Zara. “I didn’t want you to go.”
Zara went primordially still, staring at her.
Ramona groaned in deep frustration. “I hesitated.” She shook her head and scrubbed her hands over her face again. She was so ashamed. “I hesitated because I didn’t want you to leave me, and I fucked everything up because I’m path—”
Zara was in front of her now, holding her upper arms, holding her steady and still. “I didn’t want to go either,” she confessed, her voice a whisper.
Ramona paused for a moment, sniffling as she looked up at the demon standing over her. “Wh-what?” Her voice cracked on the word.
Zara’s hands tightened on her arms, not painful but grounding. Anchoring. Her dark eyes searched Ramona’s face with an intensity that made Ramona’s breath catch.
“I didn’t want to go,” Zara repeated, and there was something raw in her voice now, something that sounded almost like fear. “When the ritual started, when I felt the binding beginning to loosen, I—” She stopped, her jaw working. “I wanted it to fail.”
The words hung between them in the pre-dawn air.
“That’s impossible,” Ramona whispered. “You’ve been trying so hard to—”
“I know what I’ve been trying to do.” Zara’s voice was rough.
“I know what I should want. To go home. To get back to my perfectly organized life and my perfectly predictable responsibilities and my perfectly empty apartment.” Her hands slid down to Ramona’s wrists, holding on like Ramona might disappear.
“But when I felt the magic pulling at me, all I could think was that I wasn’t ready.
That we weren’t—” She stopped again, looking away. “That I wasn’t finished here yet.”
Ramona’s heart was doing something complicated and terrifying in her chest. “Zara—”
“So if you sabotaged the ritual,” Zara said, meeting her eyes again with something that looked almost like defiance. “Then we both did. And I’m not sorry.”
The last thread of Ramona’s restraint snapped.
She surged forward, closing the distance between them, and kissed Zara like she was drowning and Zara was air. Her hands fisted in Zara’s jacket, pulling her closer, and Zara made a sound — surprise or relief or something desperate — before kissing her back just as fiercely.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t sweet. It was frantic and messy with need.
Zara’s hands slid from Ramona’s arms to her waist, then her back, pulling her in until there was no space between them.
Ramona’s fingers tangled in Zara’s hair and Zara’s grip tightened and somewhere in the back of Ramona’s mind she knew she should stop, should think, should breathe—
But Zara’s mouth was hot against hers and her body was solid and real and here, and Ramona had been wanting this for weeks without letting herself admit it, and now that she’d started, she couldn’t seem to stop.
When they finally broke apart — gasping, shaking — Ramona’s back was against a tree she didn’t remember moving toward and Zara was still holding her like she might disappear.
“Oh,” Ramona breathed.
“Yes,” Zara said, her voice wrecked. Her forehead dropped against Ramona’s, their breath mingling in the small space between them. “That.”
The clearing was silent except for their ragged breathing and the rustle of leaves in the wind. Somewhere, a bird started its morning song.
“I’m not sorry about that either,” Ramona whispered.
Zara laughed, low and rough. “Good.”
Ramona kissed her again, hard, like she could make up for lost time through sheer determination. Zara responded immediately, one hand sliding up to cup the back of Ramona’s neck, the other gripping her hip hard enough to leave marks.
“Ramona—” Zara gasped against her mouth, but Ramona cut her off with another kiss, then another, unable to stop now that she’d started.
Her hands were everywhere — Zara’s jaw, her shoulders, sliding under the lapels of her jacket— and Zara was making quiet, desperate sounds that were driving Ramona absolutely insane.
Zara’s knee parted Ramona’s legs, and she arched into the demon, her back scraping against rough bark, grinding her hips into Zara’s thigh.
Zara’s hand tightened on her hip in response, urging her.
When Zara’s mouth moved to her jaw, then her neck, her fangs caressing the sensitive skin there, Ramona’s knees nearly gave out.
“Fuck,” Ramona breathed, tilting her head back. “Zara, please—”
Zara pulled back just enough to look at her, eyes blazing, lips swollen, hair completely destroyed from Ramona’s fingers.
She was breathing hard, her usual composure absolutely shattered.
The heat of Zara’s body warmed Ramona, making her forget that they were standing outside in the cold at night, even as their breaths fogged the frozen air between them.
“We passed a bed and breakfast at the last exit,” Zara said, her voice rough and low. “I’m not fucking you for the first time against a tree.”
Ramona stared at her, still pinned against the bark, heart racing. “I like trees.”
Zara raised her eyebrows. “I have some standards.” But Zara’s hands hadn’t moved from Ramona’s body, contradicting the attempt at dignity. “And when you finally come for me, you’ll be thankful for a soft and comfortable bed afterwards.”
Ramona was honestly shocked by her ability to continue forming thoughts after such a promise. “Right now?” she asked breathlessly, her hips slowly cresting forward again, chasing the friction that had felt so good just a moment before. “You want to drive to a bed and breakfast right now?”
Zara leaned forward, whispering against Ramona’s mouth, “Unless you’d prefer to wait until we get back to your apartment where your roommates can hear everything through the walls.” Zara’s thumb traced a deliberate line along Ramona’s hip. “Your choice.”
Ramona groaned. “You’re right.”
“I’m always right.” Zara kissed her again, slow and deep, before finally — finally — stepping back. “Car. Now. Before I change my mind about the tree.”