Chapter 36 #2
“Save it.” Ramona took a sip of her champagne.
She was aware of people nearby who had stopped pretending not to listen.
Somewhere to her left, a conversation about the Vernal Council’s agenda had gone noticeably quiet.
“You know, I used to have speeches for this. Really good ones. Very cathartic.” She considered.
“I don’t think I need them anymore. Something you said the other night, it made me realize I only have one thing to tell you both.
” She looked at Simone, then Kate, and said, “I may be a villain in your story, but you’re a joke in mine. ”
Kate’s mouth fell open, and Simone flushed a furious shade of red.
Ramona raised her empty glass in a final toast and nodded — polite, conclusive, the social equivalent of a door closing — and turned and walked back to her coven.
“Cammie,” she said. “I need another glass of champagne.”
“Ahead of you,” Cammie said and handed one over without a single question.
“Was that—” Felix started.
“Yes.”
“Oh, they’re fighting again,” Kashvi whispered with a whole lot of delight in her voice. “Kate’s storming out.”
Ramona didn’t dare look, for fear she’d start laughing.
Instead, she held up her empty first glass, thought about it being full, and watched her magic respond immediately — champagne appearing cold and sparkling and present, like it had always been willing to do this and had simply been waiting for her to ask.
Felix stared. She extinguished the nearest set of candles with barely a thought, like Zara had done the first time they’d closed the shop together, and then she lit them again, twice as bright, and a small murmur ran through the people standing closest to her.
Parlor tricks. First-year magic. She’d never been able to do any of it.
The grief of Zara’s absence hit her all at once, sharp and specific, like the sting from a fall she’d been ignoring for hours.
She wanted, more than anything, to turn around and feel the tether pull warm between them.
To hear something precise and dry about the impracticality of conjuring alcohol as a coping mechanism.
But there was only silence where the tether had been. There was only the empty shape of it under her ribs.
Rebirth, she reminded herself. Spring requires winter to end. All darkness ends, light always returns.
Felix had already claimed Kashvi for the dance floor, Gerald performing small aerial maneuvers overhead while Felix tried to lead, and Kashvi tried to lead more successfully.
Posey held out a hand to Cammie, who said she’d step on her feet and did so twice within thirty seconds and didn’t stop smiling about it.
Ramona was watching them, still standing at the edge of the floor, when someone stopped beside her.
They didn’t approach, exactly. Just stood nearby, close enough for conversation, but far enough for plausible deniability.
She turned.
Iris, in a perfectly tailored purple dress that didn’t quite suit her, hair up, hands clasped in front of her with the careful stillness she always deployed when she was keeping something controlled.
“Hi,” Ramona said.
“Hi.” Iris looked at her, and something in her expression was doing a lot of work trying to stay in place. “Your hair. The purple — it’s different from before.”
“I fixed it. I can do that now, apparently.”
A beat. The music swelled, and somewhere behind them a couple drifted past, close enough that they both went briefly silent.
“You look like yourself,” Iris said, finally. Her voice had gone quiet. “I mean, you look like you’re supposed to look.”
Ramona didn’t know what to do with that, so she didn’t say anything.
“I’m not going to make a scene,” Iris continued.
“I’m not here to demand anything from you.
I just—” She stopped. Started again, more carefully.
“I always told myself there was some reason I couldn’t tell you what I’d done.
There wasn’t. I was afraid, and you paid for that, and I’m sorry. I’m genuinely, deeply sorry.”
The ballroom kept going around them. A waltz. The smell of spring flowers forced into impossible bloom. Somewhere to Ramona’s left, a warlock was telling someone about his summer estate.
“I know,” Ramona said. “We were kids, Iris. I don’t blame you for the curse. It’s the secrecy that hurts.”
Iris nodded. Her jaw was tight.
“I’m not ready to be okay about it yet,” Ramona said.
“That might take a while.” She looked at her sister, then meant the rest of it too: “But I came out the other side. I know the truth. The curse is broken. My magic works. I have…” She gestured at the dance floor, where Felix had just stepped on Kashvi’s foot and was apologizing at length to both her and Gerald. “I have those people. I’m good.”
Something in Iris cracked slightly at the edges. Not in a bad way. Like an exhale. “Gerald has a purple bow tie.”
“He’s a very dapper bird.”
A pause that was almost a laugh from Iris. Almost. She cleared her throat. “I wanted you to know I came to the ritual because I wanted to be there. Not because of Mom.”
“I know. And thank you for being there. Thank you for all of your help, really. The grimoires and the supplies and… all of it. I do appreciate it, even if I’m not ready to fully…” Ramona lifted a shoulder in a shrug that she hoped communicated her feelings better than words could.
Iris dipped her head, recognizing the gratitude. They stood there for another moment, the gap between them not gone but maybe a little less absolute than it had been.
“I should get back,” Iris said.
“Yeah.” Ramona hesitated. “Tell Daphne and Poppy I said hi.”
Something moved across Iris’s face that might have been relief. “I will.”
She walked away, and Ramona stood there watching her go and feeling the particular texture of something that wasn’t forgiveness yet but might be the thing that grows into it, given enough time.
“Ramona.” Posey appeared at her elbow, flushed from dancing, suspiciously innocent expression already in place. “Come on.”
They danced. Ramona felt a small tickle at her scalp before she’d gone three steps. She reached up to find flowers woven in her hair.
“Posey.”
“You needed them,” Posey said with a smile — and did not apologize.
In a passing mirror, Ramona caught her own reflection. Purple hair with white blossoms winding through it. Green dress. Magic running clean and easy under her skin for the first time since she could remember. She looked like someone who’d just survived a very long winter.
She was refilling her champagne glass — a small magic, just because she could — when the room shifted. The quality of the murmur changed, a wave of attention turning toward the entrance, and Ramona turned without knowing why.
And there.
Standing in the doorway like she’d always meant to arrive this way.
Black tux with subtle purple accents that matched — exactly matched — Ramona’s hair. Tailored precisely. Hair coiffed back away from her face, revealing perfect high cheekbones. Expression composed in the way Ramona had spent seven weeks learning to read past.
Zara.
Zara.
The crowd whispered: who is that and where did she come from, but it was happening very far away, underwater, all background noise.
Ramona’s champagne glass slipped from her fingers.
It hit the floor and shattered, but Ramona didn’t notice.
All she could see was Zara, moving through the crowd, eyes fixed on Ramona like nothing else in the room was real, coming toward her like the tether had been replaced by something that needed no magic at all.