22. Rebound
Rebound
MAX
My bedroom is barely lit, the curtains cracked open just enough to let a blade of moonlight cut across the painted forest on my walls.
The shadowed outlines of pine, rowan, and fir shimmer faintly in the dark.
I painted every tiny piece of bark, every pine needle.
After I moved here, I built myself a replacement forest, a safe haven I would never have to leave.
The bed beneath the baldaquin canopy still holds the dip where I sat earlier, marking the center of my nest.
There’s no mist in the gardens tonight, no frost crawling over the windowpanes.
My conversation with the Mist King bought us a reprieve, but a short one.
Three days. Three days until we either give him what he wants—which is not an option—or watch what little piece of this world I claimed as mine crumble to ash.
If Nick and I put our minds to it, maybe we could carve out a third option. Stand our ground. Defend this house. But how long could we last, trapped inside these walls, never stepping beyond the threshold, waiting for someone to save us?
I trace the outline of a painted rowan leaf and swallow hard. If I know my brother and myself, we’ve already spent too much of our lives cooped up in safe houses. Hiding in pantries. Holding our breath.
Enough is enough.
E is waiting for me on the floor of my bedroom after eavesdropping on my conversation with Nick. I know where he is at all times now—not by sight, but by pull. When he moves, the air responds by creating a subtle shift against my skin.
I wanted him to hear. I’d hoped Nick might spill the beans on the Spindle of the Gods and spare me from breaking my promise.
“Hi,” I greet him.
“Hi,” he breathes back.
I shoot a mischievous glance his way. “You heard all of that, right?”
“Yes.” He floats closer. “You knew I was listening?”
“Of course.”
His invisibility only sharpens my other senses.
Without a body to look at, I feel the bite of his power more vividly.
I can track him as he approaches, the heat he carries casting a slow warmth along my spine.
I’m certain that if I reached out for him—the way I did after I fell, the way I did this morning in the bridal shop and again downstairs—my hands would find him waiting.
The thought drags me back to the tarot cards, to chosen chains and willing bondage. We are bound, he and I. Not by iron, but a tether I can feel strengthening even as I pretend not to notice.
“I have something important to tell you,” I announce.
I drag my hands down my face and press my lids closed, as if pressure alone might force my thoughts back into order. I shouldn’t say it. I promised Nick I wouldn’t.
But the lure of the Spindle of the Gods crumbles like hot sand and blasphemy in my mouth.
Everyone knows you’re not supposed to meddle with death.
Winter comes for everyone, and when it does, it is meant to be final.
Souls who run from their reapers are meant for decay, and decay only.
They feed the hungry mouth of the Dark One, the original, holy ghost.
Death is a release rather than a cruelty, and the dark souls’ ultimate demise is a cautionary tale. All who escape ice are bound for darkness.
The Mist Wars were sparked by that same poisoned idea, by the Mist King chasing true immortality in spite of the laws of nature. He managed to trick destiny itself, but at what cost? To cheat death is a tainted hope, dressed up as love or a desire for self-preservation, but rotten at the core.
The gods would turn their noses at me for even considering it.
Even the Dark One was not strong enough to rewrite his ending, not strong enough to be made flesh again.
And yet here I am, entertaining the sin of it, imagining a way to turn winter into spring, to cheat the truth that endings exist for a reason.
I shouldn’t talk about such things.
I swallow hard and keep my voice tight and contained as I shift gears and address the safer, more reasonable elephant in the room. “What happened this morning was a mistake.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
I grip the end of my braid. “I’d just broken off my engagement. I was angry and sad and confused.”
His breath rushes out, close enough that my skin prickles. “And I was what? Your rebound ghost?”
“Don’t be like that.”
A soft, bitter chortle follows. “Max, you kissed me like I was the last thing holding your world together, and now you’re pretending it doesn’t count?”
“That’s not—ugh.” Heat crawls up my neck. “It was a moment of weakness.”
I shouldn’t think about that kiss, and I definitely shouldn’t be whisper-fighting with an invisible ghost whose soul is only visible in the faint, trembling reflection of the windowpane.
“What are you afraid of?” he insists. “Catching a ghost disease? Ghost sperm, what?”
I hiss, scandalized.
Nick sleeps down the hall. A loud sound or voice, and he’ll hear.
“Well, I’m trying to understand the rules here,” he murmurs. “I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m with you, but I’m just to be written off as a weakness? As though kissing me was a mistake you just had to make to get over your fiancé?”
“I’m afraid of falling for you, you big jerk!” I whisper-yell.
Silence detonates through the room.
The shimmer in the window brightens. “You’re falling for me?” he asks quietly.
“That’s not what I said—”
“Max. It’s exactly what you said.”
I turn away, my cheeks burning, my heart kicking against my ribs. “Don’t make this into something it isn’t.”
“Then tell me what it is.”
“It was grief. And adrenaline. And fear. And—”
“Yearning,” he finishes. “Call it weakness, a mistake, a fucking wrong turn if it makes you feel better—but you want me, Max.”
I suck in air. “Don’t.”
“Why?” His voice breaks. “You think I haven’t been losing my mind over it all day?”
I bury my face in my hands. “It’s confusing as hell. Craving the touch of someone who doesn’t have a pulse.”
A soft growl escapes him, and he pushes himself flush against me.
“You think you’re frustrated? I want to touch you again, but I can’t, and it’s driving me insane.
I want to kiss every smart remark out of your mouth.
I want my hands on your hips, your throat, tangled in that wild hair of yours while you come apart for me. ”
He exhales hard, and a powerful light blares into the room. The sunshine within him condenses into liquid gold, reaching for me in slow, molten strokes, smearing over every place he wants to touch. Every place I’m not supposed to want him to.
I track the golden speckle of light as it reaches my collarbone, spills over my breasts, curls around my waist, and lower still.
The sun is the deadliest of all fires. I should melt from this impossible caress, but my own flames rise eagerly to meet his glow.
“I want to leave marks on every single inch of you. Proof that I exist, and that you belong to me. I want you waking up sore and flushed and happy and thinking about me before your feet even touch the floor.” His voice drops an octave.
“And instead, I have to lurk in the darkness. You have no idea what that does to me.”
Heat floods my face. The graphic images swirling in my head tug at something low and intimate beneath my belly button, a thread that reaches deep between my legs.
I can picture all of it and more, and a shudder racks my body. “Stop.”
“If you’d only reach for me again—” His light vanishes abruptly, his voice thick with hope and fear.
Hope that I might slip into this madness. Fear of rejection. Beneath it all, his hunger simmers.
Gods, I want to reach for him. The devil on my shoulder screams for me to fling all caution to the seven hells. I feel more alive in the company of death than with the living. Does that make me wicked? Is that what a witch is born to be—irresistibly addicted to her own self-destruction?
Is that what E has become? The embodiment of everything I’ve tried to suppress, something the witch inside me craves beyond reason?
Hide. Shrink. Obey. Stay safe.
That’s what I’ve been taught passes for a life, but is that yearning—that constant need for more—really so wrong?
It feels no different from the urge to heal a patient with blood magic.
That thirst to bend the rules is always there, buried deep, lurking beneath the surface.
And once you indulge it—once you reach into the dark parts of yourself and drink from that forbidden lake—it becomes almost impossible to stop.
Wanting E feels like that. Like standing on the edge of something I can’t see the bottom of.
“We can’t,” I finally manage.
“You don’t have a fiancé anymore.”
I shake my head. “That’s not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
I hesitate, searching for words that don’t make me sound as shaken as I feel. “You probably have a—” I stop myself from saying wife, the word too sour on my tongue. “Someone you belong to.”
A long, quiet sigh whistles out of his lungs. “We still don’t know for sure that I’m featured on the tree upstairs.”
“Even if you’re not, you had a life before this. Before me. It wouldn’t be fair on anyone to explore our…whatever this is. Not until we know more.”
The shimmer in the glass disappears.
“As you wish,” E whispers darkly, pacing the room.
Pacing his cage.
We sit there on the brink of insanity, the space between us cold and listless, and I already regret everything I’ve said.
My restraint tastes like the wrong kind of courage.
I can’t stop imagining how it would feel to kiss not just the ghost of him but his living, breathing self, warm and solid under my hands.
I imagine the weight of him, and how his embrace might soothe the begrudging serpents under my skin.
The back of my neck flushes in shame.
I shouldn’t crave something this impossible. I shouldn’t yearn for a man who doesn’t exist. I feel weak and selfish, but the spark of madness doesn’t relent.
Neither of us bridges the gap.
Neither of us speaks.
I keep my hands to myself and make the sensible choice.
But I know that tomorrow, I might not be so reasonable. Tomorrow I might give in and let death defile me in every way that counts.
It might devour me. Damn my soul. Whatever.
Oh, that would be glorious.
A man with wide wings guides me through the trees, his face half-lost to the shadows.
He’s very tall. His nose is almost as sharp and pointy as his ears, and his cheekbones are a mix of hard lines and hollows.
He is perfect in a way that makes my skin prickle.
He’s the kind of man that not only expects, but demands perfection from everything and everyone—including himself. The sort that doesn’t forgive mistakes.
I know, somehow, that if anything along the path dared to trip him—if a root rose too high or a stone rolled under his foot—he wouldn’t laugh it off. He’d blast the root or pulverize the rock to make sure it would never happen again.
His wings are white. Not the soft white-gray of pigeon feathers in picture books, but clean and bright.
I’m sure they’ve never known dirt. They stretch wide behind him, impossibly large, and looking at them makes me feel safe.
Nothing bad can happen while he’s here. I’ve got an angel watching over me.
The forest holds its breath around us, and I walk carefully not to shatter the silence. When he turns his head, I see his eyes are pale and blue, like winter light on frozen glass.
Looking at him makes my heart pound in a sweet, eager way.
I want him to love me. I need him to be proud.
The Red Forest blooms all around us. Leaves the color of fire drift down in slow spirals, the trees wearing scarlet and wine-red crowns.
The light between them glows with a golden sheen, as if the sun itself has chosen to burn for them—and them alone—today.
It’s beautiful in a way that makes my chest ache.
Then I see the body.
A dead man lies on the grass, his shoulder sinking into the ground as if the earth is slowly rising to swallow him whole. His auburn hair is darkened at the roots, and his eyes are open but empty, like the glass marbles Nick and I toss around to pass the time.
A soft blue light shines above his chest.
“What happened to him?” I ask, my voice high and full of sorrow.
“I killed him. And his reaper,” he answers flatly, as though it’s perfectly reasonable for him to do such things.
“Why?” I ask, but not in a panicked or tearful way—more quizzical.
“I did it for you, Maxine.” He tilts his head, smiling. “Come closer.”
I’m not sure what to do with a present like this.
I step forward, my bare feet sinking into the blood-drenched earth. The blood crawls over me, the blue light fading without a sound. A frigid wind blows past my cheeks. My fingers twitch. The world blurs.
“It hurts,” I cry out.
“You did well, little witch.” His voice is gentle now, almost soothing. “But let’s not tell your mother about this. It’ll be our secret, alright?”
“Alright,” I squeak.
The leaves keep falling. The forest keeps shining.
And something deep inside me goes very, very quiet.