Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The clearing looks weird, but I can’t put my finger on it.
It isn’t the wild cathedral of magick it is when the stars are out and Flint’s quiet faith is the only thing keeping me steady.
Today it’s smaller, almost ordinary. Dew-soaked grass, a crooked oak, Betsy standing with her hands on her hips, and an expression that says all she will tolerate is exactly none of my shit.
Calida lounges on a rock, tail flicking, and eyes gleaming with the smug amusement of someone who knows how this is going to go.
“This,” Betsy declares, thrusting a mug of coffee at me, “is a day for humility, darling. You nearly set your poor boyfriend’s eyebrows on fire last night. Let’s not repeat that.”
“He’s not my—”
She arches a brow. “Not your what, pumpkin? Not your emotional support six-foot wall of muscle?”
“Betsy!”I groan, taking the coffee. The steam curls up around my face, warm and comforting.
I can still feel the ghost of what happened two nights ago —the flicker of lights beneath my skin, the tremble of power that wasn’t just mine.
It’s been humming at the back of my mind ever since, a song I can’t stop hearing.
Betsy claps her hands. “All right! Lesson one: emotion is a river. You can’t stop it from flowing, but you can choose which way it carries you.”
I squint at her. “That’s not in any of the self-help books we sell.”
“That’s because most of them aren’t written by people who’ve ever actually managed their emotions, dear. Now, sit.”
I sit, cross-legged in the grass, heart already racing.
Betsy circles me like a general inspecting soldiers. “Your problem isn’t power. It’s control. You’ve got a reservoir in there, a deep one. But you’re letting every emotion around you pour straight in. You need to learn to close those gates.”
I glance down at my hands. “And how do I do that? Exactly?”
“Focus.” She continues to circle me. “And stop thinking.”
“That seems contradictory.”
“So is breathing while panicking. But you manage just fine.”
I hear Calida snort in my mind. ‘She’s got you there.’
I give both of them a look that I hope is withering. “Fine. Focus and don’t think. Got it.”
“Good. Now,” Betsy says, stepping back. “Start small. Think about something that makes you feel calm. Safe. Keep your breathing even.”
I close my eyes. ADHD may make focusing hard, but doing multiple things at once is kind of my jam.
The first thing that comes to mind is Flint. The sound of his voice when he says my name. The warmth that always rolls through me when he smiles — that quiet, steady heat that feels like coming home to something I’ve always known.
My chest tightens and warmth flickers in my palms.
I peek through my lashes and see a soft light glowing beneath my skin, golden and gentle, like sunlight trapped under glass.
Betsy hums. “Good. You’re channeling love, right? That’s your safest source at the moment. Keep it steady. Don’t grip it — guide it.”
It feels like holding a flame between my fingers. Beautiful, fragile, and warm. Through my exercises, I’ve been reminded that fire can burn and warm. “I can feel it moving,” I whisper. “Like it’s alive.”
“It is alive,” Betsy says. “Magick is life. It’s power made form. In your case, you have the extra pizzazz of emotion also being made form. Every thought you have, every feeling that passes through you, is a potential creation. The trick for you will be deciding which are worth feeding.”
Her words hit somewhere deep. I’ve spent so long trying not to feel — fear, grief, anger. But here and now, my emotions are painting the air around me, real and shimmering.
The light in my hands begins to pulse. “It’s getting stronger.”
“Then breathe slower. Match its rhythm, in and out.”
I obey and eventually, the glow softens. It responds like it can hear me.
“Excellent,” Betsy murmurs. “Now, we’re going to shift to another emotion. One that feels… let’s say ‘less friendly.’”
“I think I need you to define ‘less friendly.’”
“Fear.”
Of fucking course she wants to work with fear. I try not to look at Calida. “What is the purpose of poking that particular bear?”
“Because fear runs deep and you’ll never control your magick if you can’t face it. You don’t have to drown in it, pumpkin. You just have to swim through.”
“I feel like you’re starting to mix your metaphors. Can you just… for fucks sake, Bits, speak plainly.”
She studies me for a long moment. Just when I’m about to squirm, she seems to come to some sort of decision about me. I don’t even want to ask what it is.
“Okay, kiddo. By all appearances, you can use emotions to manifest various powers, yes?”
I nod. “I feel like Flint mentioned someone else who could do the same.” I can’t quite recall who.
Betsy ignores me. “Ever since you started manifesting, you’ve been doing so with both your own emotions and those around you.
How long is that sustainable? What if the power you need in the moment isn’t an emotion you’re feeling at the time?
You need to be able to identify and control your own emotional responses, and to …
tap those needed emotions, draw them out from others.
Whether or not they’re feeling them, either. ”
“Wait. You’re saying I’m… I don’t know… some sort of emotional vampire?”
“Not exactly. I’m saying you can not only draw on other people’s emotions, but I think that, if you had to, you would also be able to force people to feel whatever you needed them to, in that moment. But that’s just a hypothesis.”
There’s a long silence. “What the fuck Bits? What are you?”
She blinks innocently, the sunlight bouncing off her hair before she laughs. “Me? Sweetie, just consider me your fairy godmother. Now, back to work.”
I don’t know how she can drop a bomb like that and think I can just go on about my business, but she makes it clear that she expects exactly that.
I exhale shakily and close my eyes again. The warmth fades as I try to focus on my fear. I want to pretend I don’t know what I fear, or that I don’t know what to reach for.
Instead, I focus on the thought of what is lost with my memories.
Do I have a family? Parents? Siblings? Friends? Is anyone looking for me? Is anyone heartbroken that I, apparently, disappeared one day? Or do I have no one?
The warmth fades, replaced by a chill that crawls up my spine. Despite focusing on my own deeper fears, other images appear — Brett’s hands, his voice, his words.
The light in my hands dims as the clearing darkens.
I hear Betsy say something, but it’s distant and muted. The edge of the world rips, black threads coiling around my arms, crawling upwards like living ink. My heart is pounding my chest.
“I can’t– Betsy, I can’t stop it!”
“Yes, you can.” Her firm, no-nonsense voice cuts through my panic, grounding me. “You are not your fear. You’re the one holding it. You are in control.”
I try to focus on my breathing but the shadows tighten, feeding on my pulse.
“You need to allow yourself to feel it. Your feelings are valid.”
My breathing is growing more shallow. I open my eyes and realize I can’t see Betsy or Calida. The clearing is shrouded in mist and fog.
“Don’t fight it,” I hear Betsy instructing from somewhere in front of me. “Name it.”
I swallow hard, closing my eyes tightly. The words tremble out of me. “It’s helplessness.”
The second I say it, acknowledge it, the shadows shudder and disappear. I can feel it — the emotion uncoiling, taking shape. The darkness softens into a mist. When I open my eyes, the fog lingers, but I can see them again.
Betsy is smiling. “See? Fear loses its fangs when you acknowledge what it is.”
My throat burns. “I thought I was supposed to control it.”
“You just did.” She tosses me a saucy wink. '“Control isn’t suppression, pumpkin. It’s understanding. It’s allowing yourself to feel and not fear it.”
Calida gives a lazy stretch, dragging my attention away from Betsy. ‘Not bad for a beginner. She didn’t even set anything on fire this time.’
Betsy gives her a sharp look. “Don’t tempt fate, child.”
We break for a lunch of sandwiches and lemonade, eaten on the grass whilst the world hums with quiet energy. I can still feel the pulse of magick beneath my skin, like I’ve been rewired.
I’m just trying really hard to avoid meeting Betsy’s gaze because I can feel her studying me and I’m starting to feel like a bug under a microscope.
“You’re holding it wrong.”
I blink. “What?” I look down at the sandwich in my hand.
“Yourself.” She gestures with a hand, heavily ladened with rings and I notice a smear of mustard. “You keep trying to hide it. The light, the power, the way you can sense feelings moving. You’re trying to make yourself smaller. Stop. It.”
I frown. “But every time I feel something, something else happens.” I pause. Fuck it. “I’m scared I’m going to hurt someone.”
“Then learn how to do it right. Words are spells as much as anything else.” She makes it sound so simple. “Pretending you’re not powerful isn’t going to make you, or anyone else, safe. It makes you fragile.”
That lands like a blow. She’s right and we both know it.
I look down at my hands again. Simple. Ordinary. Thin, pale fingers. Narrow palms. I keep my nails fairly short and paint them when I feel like it. Dangerous.
“Okay. Teach me.”
The afternoon stretches on as we move through exercises that don’t really make sense — grounding emotion through sensation, calling light and shadow, letting them dissolve again, ignoring the emotions going on around me until I can identify which emotions are mine and which belong to those in the area.
Sometimes, I succeed. Sometimes, the grass catches fire – although usually only when a particularly angry individual passes by our spot. Betsy always stamps it out with practiced efficiency, muttering something about “emotional arsonists”.
By the time the sun starts to set, my muscles ache, my heart feels wrung out and my hands are practically vibrating with residual power.
Betsy crosses her arms. “One more.”
I groan and flop back on the grass. “You’re trying to kill me.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive, should the need arise. Now. This one is about peace.”
“Peace?”
“Find it. Whatever that means to you.”
Peace? Has she met me? The girl with no memories, no ability to concentrate or focus.
Who showed up one day with no family, no friends, no money or prospects.
I get distracted, my mind races like I have all of the browser tabs open and at least two of them have random sounds playing. What the fuck do I know about peace?
My brain is a storm. My emotions feel like colliding galaxies. Peace feels like something that other people are able to find in soothing candlelit yoga classes rather than something I have the capability to conjure on demand.
But I try to anyway. What brings me peace?
I close my eyes and think of Flint.
Not the chaos of him. Not the aches, or the fear, or the longing. Just him.
The steadiness. The quiet way he breathes when he’s asleep.
The way he looks at me like I’m something holy, rather than someone broken.
The way he touches me in small ways, in innocent moments — a brush of his hand against mine, a squeeze to my thigh.
Holding my hand or brushing my hair off my face.
Tracing a fingertip down my leg when we’re sitting together on the couch, reading or watching TV.
Stroking my back as I drift off to sleep.
It’s small, at first. A thread of silver light that winds between my fingers, soft and lovely. It feels like exhaling after holding a breath for too long.
I open my eyes.
The clearing glows.
Not bright or blinding. Just enough to make everything look gentler. The trees shimmer faintly, the air hums like music. It’s beautiful and, for the first time, the power that I appear to have doesn’t scare me.
Betsy lets out a low giggle. “Well, I’ll be damned. You did it, pumpkin.”
I turn to her, oddly breathless. “I did?”
“You did. You made your peace visible.”
Calida flutters her wings, tiny sparks trailing from her scales. ‘Took you long enough.’
I laugh, real and unguarded. The sound vibrates through the clearing and the light shifts, catching on the edges of my joy. A rainbow arcs faintly above us, despite the lack of sunlight to make any logical sense.
I stare at it, heart full to bursting. “It’s beautiful. It feels like… like I’ve done this before. Like remembering.”
Betsy tilts her head, almost like Calida. “What does?”
“This.” I gesture to the air, the color. “It feels familiar. Like… I’ve done this before. Like my heart knows something my mind doesn’t.”
Her expression softens. “Then maybe you’re finally listening.”
That night, back in the apartment, I can still feel it. The pulse of energy under my ribs, alive and patient. When I close my eyes, I can still see the rainbow, faint but waiting.
Flint’s voice drifts in from the kitchen. “How did training go?”
I smile. “Betsy didn’t explode and the clearing is still intact so… progress?”
He chuckles. “You look… different.”
“Do I? Bad different?”
He leans in the doorway, eyes tracing me like he’s memorized me and is looking for the differences. “Lighter,” he says, finally. “Like you let something go.”
“Maybe I did.” Maybe. Maybe I’m finally learning how to work with my powers, instead of against them. “I’m learning.”
And as the light flickers over my skin, light, warm and gentle, I realize that for the first time, it doesn’t scare me anymore.
It feels like mine.