Chapter 38
Chapter
Thirty-Eight
She and Reece weren’t talking about the little excursion to go see Emerson.
Delainey wasn’t sure what had possessed the stalking trip, and she didn’t really want to interrogate that.
As far as she could tell, Emerson was telling the truth. He was in Hobson for some kind of business at the university, and he was trying to make himself useful by helping the coven break the tether.
Two days later, after one more phone call from Aya and Serena, they were still no closer.
But time in the cabin was good.
Those mornings she and Reece had shared before they became official now included cuddling and kisses. He already knew what kind of coffee she liked, which meant she didn’t even have to train him. Things with him were good, great even, but the cabin itself was starting to feel like a prison.
Nico and Elise had to be getting itchy to get their space back. It was getting a little ridiculous to expect that they could stay here indefinitely.
“I want to try and break the tether,” she told Reece one morning while the sun streamed through the windows in the kitchen.
Reece sat on one of the benches under the counter with a mug in his large hands. He looked wary. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“We’ve been sitting here waiting for the others to figure this out and they haven’t figured out shit. We have to try something.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“A bit of spell work, maybe. Aya is the smartest witch I know but she can’t feel it like we can. I’m going to go deep inside and see if I can’t pry this thing apart with my own damn magic.”
Reece definitely didn’t like the sound of that, and he wasn’t trying to hide it. “We could try and outrun it again,” he said, setting his mug down on the counter with a dull thud.
“When we tried that last time we both almost had heart attacks.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but I swear I felt like it was going to snap if I just made it a few more feet.”
She didn’t want to suffer the pain that came from testing the length of the tether, and she didn’t want to risk Reece dropping dead from a heart attack. But he wasn’t wrong.
She had felt the exact same thing. It couldn’t hurt to try, as long as they were careful and didn’t have heart attacks, a thing they could definitely prevent by just willing it away.
They went outside but didn’t head for the woods. There was no need. There was plenty of green space around the cottage. On either side of the gravel driveway, the grass was thick and uncut, damp with morning dew that soaked immediately through Delainey’s sneakers.
She got up on her tiptoes and kissed Reece’s nose.
“Race you,” she said, and then she turned around and took off running, leaving him to make a noise about her cheating before he went running in the other direction.
A tree blurred past her. She felt the wind on her face, and it was exhilarating for about three seconds before she could feel the tether start to stretch as they passed the bounds of the safe limit.
It started as a tingling warmth in her sternum, almost pleasant, the way a muscle felt right before a cramp, and then it wasn’t pleasant at all. She felt the pain in her chest and tried to pretend it was just uncomfortable, but a blaze of agony washed over her.
It was like someone had driven a hook between her ribs and yanked, the invisible line pulling tight and then pulling harder, and her vision whited out at the edges as every nerve from her collarbone to her navel screamed.
Between one stride and the next, Delainey’s legs gave out, her palms and knees hitting the dirt. The impact sent a sharp sting up through her wrists and kneecaps, gravel and grass pressing into her skin hard enough to leave marks.
“No,” she gasped. She tasted something copper in her mouth, and her world narrowed to pinprick vision in front of her.
Her heartbeat was so loud in her ears that she couldn’t hear anything else.
It felt like her soul was being torn out of her.
She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw that Reece was still on his feet, but barely moving, as if he was trying to run through molasses. His shoulders were hunched forward, one arm pressed against his chest, every stride a stuttering half-step.
She could do this.
She could feel the thin stretch of the tether, and he was right. It felt like it was about to snap.
All she had to do was make it a little further.
She put her hand in front of her and then moved her leg, crawling inch by inch to try to get to the edge of the woods and break this damn thing with all the might that was in her.
Her fingers dug into the dirt. She could feel it getting under her fingernails, but she didn’t give a damn. She just had to keep moving. Her arms shook with the effort, muscles burning as if she were dragging something impossibly heavy behind her, and the grass tore loose in clumps under her grip.
Every inch forward sent a fresh spike of white-hot pain through her chest, and she could feel blood warm and metallic on her tongue where she’d bitten the inside of her cheek.
Behind her, Reece cried out, and she heard him fall even through all the noise in her head.
Delainey hit a brick wall, not literally.
It wasn’t even a tree.
She simply couldn’t move any further. Her heart beat so fast she couldn’t see, and she was only pain. And Reece was on the ground somewhere behind her.
Her hands had gone bluish-gold at the fingertips, her magic surging unbidden under her skin in a desperate, useless flare that had nowhere to go and nothing to break.
It was agony to turn around, even as the pain lessened with every inch she covered in her weak crawl.
She dragged herself through the grass on her forearms, the dew soaking through her sweatshirt, the world slowly widening back from that pinprick into something she could navigate; the cottage roof, the stone chimney, the tree line, all swimming back into focus.
She found Reece lying in the dirt and ran her hand over his hair and down his face until she finally found his pulse, which was beating strong, even though his eyes were closed and his breath was coming in heaving gasps.
His red hair was damp with sweat, plastered to his forehead, and his skin was pale enough that every freckle stood out against white skin.
One of his large hands was still curled into a fist against his sternum.
She didn’t have the energy to try to sit, so she laid her head against his chest and willed him to wake up.
It had nothing to do with magic, and only with the emotion she was feeling for him, the things she refused to name. She found his hand and grabbed onto it, and had no idea how long she lay there before he groaned and tried to move.
“Don’t,” she told him. “You’re okay.”
It didn’t work. He moved.
“You passed out,” she said. “I had to come rescue you.”
Delainey felt his chin move, and he kissed the top of her head.
“That’s what you’re there for,” Reece said, his voice rough and scraped thin, barely louder than the sound of his own breathing.
“Can I try magic now?” She tried not to sound like she was saying I told you so, but there was a bit of an ‘I told you so’ in her voice she couldn’t hide, what with the exhaustion and pain still lingering.
Reece groaned, but agreed.
Delainey sent her mind into the bond between them and found the individual strands linked into both of their life forces. She tried peeling them back one by one, but every time she got one strand to let go and moved to the next, it would snap back into place with a thwack.
Each snap sent a jolt through her, and she could feel Reece flinch beneath her every time one reattached, his heartbeat spiking under her ear, his fingers tightening around hers.
She tried for several minutes, losing herself in the magic, but eventually had to give up, afraid that if she messed this up the bond would snap back together even tighter.
Delainey came back to herself. She was still lying against Reece’s chest, and he was still holding her close.
They were still stuck together.
But at least it was with Reece.
She wanted her freedom back, but there were worse people to be stuck with.