Chapter 47
River
The change in Laurie was gradual. Progress was slow and not without slip-ups, and we still had a long way to go.
But the change was there.
Laurie was reforming in front of my eyes.
I could see it in the way she smiled—no longer strained and uneasy.
Her lips turned up at the corners more often than ever.
It was the slightest difference, but beautiful to see.
She still scowled over breakfast, but some tightness had eased from her shoulders; her laughter came quicker, the kind that startled us both when it happened.
I’d half expected her to feel less like herself without the open wounds, but the opposite was true—her real personality was expanding into territory that raw trauma used to occupy.
She wasn’t the only one changing, either.
I could feel my own powers expanding, growing stronger by the day, like a muscle I’d only just learned to flex.
I was beginning to realize that I could actually help people.
I could do more than simply soothe emotions; I could do more than simply slap a band-aid on a gaping wound.
I could stitch it up instead.
Until now, I’d always regarded my empathetic powers as a kind of patch-kit and nothing more, but the past few days with Laurie had stretched that definition past recognition.
Each time I slipped into her mind and teased out another barbed fragment, my reach extended, my precision sharpened.
I could tap into the entire circuitry of her mind—and with Laurie working with me, examining each memory before passing it along—I could rewire it.
I started to wonder, if I could do this for her, who else could I help? Clearing minds—not with Hunter’s blunt-force amnesia, but with careful excisions. Memory microsurgery.
The more I thought it over, the more visions bloomed behind my eyes. A possible future: a clinic of sorts, where scars were healed, not erased. My gift could be more than cryptic fortune cookies and comforting auras. But even with all this gradual growth, still, my mind was plagued with concerns.
Laurie’s future remained a blacked-out panel in every probability lattice I scanned.
I could stare at the skyline until my eyes bled and bend my body into every yoga position, and see every possible tomorrow for Hunter, for Jordan, for the man walking his dog across the street—but Laurie’s thread was still a void, a radio silence that made my pulse stutter.
And that wasn’t the only problem.
The outside world was fraying. The Leyore coven’s coalition had become a cracked veneer; some elf factions were pulling back after the organization’s strike.
Witches were shielding their coven houses instead of scouting for more facilities.
Every meeting, every whispered report confirmed what we all already understood: The organization was winning the cold war, and we were losing our chance to wipe them out.
Some nights, the pressure of both truths woke me before dawn, heart pounding long before Laurie’s nightmares flared to life. Other nights—like tonight—her scream beat me to consciousness.
For about a week now, Laurie had been sleeping in my bed instead of retreating to the guest room.
We never spoke about it. There was no invitation, no awkward announcement.
She’d dozed beside me after that first night of intimacy, and that was that.
We slept tangled together under the covers ever since. I wasn’t about to complain.
It felt too natural to question. Too perfect.
So when her scream ripped through my dreams, I was already there, jarred awake just inches from her thrashing body and rolling over to crush her to my chest.
“It’s not working,” Laurie rasped the moment I wrapped her in my arms. Her skin was slick with sweat, hair stuck to her temples. When she looked at me with tear-stained cheeks, I could see the horrible visions playing behind her eyes. “River, it’s not working. It’s still there. It’s still bad—”
“Shhh.” I pressed her head to my shoulder, projecting calm in steady waves. “You’re still going to have bad nights from time to time; that’s normal. We’re not at the finish line yet.”
It was times like these when I could kick myself for daring to let myself drift off. But the extractions were taking their toll on my body, and I had to snag some rest occasionally or I’d be rendered completely useless.
It was a balancing act I had not yet perfected.
Laurie’s aura flared like a bonfire, then ebbed as I siphoned the worst of the panic. I swept my own aura over the perimeter of her mind—the flickering embers of a dying blaze—and cooled them, one bright fleck at a time.
“It is working,” I whispered as her breathing slowed. “You’ve just got to hold out a little longer.”
Her fingers fisted at my back, and she heaved in a despairing breath, still frazzled by memories of smoke and flame. “How long? How long am I supposed to keep living like this?”
I leaned back just enough to meet her gaze. “As long as it takes for us to heal your mind.”
When she rolled onto her back, I followed, cupping her cheek with one gentle hand and anchoring her to the here and now. “We keep going—one shard at a time. Until the fire’s out.”
Laurie sniffed and dashed a hand across her eyes, then rolled over again until she was flush against my chest, burrowing into the side of my neck.
“Tell me something stupid,” she murmured, and her voice came muffled through my tousled hair. “I could use a distraction.”
“All right.” I shifted onto my side and propped my head on one hand, the other trailing gentle fingers down her back.
“Back when I first joined the Leyore coven, I was way more stand-offish than I am today.” I leaned down and pecked a kiss on her forehead.
“Kinda like you were when we first met, just not as… jumpy.”
“Jumpy is generous,” she grumbled into my arm.
“Don’t hijack my story.” I blew a curl from my eyes and tilted my head back. “Anyway, I was super suspicious of Jordan and pretty much everyone else in the coven, and I did nothing to hide that fact. They all went out of their way to make me feel welcome and I was a complete ass about it.”
Laurie’s comment came wry and dry against my shoulder. “Sounds familiar.”
“Hey, at least you had genuine reasons to be wary of me.” I poked at her ribs and she swatted my hand away.
“I was just… so used to being alone, I had no idea how to let anyone in. I thought Jordan was being kind out of a sense of duty. It took me years to realize that ‘kind’ was just her natural state.”
“This story isn’t stupid,” Laurie cut in. “It’s sweet.”
“This is just the preface—bear with me.” I dragged myself upright and propped my back against the headboard while Laurie lay her head in my lap. My hands rested on her head, fiddling with her hair while I dredged up dusty memories.
“So anyway, things continued like that for a while. Jordan would try to include me in meetings, and I would sit quietly in the corner and occasionally offer snarky remarks. Then one day, she’s hanging out with this Leyore noble—some rich asshat who was talking down to her.
In his eyes, Jordan’s brother was this great ruler and Jordan was just some loose cannon who didn’t know how to hold her tongue. ”
My lips pursed at the memory, at how irritated I’d been to see someone treat her so poorly—how ashamed I’d been to realize that was how I had been treating her too.
“Then all of a sudden, I get a vision. I see this guy tripping over his own coat on the way down the stairs—in front of a bunch of coven members—and I think: perfect. I hope he face-plants so hard he gets floor polish on his tonsils.”
Laurie tilted her head to glance at me with raised brows. “And it happened?”
“Not quite how I expected.” I grimaced, but a grin tugged at my lips. “I followed him because I wanted to see it for myself, and I dragged Jordan along with me so she could see it too. I was so focused on what I thought was going to happen, that I wasn’t watching my step.”
Laurie was already giggling, quiet huffs of breath when she realized where this story was going.
“Yeah…” I shook my head, smile spreading across my face. “I tripped halfway, and I took Jordan down with me. We both took a tumble down the stairs—in full view of everyone—and we landed in a heap at the bottom. The commotion caught the guy by surprise, and then he tripped on his coat.”
Laurie was snickering now, peals of laughter that warmed my chest. “Did he at least land on his face?”
I nodded in tight-lipped satisfaction. “So hard, he chipped a tooth—and that’s pretty rare for a vampire.”
Laurie burst into full blown laughter and the sound shook me to my core.
Her eyes crinkled at the corners, still tinted red by earlier tears, and all I could do was stare.
When her cackling petered out she noticed, and tilted her head to the side—suddenly self-conscious and flushing slightly in the dark. “What?”
I was speechless for a beat, but I shook my head, surprise coloring my whispered words. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh like that. A real laugh—a happy one.”
Laurie jerked her gaze away, embarrassed. “Yeah, well, maybe I’d have done it sooner if any of your jokes were actually funny.”
“My jokes are funny!” I pushed her shoulder and leaned over her when she tried to hide her smile. “I’ve had centuries to refine my comedy. I can’t believe you don’t appreciate the effort I put into my humor.”
“All right.” Laurie palmed a hand over her face, giggling again while I tried to pry at her fingers. “Tell me a joke right now and I’ll prove to you that you’ve still got a long way to go.”
I sat back against the headboard with a pointed exhale and my arms folded. “Fine—” I got exactly four words into a “why did the chicken cross the road?” joke and she erupted into bouts of loud laughter all over again.
All I could do was stare.
I took in the gleam in her eye and the joy on her face and my heart clenched tightly in my chest. It was so unlike her, so impossibly far from what I could have expected—for once, seeing her light and carefree and not tainted with pain.
Her laughter continued, ringing around the room, music to my ears.
It was the most beautiful sound in the world.