22. Adrian
Adrian
A drian choked as the wind whipped out of his lungs. The connection between them broke. One moment he was inhaling the cool, dry air of the California coast, the next he was falling away from the warmth and comfort of the connection to her, back to the cool humidity of the little cottage.
He braced his arm on the bed, trying to catch his breath as his head spun.
Cori had collapsed into a heap next to him. He couldn’t imagine how much magic she had just expended, or how much emotional energy. As he watched her, the slow rising and falling of her chest, the gentle fluttering of her eyelids, he was overcome with an intense desire to scoop her up in his arms and tell her she was safe.
A single tear fell from her eye, tracing a path to the wave of hair at her temple.
“When…” he stammered, not knowing how to organize the questions that were fluttering around his mind.
“I gave the prophecy when I was twelve years old,” she answered, rubbing her temples. “I was seventeen when I left home for Yale. My family knew I had gotten into a college, but I couldn’t tell them which one.”
“They don’t know you’re here, do they? ”
She shook her head. The totality of her isolation and the weight that she carried hit him. She squeezed her eyes tight. “The coven priestesses decided that the safest thing for me, and for my family, was to create a new identity when I came of age, focusing on my studies until the prophecy came to pass.”
She sat up slowly, putting her head in her hands. “Nobody ever suspected that a quiet Charms witch would have a mysterious past. I had ways of checking in, always with my mom’s magic. Separating from them has kept us all safe.” Her eyes dipped down to the floor, the bloody pentagram at her feet. “Until right now.”
Adrian’s chest tightened. “You must’ve been so lonely.”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad. I had my studies to distract me. And there’s Anne,” she said, her face warming. “Anne was the only person that I ever felt comfortable getting close to. She even invited me to Christmas a few times.”
She sighed deeply, her eyes still pale and dark. “I don’t even know what their life is like now. I don’t know if my brother ever married. Maybe I could be an aunt,” she mused with a sad laugh.
Adrian’s stomach hollowed at the thought of Cori spending holidays alone in New Haven, wondering about the welfare of her family across the country, being completely in the dark about their happiness and sadness. The expansive darkness of her eyes was regaining the golden hue as she took one restorative breath after another.
He imagined what it would be like to be away from his family for that long. Hell, he had never been away for more than a week. He bit his lip, chewing on his thoughts. There is no way his parents would have sent him away, no matter the risk. He hadn’t been there, or lived through it, but he wondered how sending her away—forcing her into exile—was the best choice.
Resentment filled the hollow of his gut.
She shook her head, gulping deeply. “The whole time I was at Yale, I didn’t use my Eye. I pushed it away, and I didn’t have a single vision until I arrived here. For some reason, my Eye has become unhinged the past few days, and I’ve been bombarded with one vision after the other,” she said bitterly. “You’re the first person I’ve told about any of this since I left California.”
“Do you think whoever left the pentagram was here to…” He stilled again, a shiver running through him.
“I think whoever it was knows who I am.” She squared her shoulders. “If I’m killed, then the prophecy will die with me. It won’t come to be.”
He cocked his head. “Are you sure about that?” His eyebrows rose with incredulity. “It sounds like a superstition.”
This made her smile. “It doesn’t matter if it's true or not. If witches out there believe it to be true, that’s all that matters.”
He stood at this, nervous energy bouncing through him as he ran his fingers through his hair. “Do you think there are Gray witches out there who would believe that kind of thing?” He was suddenly struck with guilt—just moments ago, he had been accusing her of being a Gray witch.
“It’s not just the Gray witches, though,” she sighed, resting her head in her hands. “It’s the second part of the prophecy that’s problematic. If some witches are weakened, then we all are.”
He froze. “What do you mean?”
“It’s like the prophecy says. ‘All those who have betrayed the Covenant will receive no more, and all those who have borrowed from the betrayal will weaken through the Other.’”
He looked down at her, his brow knotted in confusion. “I get the part about the Mother and the Giver,” he turned over his words slowly, trying to decode them. “But how would all of us weaken through the Other if a bunch of witches lost their magic?”
Cori raised her eyebrows. “That’s what the Other is. The collective magic we all have as a community of witches.” She seemed surprised to be explaining something so simple to him.
The Mother, the Goddess that provides the magical being with guidance and comfort. All witches prayed to the Mother when they are in need, when a spell has failed them, or they have lost something. The Giver bestows magic to a being. Nobody knew why the Giver gave to some and held from others, but it seemed to run in families.
“The Other is how magic stays alive,” she said thoughtfully. “We all pull energy from each other, and when one witch is weakened, it weakens all of us.”
He twisted his face at this, and he let out a relieved laugh. “That’s not the Other, Cori.”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. “Yes, it is. It’s one of the first things they teach you in coven as a kid.”
“Well, that’s not what we learned as kids. The Other is the magic that’s embedded into the fabric of the Earth and sky,” he said it with conviction. “The Other is what an Elemental witch pulls their energy from. It’s the magic within the water that gives me my power. It’s the magic in the heat of the core of the Earth that gives Ariel her power.” Cori shivered. “There are no Air Elementals in my family, but those who can, control the wind and the sky through the air that holds magic all around us. The Other has nothing to do with other witches. Think about it, Cori, you’re Celestial. I don’t know, I’ve never met a Celestial before you, but don’t you get your magic from the stars?”
She shook her head at a loss for words, her mouth agape. “That’s not what I was taught in the coven at all.”
He didn’t know there could be such a different way of thinking of the Other, but what he said rang true in his heart.
She shifted her gaze toward the window, squinting her eyes as though listening for something as she stood up to look at the sky.
“That’s not all, though,” she said, deep in thought. “I can feel the Other. Auras. I can feel and sense other people’s deepest emotions when I open my Eye to them.” Now she was the one pacing. “And I can see spirits. Just tonight at the bar, there was a man there with a friend. A woman his age came into the room and kissed him on the cheek.” She instinctively moved her hand to her face. “I always assumed my ability to do this came from the Other.”
Adrian swallowed hard. “You saw his wife come into the bar?” It all made sense now—the blank looks, the electrical cord on the dock. His heart pulsed with the realization that she had seen an electrical fire sparked by the frayed cord in her vision at dinner last night. That’s why she wanted to accompany them this morning. That’s why she had known exactly where to look for the cord.
She nodded simply, sitting heavily next to him on the bed. “Did you know her?”
“I told you before, everyone knows everyone in this town. His wife died of cancer a few months ago.” He looked at her, fidgeting with the hem of her sweatshirt as she gazed out the window, still deep in thought. She was clearly at odds with herself for being so vulnerable with him.
But she had told him. Nobody else but him. Why ? He had known her for only a few days. Hell, he barely knew her at all, but he couldn’t stop the sensation rising in his chest as he let the reality of her secret sink in. Knowing felt…it felt right. Like he was supposed to know.
The idea that there were witches out there that wanted her dead made something inside him—something raw and primitive—crack wide open. She looked back at him, her eyes now fully aglow with her magic, and he knew she could sense his emotions twisting and turning between anguish and anger.
“You said you can read people’s emotions?” he asked in a low voice, not shifting his gaze from hers. She nodded. The golden flecks in her eyes were like starlight reflecting in the brightest sky. “What did you sense from me on the boat today?” She flushed at the brashness of his question, and she tore her gaze away. He knew what she had felt from him. The weight of her magic still clung to him, lingering in his blood.
“I felt—warm.” She bit her lip.
“What else?” His voice was a deep whisper, and he suddenly realized how close his hand was to her thigh. She was holding back. And he never wanted her to hold anything back from him again.
She dipped her head. “I don’t know what it was. It was like the tide rising and falling.”
The corner of his mouth ticked up, and he paused for a moment. She had felt his magic, and now he knew he had sensed hers when the sky started spinning above him on the boat. “Why?” He prodded her.
She looked up to meet his gaze again, and something frantic flashed in her eyes. “I don’t know.” He hesitated for a moment as his hand rose to graze her cheek, brushing away what was left of the tear that had fallen there.
She leaned into his touch, and his hand drifted back to her hair, lacing his fingers into the loose waves. Although the press of her cheek against his hand was light, there was a heaviness to it that made his skin catch fire. He leaned closer, bringing his lips closer to her ear.
“And what,” he whispered as the electric energy of their magic connected again, “are you sensing from me now?” His lips were now barely grazing her cheek as he became consumed by waves of her magic.
She turned toward him and pressed her lips to his, and Adrian plunged into the energy of the sky, liquid heat coursing through his veins.
His touch and his movements became more urgent as he wrapped his hand in her hair, pulling her closer. She abruptly pushed against his chest, letting go of a frantic breath as she withdrew.
Cori’s eyes were wide as she stared at him, fear flashing in golden flecks of light. But she didn’t look away. Her hand traced the curve of his collarbone, and he released a soft groan as his muscles strained against her touch.
Her head tipped back at the sound, and his lips instinctively moved to her throat, outlining the swell of her jaw, trailing softly along her neck. He could barely breathe. The intensity of his mouth on her hastened the heat as their magic combined, and he became completely lost in the eternity of the sky.