Chapter 11
Cillian grabbed the glass of water off the counter and stood. “I’ll show you, but you have to promise you won’t go running off again. While hide-and-seek in the dark is certainly something I would entertain in … other circumstances, I would prefer to wait until those burns on your hands heal.”
He winked, and heat rose up in my cheeks.
Other circumstances as in … oh … Oh! Okay, that’s hot as fu—no!
Get your head out of the gutter! I cleared my throat.
Of all the things I’d run from in my life, I highly doubted whatever parlor trick he had prepared would be one of them.
“You have my word, I won’t run. Wow me.”
He nodded and pinched his eyes shut, one hand white-knuckled on the stone hung around his neck, the other around the water glass.
Seconds ticked away to minutes. When I’d all but accepted the whole thing was a ruse, I heard it: the buzz in the air, like some sort of machine amping up.
As the pitch rose, my hair began to lift off my shoulders in chunks, charged with static electricity.
The sound peaked at a near ear-piercing octave, when the room stilled suddenly.
Cillian’s eyes popped open, a smokey film over his irises.
He dropped the stone—my hair falling around my shoulders in time—and his hand hovered above the glass.
One long exhale and it started. Water droplets began to fall upward, against gravity, defying every rational explanation my brain tried to grasp at.
Like magnets drawn together, but quicker, one bead after the other rose, until the entire glass pooled against the bottom of his palm, swirling.
My mouth fell open. “Whoa, how—how did you—”
“Might want to pick that jaw up off the floor there, ’cause you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
He smirked, setting the now empty glass on the side table before placing his free hand under the pool.
Sealed in some sort of invisible forcefield, he moved his hands adjacent from one another without losing a single drop.
My eyes widened as the water tied itself into different shapes and sizes with the gentle twist of his wrist: a sphere, a mini whirlpool, a waterfall.
Stunned into silence, all I could do was watch until he gave me a final wink and clapped his hands together, making me jump. In a poof of mist, the water was gone.
My head swam with questions, but each led back to one. How? Just, how?
“So,” he said, leaning against the counter. “Was that proof enough?”
“How did you do that?”
He pointed a finger at himself. “Witch.”
“Right … I, but you … and—” I tripped over my words.
“It’s all right, take your time. Let it sink in. I know how impressive my magic can be.”
Cillian sat at my side, closer now than before, and a spark snapped between us.
Warm, lovely, encompassing. And though a part of me really did want to run, a larger part wanted to press into that warmth.
Into him. He grinned, an almost bashful look beneath it, and ran his hand through his hair, propping his elbows on his knees.
“Okay, so,” I breathed. “Witches are real then …”
“Correct. Are you ready for some answers now, or should I give you a little longer to wrap your head around it first?”
“No, no, I’m good. You know, just having a mini-internal crisis regarding everything I’ve ever known about life and the world as a whole. No big deal.”
He chuckled. “Understandable.”
I crossed my legs pretzel style and turned to face him, careful not to use my hands as leverage. “So, you got that mark from a witch in a nightmare?”
“Yes. Only, she wielded a very different kind of magic than what you just saw.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, take my talisman for example.” He held up his pendant. “It’s tourmaline, known for its ability to neutralize negativity. It gives me a strong connection to my affinity and helps me focus my spells more accurately.”
“Affinity? Is that like a magic style, or …”
He flipped my ice pack, meeting my stare. “In a nutshell, yeah. There are four magical archetypes: Baneful, Ethereal, Tinctured, and Elemental. Broken down to the simplest form being: dark, light, spiritual, and physical.”
While my rational mind told me he was full of shit, my intuition told me otherwise.
The urge in my center said to stay, listen and, even more unexpected, learn.
I’d searched for answers to my dreams for longer than I could recall, had known terror for so long.
But his words, they—they made sense somehow.
Like I’d known what he said was fact, but had somehow forgotten.
I swallowed hard. “And your affinity?”
“Elemental.”
“That explains the water and the mist …”
“Exactly. My ancestor, she was born a Tinctured witch gifted in herbal healing, counteracting dark magics, that sort of thing. Along her journeys, she’d come across a box, spelled shut for years, she’d said.
But even sealed, you could feel this … evil radiating from inside.
Whatever it was, it was dark, created by Baneful magic.
She was to watch over it, make sure it never ended up in the wrong hands.
” He sighed. “She left it to me, given I was the only one still alive in the family.”
The confession hit me like a freight train. He was no stranger to loneliness either. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright.” He flashed a weak smile. “It was a long time ago.”
“My mom … she left me. Never knew my dad. So, I understand.” The words rolled out before I could question if I’d truly wanted to share them. But, after they fell from my lips, I realized I had wanted to.
He placed a hand on my arm. “I’m sorry.”
“Long time ago too.” My shoulders hunched, his stare heavy on me. “The box?”
“Right.” He nodded and removed his hand.
“A few years later I began having these dreams. They started off like normal nightmares: losing teeth, falling, the usual. But then they took a dark turn. This creature continually hunted me, always managing to find me no matter where I hid. That picture you showed me …”
My heart began to race. Of the beast, the one who’d haunted me every night since I could remember. “There’s a reason you recognized it …”
“Yes. I’m not entirely sure how we’ve seen the same thing, but that very same creature beat me senseless in a particularly violent nightmare. It kept demanding I return what rightfully belonged to it.”
My blood chilled. No way … there’s no possible way …
“Eventually,” Cillian continued, “I connected whatever was in that cursed box to what the creature was looking for. It took me a few weeks, but I cracked the spell, opened the box, and found this stone inside unlike anything I’d ever seen before.”
“What did it look like?” I asked, too hurried.
He searched my face. “Red, divots all around it, but it had this sickening effect I can’t quite explain. Why?”
Chills spread through me from head to toe. Holy. Shit. I didn’t think, didn’t give myself a moment to process. Instead, I threw the ice pack on the bed, snatched his hand, and the pain hit me. “Ah!”
“Hold on, hold on.” He took my hands. “I’m no healer, but I think I can still help.”
With one hand gripped around his talisman, he allowed the electricity inside him to build before touching two gentle hands against my palms. I watched in stunned amazement as the deep rivets began to loosen, shimmy, and crawl up my palms, disappearing into his fingertips.
“Fire is an element too,” he said with a strained smile.
“Are you okay? You look a little—”
“I’m fine, don’t worry about me. Now, did you have something you wanted to show me, or are you just eager to get this whole budding romance thing rolling already?” he teased.
I didn’t fight the laugh rising, but I still saw it despite his attempt to conceal the truth beneath well-timed snark—the absorption of the last burn line made him shudder. He stood before I could question him again and motioned toward the door.
“Lead on, little shadow.”
When we reached my room, Cillian paused, leaning against my doorframe as I fiddled with my room key.
“Ah, so you are ready to take our budding romance to the next level then.” He smirked. “Fine by me. I do love a woman who knows what she wants.”
I rolled my eyes as the lock clicked over. “Ha ha, very funny. No, I need to show you something.” With the door shut behind us, I flicked the lights on, tying my hair on top of my head in a messy bun. “You said it was a red stone, right?”
“I did … What are you getting at?”
I ripped my bedside drawer open, fished out the buzzing stone from the recesses, and extended it to him. “Is this what you were talking about?”
The color drained from his face as he slapped it from my hand, the stone clattering to the ground. Without pause, he slid a lacy doily off the side table, wrapped the stone, and threw it back in the drawer. “Where did you get this?”
“What is it?”
“I’m not kidding, Fey,” he said, voice and gaze darkening. “Where did you find this?”
I sank on the mattress, heartbeat pounding in my ears. “It … it came to me in a dream.”
“God, it’s worse than I thought …”
“What’s worse?”
“Nothing, I just—you can’t touch that thing, all right? Ever.”
His attention fell back toward the bedside drawer, a shiver running through him. As if that weren’t enough to make me run for the hills, I pressed again, unsure where my sudden bravery had come from. “What. Is. It?”
“It’s a long story—”
“What? You have some hot date you need to run off to? ’Cause me? I’ve got all night.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m going to ask you one more time. What is that thing, Cillian? And no evasive maneuvers this time. I want the truth.”
He stood rigid and quiet for a few moments, but with a sigh, he pointed to the empty spot next to me on the bed. “May I?”
I nodded.
“I don’t know exactly what or where it originated from, but whatever its intended purpose is, it’s not good. It was born of Baneful magic, which seeps into everything it touches like ink in water.” His expression softened. “So please, promise me you won’t touch it, okay?”